Have you ever wondered how to get paid to walk? In today's day and age, there are a plethora of ways to earn money, but did you know that you actually can make money walking? It's true! We've found these options below that, in fact, do allow you to make money walking in one way […]
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It’s no secret that our world is trending in a mobile direction.
As a marketer, you need to recognize this concept and adapt accordingly. Your customers are using their mobile devices to consume, so that’s where you need to target them.
For those of you out there who developed a mobile app, you’re already heading in the right direction.
In fact, without the app as a platform, you won’t be able to use push notifications as a marketing tactic. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t continue reading if you don’t have a mobile app.
While you may not be able to implement this strategy right now, you’ll be able to do so once your app launches.
Let’s start with the basics. What exactly is a push notification?
I’m sure you’ve seen these before, probably on your own mobile devices, even if you didn’t know what they were called. It’s a message that appears on your screen, similar to a text message, but it comes from an app.
This is a great opportunity for you to share information, provide updates, and stay in contact with users who have your app downloaded to their devices.
But with great power comes great responsibility. Overloading on these messages could backfire, which I’ll explain in greater detail as we continue.
It’s important that you clearly understand the difference between texts and push notifications. Even though they are similar and look the same on the screen, they are extremely different.
For example, when someone sends you a text message, the opening lines of the text will appear on your home screen. When you open up the message, you’ll see the full text.
But that’s not the case with a push notification.
When a user opens up a push notification, it brings them to the app, but the message is gone. So if your push notification is too long, part of it may get cut off, and the user won’t even know what you’re trying to say to them.
To prevent this from happening, it’s best to use as few words as possible when crafting your messages. That’s why shorter push notifications are more effective.
As you can see, fewer words lead to higher click rates.
So while you won’t have as much liberty with your word count as you would with a text message, push notifications are still very effective.
SMS messages from businesses can be perceived as spam. But with a push notification, they know exactly where it’s coming from since the app is installed on their device.
Plus, it’s free for users to receive a push notification. But they may have to pay for incoming SMS messages, depending on their plans.
Unsolicited SMS messages are also illegal, so overall, it’s best to just stick with push notifications and keep the word count low to ensure that your entire message gets displayed on the screen.
So now that you know how long to make your push notifications, it’s time to talk about the content and reasoning behind sending them.
If you just want to say hello and remind your customers who you are, push notifications are not the way to do this.
It’s annoying and will end up hurting you instead of helping, but we’ll talk about that in greater depth shortly.
So what type of content should you send? Personalized messages.
As you can see from these numbers, your best bet is to stick to content that’s relevant and personalized to the user.
Here some ideas to help you segment your audience so you can deliver content that’s tailored to each user.
You’ve got lots of options to choose from.
For example, let’s say your company will be attending an industry event in South Florida. It wouldn’t make sense to send that notification to everyone in the United States who has your app.
Realistically, people aren’t going to travel for something like that. So it’s a waste for you to send something irrelevant to them.
But you could definitely send that notification to app users who live in Florida, especially if you’re offering them an incentive or exclusive offer for attending the event.
This type of push notification is personal and adds value to the recipient.
As I’ve said a few times already, you need to tread carefully with your push notification strategy.
Sending too many push notifications or irrelevant messages will backfire. That’s because users have the option to opt-in and opt-out of your messages.
That’s right. If you annoy a user, they will simply mute your notifications. People already have predetermined feelings about these messages. In fact, 52% of app users say that push notifications are an annoying distraction.
Once you get muted, it’s going to be nearly impossible for you to get the user to turn notifications back on.
You won’t have a way to contact them unless you send them an email. But sending an email begging a user to turn on push notifications isn’t the best look for your brand.
So you’ll be better off just trying to prevent this from happening in the first place by limiting your number of push notifications per week.
As you can see, even sending more than two push notifications in a week can cause up to 37% of users to disable these messages.
Sending too many push notifications can have an even worse effect than getting muted by the user. More than 30% of users will stop using an app altogether if they receive between six and ten notifications in one week.
So as a rule of thumb, keep your push notifications to one per week at the most. Only send content that adds value to the user, like a discount or an important update.
Flash sales are a great opportunity for you to take advantage of push notifications.
These types of promotions create the fear of missing out, better known as FOMO. The user will think that if they don’t buy something fast, they’ll miss out on a great deal.
Consider this. The app user is already interested in your brand. That’s why they downloaded the app in the first place.
They’ve probably purchased something from you in the past. So the flash sale could be enough of a reason for the user to buy something that’s been on their mind.
Flash sales could be just a few hour time window, or potentially up to 24 hours.
Just make sure that you send it out at an appropriate time. Don’t send a notification on Tuesday if the flash sale isn’t until Friday.
Remember, you’re trying to limit the number of weekly push notifications that you send.
