Why publishers should use push notifications

In working with publishers to increase engagement with their apps, we knew push notifications were a powerful tool. After one publisher started using them, they saw a 60% increase in active users over three months.   The 2024 State of Mobile Publishing Report revealed that publishing brands that successfully optimize mobile app push notifications had more than twice as high audience engagement. 

We wanted to uncover tactics that could elevate the performance of more publishers, so we dug into data from more than 350 media apps built by Pugpig. We also partnered with Airship, OneSignal, PushPushGo and Pushly to get further insights from thousands of apps and billions of users around the world. 

As Eric Ulken, Vice President of Product at the Baltimore Banner told us for the report: “(Apps are) the only platform that we are able to push, bring people in without having to voluntarily follow a link. Newsletters to an extent, yes, but push notifications are more effective at bringing people back.”

This led us to ask what drove the performance of the most successful publishers. We also wanted to answer the question from some publishers who were worried that using push notifications would not only drive users to opt out of push but also delete the app. 

In truth, we did find one specific use of push that drove up app uninstalls: If a publisher sent push messages linked to gated content to nonsubscribers, churn increased. 

Apart from this churn-inducing use case, we haven’t found evidence that push notifications drive uninstalls. 

Build habits immediately

Airship has found more risk in not using, compared to using, push notifications. While app audiences are typically publishers’ most loyal users, they can’t take that for granted. Airship’s data shows the first 48 hours are critical in building habits that keep new users engaged with the app. 

App onboarding screens that include prompts to encourage users to opt into push notifications, customise the app and provide information on how to use it are key. Successful publishers such as Boston Globe and Minnesota Star Tribune have onboarding screens or pop-ups that ask users to opt into and customise push notifications the first time they open the app. 

According to OneSignal, in addition to higher push opt-in rates, apps with onboarding messages have 56.25% higher stickiness measured by the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users than apps that don’t. 

Messaging providers have found in their research that the most successful app onboarding sequences use multiple forms of messaging including email, push notifications and in-app messages. Notably, publishers should increase their adoption of in-app messaging because it doesn’t require app users to opt in, unlike push notifications. Plus, using multiple communications channels increases engagement by 37%, leading to higher 1-day, 7-day and 30-day app retention, OneSignal has found. 

Relevance is the key driver of push performance

We used data from the messaging providers to identify the most successful publishers using our app platform based on push notification open rates. Airship has found that personalisation boosts open rates by 37% on average. When we reached out to the best-performing publishers, we found the common thread between them was that they employed different methods to increase the relevance of their messaging, although they employed different tactics. 

• ACCA Student Accountant used an Airship scene to allow students to identify if they are currently studying for an exam. 
• City AM uses content strategy and click-through data from its newsletters to inform the stories they push. 

• The Boston Globe started allowing users to choose which push notifications they received using a preference centre. Open rates increased by up to three times. 

Their success in using relevance to drive higher push notification open rates has led to higher engagement and growth in their app audience. The Boston Globe has been so successful in increasing their app audience that they dedicated a staff member to focus on optimising their app even more. 

While we started this research looking to investigate push notification best practices, it quickly became obvious that publishers have several other app messaging opportunities to foster loyalty and habit with their apps such as Apple’s Live Activities. You might be familiar with them from delivery, ride-sharing or navigation apps when the app presents constantly updated information on the lock screen. News publishers have used these to show live updates of sports events and elections. As with other app messaging options, Live Activities have been shown to increase engagement. 

• Sports apps featuring live activities have 3.7x more sessions than those without them, according to Airship. 
• Across all types of apps, OneSignal found that apps that use them have a 23.7% higher retention rate. 

Google plans to add a similar feature in Android, which it calls Ongoing Notifications. The feature is planned for Android 16, which is scheduled to be released in the second quarter of 2025. 

The report contains more details about the case studies as well as benchmarks and best practices about: 

• The best time to send push notifications
• The ideal length of push notifications
• The best size for images in push notifications.  

You can download the full report to get all of the insights about how to use app messaging to achieve your app engagement, retention and growth goals. 

