Go ahead. DIY. Even if your custom made push notification system passes the audition stage, chances are, you'll soon realize you're in over your head. If you’re serious about mobile marketing, you need to acknowledge there's a lot more to it than what meets the eyes.
All too often we hear from brands who already have their own app (nice work!) and have even managed to generate millions of app downloads AND opt-ins (amazing!). At some point during the implementation of theses strategies, they were given the choice of either custom developing their push notification system or selecting a mobile marketing platform to help manage mobile campaigns, ensure message deliverability and full analytics access.
For those who pick the custom route, here's a few pointers:
What’s happening within my app?
If you were to send a message to a complete stranger, meaning you have no idea what their preferences and behaviours are, would you expect a positive interaction to come out of it? How could you make sure you send the right message at the right time if you’re completely in the dark?
The same holds true for your push notification campaigns. Before you can confidently strategize on any mobile marketing campaign you need to collect the right data to work with. Obviously this is not a one-time thing either. Every interaction with your app users is an opportunity to get to know them better, much like in any in person interaction; except with app users, you need to be able to process your learnings in bulk. The idea is to create long lasting relationships based on a foundation of trust and respect where your customer feel like you, as a brand, can put a face to the data.
Simply sending a push notification is not enough, you need to know who taps on it, who converts and even more importantly, who doesn’t show any interest in it and what that tells you about them. To do this, you need a mobile marketing platform.
Updates. Endless updates.
Every time Apple, Google, etc... release a new update you need to update your custom built system. Read: time & money. Whether you have in-house developers doing this for you or if you’re using an agency, chances are they don’t specialize specifically on push notifications (meaning they work on broader projects, build apps, websites, etc). In other words, this is going to take them longer to accomplish and might still not be perfect. You need a team that’s 100% focused on this and behind you at all times. Once again, you need a mobile marketing platform.
Capacity.
As your app user base grows, so does your need for a reliable system. Pushing to 500k users is very different than 5k. You need a system that’s robust enough to handle such loads and doesn’t allow for long down times. Once again, for this, you need a mobile marketing platform.
Staying ahead of the curve.
Finally, if you’re a brand who wants to be ahead of the curve with mobile, bringing in innovation means (you know it by now): time & money. Any new ideas you come up with will require research and development hours either in-house or outsourced. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just sit back, relax and get these delivered to you so you can focus on USING THEM? For this, you need a mobile marketing platform like Notificare.