Also, don’t send it at 3:00 AM when people are sleeping. This may sound like common sense, but you’d be surprised how often I see mistakes like this.
If the flash sale is from 1:00 – 4 PM, then send it at 1:00. If you send it too early, then when someone opens up the app they won’t be able to take advantage of the offer yet.
You’d have to rely on them coming back later to buy, which they could easily forget.
Use push notifications to enhance the customer experience. If they’re waiting for an update on something, tell them via push notification. Here’s a great example of this concept applied by Uber.
They send a notification to users when their car is arriving.
Users don’t have to keep the app open and track the location of their drivers. They also won’t have to stand outside to wait in the cold, rain, or heat.
Even though this type of message doesn’t offer a discount, it still provides users with a value that improves their experience.
This tactic isn’t just limited for ride-sharing apps. It’s something that can be used for any type of delivery service.
For example, “Your food is here,” is another message that an app user would want to receive.
They won’t have to stand outside to wait for the delivery driver. This also eliminates the need for drivers to make calls, which is a safer and more efficient process for your company as well.
This type of customer service goes a long way. By improving their lives, the customer will be more likely to use your app and spend more money in the future so they can continue to get this type of great service.
Not all push notifications are created equally.
If you have a mobile application that’s available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, you need to realize how these notifications will look on the user’s screen.
Check this out. Just look at the difference between iOS and Android users in terms of click-through rates.
With that said, iOS users open their push notifications at a rate that’s seven times faster than users with an Android device.
Why would this happen? It has to do with the differences in the software on each device.
When an Apple user unlocks their phone, the push notification disappears from the screen. But Android users have to manually clear their notifications.
If they don’t clear it manually, they would have to open it to be removed from the notification screen. That’s why Android users have higher open rates, but Apple users open notifications faster.
There are also slight variations between how notifications look on the same platform, but from different devices and software versions.
You need to take all of this into consideration when you’re tracking certain metrics.
Just because the click rates from your Apple users might be lower, it doesn’t mean that those people aren’t interested in your brand. So don’t do something drastic like abandoning your marketing tactics that target those users.
Geofencing relates back to personalization.
The app uses location-based services to target users.
Here’s how it works. Let’s say that you have a chain of physical store locations. If a user has your app downloaded to their device, they can get a notification about a sale when they walk within a couple of blocks of a store.
Check out this example from Vitamin World so you can see what I’m talking about.
So when an app user enters any of those geofenced areas, they’ll get a discount sent to their phone.
This ensures that your push notifications are timely and relevant. It works great if you have a mobile app for your restaurant business.
If an app user walks by during lunchtime, send them a notification about a discounted lunch promotion.
Even if you don’t have physical locations, you can still use geofencing technology to enhance your push notifications. For example, let’s say that your mobile commerce brand sells equipment for water sports, like surfboards, paddleboards, and wetsuits.
If someone with your app enters a geofenced area by the beach, you could send them a notification.
But it wouldn’t make sense to send this type of promo to someone who is in the desert or in the mountains. Make sense?
Geofencing encourages your customers to spend more money. Once they get a notification, allow them to spend money right away from within your app.
Whether it’s for a product, service, or subscription, you want to make sure that your push notifications are actionable.
Just remember what we talked about earlier. Although geofencing is a great marketing strategy, you don’t want to go overboard. You can still annoy your users and get muted if you send too many of these.
Push notifications are a great way to improve sales from your mobile app. But there are certain things that you need to keep in mind before you send them out.
Limit the number of words per notification. Don’t send push notifications too often.
The content of these messages needs to be timely, relevant, and personalized. Add value to the recipient by offering promotions or flash sales. Use geofencing technology to target app users in a specific area.
Understand how iOS and Android users behave differently when receiving a push notification.
If you follow these tips, you’ll be able to improve your mobile marketing strategy and increase sales.
What types of push notifications are you sending to your mobile customers?
There’s a little ice cream shop near where we live that serves some really delicious ice cream. I’m not sure if they make it in their shop or whether they buy it from a vendor, but whatever the case may be, it’s incredibly rich and creamy stuff.
Naturally, our kids love the place, especially on summer evenings when it’s warm out but not unpleasantly hot. Whenever we’re near the ice cream shop with our children, or one of them thinks of it after dinner, we’re usually asked whether or not we can go to the ice cream shop for a cone.
Now, if our whole family goes there, it would cost about $20 for a cone for each of us. It’s not a terrible expense, but it’s one that could add up pretty fast if we indulged regularly at the ice cream shop.
So, Sarah and I usually give our default answer of “no” to the suggestion of an ice cream shop visit. It’s not something we do very often.
A few days ago, however, we were on a long family bike ride spanning quite a few miles along the bike trails not too far from our home. It was a leisurely ride, but a pretty long one, especially for our youngest child. We stopped at a park along the way. We stopped to pick some berries along the path. We stopped for water and for a bathroom break.
