When you unlock your phone, you can see several unread notifications. Also, how many red bubbles of notifications can you see on the corners of different apps? This is how many businesses, apps, and organizations are trying to grab your attention. With reduced attention spans, there is a huge challenge for these apps and businesses to grab the attention of the users. Organizations are now realizing that the perfect way to engage customers is through their mobile phones, whether through SMS text messages or push notifications. Let's understand what these two are and how can you choose between them.
SMS Notifications
SMS stands for Short Messaging Service. It is a text message that you receive on your phone. SMS can be used to send time-based notifications to your customers and subscribers. SMS marketing can be used as an important marketing tool. Usually, text messages are limited to 160 characters only. However, in case your text marketing strategy requires more than 160 characters, you can still convey your message in more than one message in a single SMS.Why SMS notifications are important?
Several organizations and businesses choose business text messaging services because the text messages can be sent at any time on any device. No need to download or install an app or software. Almost every mobile phone is capable of receiving SMS and businesses have an opportunity to schedule text messages.If your friend or family member wants to give you some important information quickly, they will choose to text you instead of email or call. Moreover, most of the customers prefer to receive offers via text messages.
When to use it?
To convey emergency text alerts and give information to users about the latest features, SMS notifications come in handy. Text messages can be used by various businesses to:• Spread information about the new events
• Enhance profits with cart abandonment and sales texts
• Share internal information with the employees
• Send survey text messages to customers
• Provide information to patients about new appointments
• Give information to customers about reservation verification
Push notifications
A pop up appearing on the mobile device is called push notifications. They may appear on the mobile device regardless of the customers using their mobile phones or it is in a locked state. Its maximum character length changes with every device, but generally, the length lies between 100 to 200 characters.Why push notifications are important?
With push notifications, the users do not need to be in the application to see them. The publishers of the app may send it at any time. Several people choose to receive push notifications while downloading the app. Most of the users always allow the request for push notifications while installing an app. But the ease of sending the push notifications may also present danger. A survey showed that most people stop using an application if it shows too many notifications. Hence, the marketers need to understand what is the right amount of notification that should be sent without irritating the users.
When to Use Push Notifications
It may be used for several things like sending promotions to users, inform customers about upcoming updates, and ask them to take action. It’s essential to note here that customers must download the app to get push notifications. Also, push notifications to ensure that customers remember your app. When push notifications are used correctly, it can improve the retention rate.Difference between push notifications and SMS text message
They both are used for the same purpose, but the platforms to send them are different. You should consider the following points to understand the difference between push notifications and text messages.• SMS notifications don’t need apps
If your company or business supports a mobile app, you may want to send push notifications. Otherwise, SMS notifications can be a better option for you as it does not require your customers to have a specific app installed on their phone.You need to have basic knowledge of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to add push notifications into your web app. But, an online text message can be sent without any coding knowledge.
• Users may reply to SMS notifications
Push notifications only allow push notifications. Whereas, if you want that your customers can reply to you with requests and questions, you can use mass text messaging . SMS messages can allow for 2-way communication.• SMS notifications can be triggered by another app
For your messages to be effective, you need to send them to the right people at the right time. Many apps can allow you to trigger sending messages when an event occurs.It’s easy and simple to include SMS notifications into your service to enhance retention rates. group texting can be beneficial for your business when you do not want to invest in an application or in case you want to target users with any kind of mobile phone. Text messaging has several benefits over push notification and hence, text marketing is preferred over push notifications marketing.
