Triggered web push notifications: The secret sauce to higher online conversions

Srikant Kotapalli

Apr 27, 2020

Web push notifications have proven to be one of the most effective channels for customer engagement and digital growth across industries. They provide businesses with the necessary hook that’ll help them engage their customers throughout the lifecycle, while improving retention and driving revenue.

In our previous blog post, we talked about the different types of web push notifications, the benefits of each one, and when exactly to use them. Today we’ll deep dive into triggered web push notifications and get to know the type of campaigns that will help you achieve higher conversions.

For marketers, success is not defined by just sending push notifications. Engaging the right users with the right content and at the right time is critical for your growth. In a world of ads and messages influx, marketers like you are fighting to ensure their messages reach their users and be relevant to them. This is where triggered web push comes into the picture, where every message is based on the user’s action.

Table of Contents
  1. What Is a Triggered Web Push Notification?

  2. Benefits of Triggered Web Push Notifications

  3. 4 Triggered Web Push Notification Campaigns to Boost Conversions

  4. Before You Go

What Is a Triggered Web Push Notification?

Triggered web push notifications, as their name suggests, are notifications that are sent to website users based on their actions. These actions (also known as events) are taken by your users and, once a specific event is triggered, the notifications are sent automatically. 

You can set triggers and goals based on user actions like product views, abandoning the cart, adding to the wishlist, completing the purchase among others. You can also choose your audience segment based on their attributes like location, devices, OS, etc.

Benefits of Triggered Web Push Notifications

With triggered web push campaigns, you can send push notifications as a nudge to follow up on your buyer’s journey. It enables you to send automated messages based on predefined triggers and real-time customer data.

Here are the benefits of sending web push notifications based on specific triggers and user-based actions:

  • Targets the right users, at the right time
  • Re-engages and retains users
  • Helps in achieving higher user engagement
  • Increases online conversion rates

Now let’s take a look at different triggered web push campaigns that elevate your growth curve.

4 Triggered Web Push Notification Campaigns to Boost Conversions 

In today’s customer-first era, people have become more mindful of what they receive and when they receive it. As a digital-first brand, you need to be really strategic about not only what to communicate but also about when to communicate it. That makes the timing of your web push notifications super crucial.

Understanding and analyzing your users’ behavior is the key to optimizing your conversion rate. So let’s have a look at different types of triggered push notifications.

1. Welcome Push Campaigns

First impressions count! Sometimes they can be your last impression too. Welcome push notifications are the first personal interaction with your website users. They are also a great way to educate your users about what your website offers and help them experience the benefits quickly. Hence it is imperative to make each notification count.

Sending a warm welcome to your first-time website visitors is essential to onboarding them and showing that you appreciate their subscription. Sending a series of welcome notifications including personalized offers and messages is a great way to build customer relationships.

2.Conversion Push Campaigns

Conversion push campaigns are designed to nudge your customers into achieving the conversion goals you’ve set. One of the most prominent goals is to convert the cart abandoners. Browse abandonment and shopping cart abandonment are the toughest hurdles for eCommerce and airline brands. With no physical interaction to remind or nudge a customer, more than 69.57% of the shopping carts are abandoned globally before customers make a purchase. In order to tackle this challenge, you need to send timely push notifications encouraging users to complete their purchase. 

For example, Malcolm visits your website and adds a shopping cart and abandons it without making a purchase. You can send a personalized web push notification to Malcolm after a predefined interval guiding him back to the shopping cart or checkout flow with a reminder or an incentive that will encourage him to complete the transaction.

For example, Jenny visits your travel website and browses flights for Hawaii and abandons the search without booking a ticket. You can send a price alert web push notification to her after a predefined interval guiding her back to the flight search page and nudge her towards the conversion goal (i.e. booking a flight).

3. Re-Engagement Push Campaigns

Re-engagement web push notifications are very important for your brand’s growth. They encourage customers to return to your website at crucial moments when they tend to become dormant. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t seek to re-engage their users until they are long gone. However, you would ideally want to reach them when the engagement begins to fade away. An effective re-engagement web push campaign will definitely grab your user’s attention and encourage them to return to your website.

For example, Lisa visits your online eCommerce store and checks out women’s clothing categories and adds an out-of-stock red top to her wishlist and drops off your website. There’s a chance that she might forget her wishlist and never return to your website. In such cases you can send a personalized web push notification at the right time to Lisa with a back-in-stock reminder message, encouraging her to complete the purchase.

You can also re-engage users who have recently purchased a product after a predefined time interval. Use Insider’s personalized product recommendations to effectively re-engage your users.

4. Retention Push Campaigns 

Loyal users are the lifeblood of your business growth. They are more responsive to campaigns and more likely to bring in new users through word of mouth. As a marketer, you are responsible for acquiring new users but your most important goal is to retain previously acquired users. 

You can send users a trigger push notification to get them to complete an action that will keep them coming back for more. You could remind them that they were in the middle of planning a holiday, or they still haven’t made their first purchase or haven’t used their coupon code yet. This helps to curb “day 0”, “day 1”, and “day 7” retention.

For example, Mario lands on to your travel website and signs up as a user. He then checks out destinations, hotels, and flights for the summer holiday. He then drops off and doesn’t return again. You can achieve retention on “day 0” by sending a web push, nudging the user to come back to the website and pushing them down the funnel.

With triggered web push notifications, you can now guide your web users along the conversion funnel, boost user engagement, retention, and more. Set specific triggers and goal-based user actions at the right time and with high relevance to improve engagement and conversions.

Before You Go

Triggered push notifications enhances the overall communication process. They are an effective way to increase customer engagement and help boost your online conversions. Create specific triggers that will enable you to target your customers with the right messages at the perfect time. No matter what business you are in, triggered push notification campaigns can help you navigate the customers to end their buyer’s journey and result in achieving your conversion goals.

In this blog post, we talked about triggered web push notifications, benefits of using them, and their varied use-cases. In our next blog in this series, we’ll discuss the best practices and strategies to step up your web push game. To find out more about how to increase your revenue with triggered web push notifications, sign up for a quick personalized demo.


Srikant is a seasoned product marketing leader with 15+ years of experience in building and marketing SaaS products. As VP of Product Marketing at Insider, Srikant is responsible for Insider's product positioning, GTM and analyst relations. When not working on product marketing projects, Srikant loves exploring the design and engineering of things