At one point during the ride, it was observed that we were going to go near the ice cream shop very close to the end of our ride – in fact, we’d basically go from the ice cream shop directly to our home. So, Sarah made the suggestion that maybe we could stop for ice cream on the way home.
Naturally, our children were incredibly enthusiastic, and anticipatory talk about the ice cream shop and what flavors we got last time filled the conversation for the next few kilometers. The children were really excited for this treat at the end of our family’s long bike ride.
When we made it to the shop, we were pretty warm, so we went inside to cool off for a few minutes before ordering. The children excitedly checked out the day’s flavor offerings and made their selections, and the five of us enjoyed a cone together, talking about our bike ride and the fun we’d had over the last few hours.
We biked home slowly from the ice cream shop, our bellies full with a bit of ice cream and our minds and mouths reflecting on the wonderful day we’d spent together.
There are a couple of really key things I want to pull out of this story that relate to the value of little experiences and splurges like stopping at the ice cream shop.
First, you don’t really get much value for your dollar if a little experience or treat like this is completely ordinary and routine. If we stopped there all the time, the value we got for our $20 would not be nearly as high. It would seem completely ordinary and ho-hum – just another ice cream cone. That’s about as unenjoyable as ice cream can get. If you really want to make ice cream so routine in your life that it becomes ordinary and forgettable, then buy a big bucket and keep it in your freezer. There’s no need to pay the ice cream shop premium if it’s such an ordinary and routine experience.
The same thing holds true with all kinds of little treats and experiences. There’s no need to pay the coffee shop premium if it’s become an ordinary and routine experience – just make some at home. There’s no need to pay the book store premium if it’s become an ordinary and routine experience – just check out books at the library if you don’t already have a bunch that are unread at home. If something non-essential in your life that costs money has become ordinary and routine, then you should reboot that routine.
Second, anticipation adds a lot to a little experience. If we do decide to go to the ice cream shop, we’re far better off deciding to do so a while in advance so that there’s the joy and pleasure of anticipating the stop. We get the enjoyment of thinking ahead to the experience along with the opportunity to talk about it and share that joy. It’s fun to anticipate something, and it’s free!
However, it’s much harder to have that joy and pleasure of anticipation if the stop is a routine one, so anticipation works much, much better if it’s an occasional experience rather than a regular one. It’s hard to really enjoy the anticipation if you do that thing every single day, after all. There’s not much anticipation to a treat you indulge in several times a week.
Third, most little treats are better when they’re social. Going to the ice cream shop alone is far, far less enjoyable than doing it with your kids or with your wife or with friends. The joy in most shared experiences is much higher than the joy in a solo one.
If you’re going solo, skip the little treats and experiences. Hold off on them until you have the opportunity to indulge with a friend or with a loved one. This directly heightens the experience for both of you because it becomes a shared experience that you can talk about together.
Finally, you should keep your personal “baseline” as low as possible, so that your costs stay low and many things feel like treats. Try to keep your “routine” things as simple and inexpensive as humanly possible so that the costs don’t add up on you, plus you retain the benefit of thinking of everything better than that routine as being a treat, one worth anticipating and enjoying.
For example, ion’t indulge in the world’s greatest coffee every single morning – instead, find the most inexpensive coffee that’s “good enough” and drink that. That way, on the occasions when you do drink that expensive coffee, it’s a treat, and your daily ordinary cost is as low as possible. Don’t have a mind-blowing bowl of ice cream every evening as a treat – it will quickly seem ordinary and then you have yourself a very expensive ordinary routine and the mind-blowing ice cream won’t seem special any more.
In the end, it’s all about making little experiences in your life as meaningful as possible while simultaneously spending less money on those little experiences. Believe it or not, those two things go hand in hand.
It’s all about the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation, where if you regularly and frequently indulge in a particular splurge, then it starts to become less and less special and more and more normal and routine, then when you try to break that new routine, it feels like a loss. That’s not a winning strategy for much of anything.
Instead, spread out those little pleasurable experiences. During most of your life, stick with a very simple baseline. When you do decide to splurge, decide a bit in advance and let yourself enjoy some anticipation. Try to make the splurge social, so that it’s a shared experience with someone in your life. Also, make sure the splurge is something you’re really going to enjoy – otherwise, what’s the value in it?
You’ll find that if you use these strategies with the little pleasures in your life, they will become much more pleasurable and even meaningful, which means that you’re getting far, far more value for your splurging dollar. That $20 we spent on ice cream after our bike ride was a great $20 spent, and I don’t regret it in the least. We anticipated it together, it was a social moment, and it was a true treat because I don’t eat good ice cream all the time.
Try applying the same principles in your life with things like coffee stops or shopping trips or meals eaten out at restaurants. Cut the unnecessary parts of those experiences out of your life, and when you do indulge in those treats, make it social and anticipate it a little and really enjoy the experience. You will get far more value for your dollar and your time this way.
Good luck!
The post The Value of Making Little Experiences Meaningful appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
Moneywise’s Helen Knapman meets Richard Watts, the manager of Old Mutual UK Mid Cap, a First 50 fund for beginner investors
We invest in FTSE 250 companies, excluding investment trusts, as well as companies that are FTSE 250 size but are not listed on the FTSE 250 stock exchange – they could be listed on AIM, for example.
We have an active share [the percentage of the fund that differs from the FTSE 250 benchmark] of 80% to 85%. Our basic proposition is investing in companies with strong earnings growth. Over a long period of time, the FTSE 250 has delivered the fastest rate of UK earnings growth – faster than the FTSE 100 and small-cap [small companies] markets.
So it’s a very attractive proposition: fast earnings growth but with risk characteristics more akin to established large caps [larger companies].
We try to take advantage of under-researched stocks and find anomalies within our investment universe.
Key criteria we look for are positive earnings surprise – companies that will beat consensus market forecasts – and valuation re-rating potential.
The idea is you need to get at least 51% of your stock picks right and then drive that win rate as high as possible and keep it there consistently year after year.
But you can’t just be a great stock-picker; you need to get your portfolio construction right. We run high active positions in conviction ideas – I’m not frightened to have a 4%, 5% or 6% unit in a stock.
The top 10 stocks in the fund typically count towards 40% to 50% of the fund, while the top 30 typically count towards 80% to 85%. We currently hold about 40 stocks. We’re custodians of people’s money, but people don’t give me their money to base it on a benchmark-hugging fund.
We don’t automatically sell when share prices rise or fall; sometimes in these scenarios we buy more shares. We typically sell if we think the investment thesis is breaking down, or we’ve extracted the value and it’s time to move on.
The stock turnover is about 20%.
“We look for positive earnings surprise”
Lots of people try to time the market. But my view is that this is a very difficult thing to get right consistently, so why bother? Instead, I manage the fund with a low turnover – the average hold is three to four years – and a high-conviction approach.
Some 80% of what we do is stock picking, and 20% is top-down investing [an approach that looks at the overall economic picture]. So if you think you’re coming into economic recovery, don’t be too defensive in your position and have exposure to economically sensitive stocks. Likewise, if you come into a difficult economic environment or a recession, become more defensive.
Indivior, a drugs company that produces a treatment for opioid addiction. It has two products – a film, like a dissolvable tablet, and a monthly injection, and we think the injection is a game-changing solution which will grow the market. Last summer, the share price was £3; there have been a few ups and downs since then, but the share price is now hitting highs of £4.85.
GVC, a sports betting and gaming business, as it looks as if the US gaming market will open up following the Supreme Court decision earlier this year to allow sports betting.
In terms of things that haven’t worked, in the past 12 to 18 months we have reduced our holding in the retailer Pets at Home and completely sold out of software company Micro Focus, which put out a profit warning earlier this year.
Some examples are: Ashtead, an equipment rental company I bought in 2009 for certainly less than £2; now it’s £24. That’s been in the fund for nine years now and it’s been a great performer. Once these stocks get going, they can perform for long periods of time.
Boohoo.com. The online fashion retailer IPO’d [when shares are sold to the public for the first time] at 50p at the end of 2014 and fell to 25p, but now it’s about £2.10.
Fever-Tree. I couldn’t buy the drinks producer initially as it was a small-cap stock. But it got to the market cap size consistent with a FTSE 250 stock on AIM, and I bought it for about £7.20. I was late to it, but it’s now £30.
SSP. The food and drinks operator IPO’d at £2.10 about two to two and a half years ago. The share price is now about £6.50.
Do your research and try to understand what you’re buying.
Notes: (i) Source: Old Mutual UK Mid Cap Key Investor Information. (ii) As at 8 June 2018. (iii) As at 28 February 2018. Source: FE, 11 June 2018.
Richard Watts joined Old Mutual in 2002 as an analyst on the UK mid and small-cap team before assuming full portfolio management responsibilities in 2009. He joined from Orbis Investment Advisory, before which he was at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Richard has a degree in mathematical sciences from the University of Oxford and is a CFA charterholder.
| Five-year discrete performance of Old Mutual UK Mid Cap Fund | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
| Old Mutual UK Mid Cap R Acc GBP | 38.38 | 8.14 | 24.72 | 10.01 | 27.99 |
| Benchmark (i) | 34.94 | 2.79 | 12.04 | 5.08 | 18.24 |
| (i) FTSE 250, ex investment trust in GB. Source: FE, 11 June 2018. | |||||