TL;DR report highlights:

> Mobile is the dominant platform for audiences, and its use is stable or growing across major markets around the world

> News and magazines has been a fast-growing segment amongst non-gaming apps, in terms of both downloads and revenue

> There has been an explosion in demand for AI chat and image generation apps, and the technology has a halo effect, as apps with AI features benefit from the surge in interest in artificial intelligence

> First-party data is a priority for publishers, and many use their apps to collect their own data

> Publishers see an opportunity to take advantage of regulators pushing Google and Apple to open their app stores, allowing them to keep more revenue and capture more data about their subscribers

> Push notifications are a killer feature for apps, offering a unique path to direct engagement

> Audio, puzzles and digital editions deliver high levels of engagement, and publishers should lean into these formats to build loyalty and habit with audiences

> Publishers plan to develop apps with richer, more personalized content and deeper community and interactive features. Publishers are already launching apps with high-touch membership features to increase revenue

Optimistic, despite challenges

One publisher we surveyed succinctly summarized their challenges, which mirror those of the wider industry: “Rapid declines in audience and revenue, challenges through the changing digital ecosystem thanks to the rise of AI and decline of social traffic.” Publishers told us that the lingering effects of inflation have made subscribers more price-sensitive, which makes it difficult for them to raise prices for those on discounted offers. Ad demand and falling digital ad yields were also eating into their top line. 

Despite it all, publishers remained optimistic that they would weather this storm, although less so than in our previous report, and they are pessimistic about the publishing industry overall.

AI has added to this period of disruption, but the perception of its impact is mixed. Publishers are concerned that AI-powered search will erode what is currently a reliable traffic source. 

However, publishers are also optimistic that AI can give as much as it takes from them. AI dominates their innovation agenda, as they look to a suite of AI technologies to drive efficiencies and deliver new value for audiences through personalization and AI-generated summaries, which have shown promise in engaging young, mobile audiences. 

A focus on retention, experimentation with acquisition

Apps have traditionally been seen as part of publishers’ retention strategies, and retention replaced acquisition as the top priority in our latest survey of publishing professionals.

However, the well-known challenges in audience development driven by changes in search and social are driving publishers to experiment with apps as audience acquisition tools.

Publishers are using advanced data tools to monitor how their apps are being used and what drives subscriber conversion. The Baltimore Banner in the US uses BlueConic to track what content users engage with, which app features they engage with and which newsletters they are subscribed to, Eric Ulken, VP of Product at The Baltimore Banner said it allows them to correlate activity that leads to conversion or retention, and that data is changing how they view the app in the context of their subscription strategy. “We tend to see the app as a retention play, largely. I think increasingly we’re starting to understand the value that it has further up the funnel,” he added. 

The Baltimore Banner is gathering and leveraging first-party data in the app through their use of external link entitlement (ELE), which allows them to direct iOS users to their own subscription journey. ELE allows them to avoid paying Apple 15-30% of their subscription revenues and gather first-party data from their users. 

While publishers have to apply to Apple to implement ELE, most of the publishers in our survey said they were interested in exploring the option. 

> To read next: how to maximize reader engagement on mobile apps

Push Notifications: The killer feature of apps

Using their data, The Baltimore Banner found “a strong correlation between regular use of the app and retention”, Eric said. 

For the report, we analyzed the product features responsible for users’ high engagement with apps. We found:

• A minority of app users are puzzle fanatics, but these users are extremely regular.
• Audio again plays a minority role in terms of the users of most apps, but audio users spend a lot of time in an app. Looking at one high-performing app, we found that audio users spent 2.5x more time in the app than non-audio users. 

Encouraging more people to use these features will help support subscriber retention. 

Publishers also find that push notifications offer a unique opportunity to engage audiences. 

“It is the only platform that we are able to push, bring people in, without having to voluntarily follow a link. Newsletters to an extent yes, but push notifications are more effective in bringing people back,” Eric Ulken, VP of product at The Baltimore Banner said. 

In analyzing data for the report and working with our customers, we have seen one publisher increase engagement with their app by 60% simply by starting to use push notifications. According to data from the apps we build, publishers with high-performing push notification strategies, which had average open rates of 2.55%, had more than twice as much engagement when measured by sessions per user per month than publishers with low-performing strategies. 

The future of apps

With mobile being the primary platform for most countries, publishers see apps becoming more central to their strategies. They also saw apps allowing them to reach audiences they currently don’t, including younger audiences. Pugpig data shows the opportunity apps present to reach younger audiences. For one century-old publisher, 53% of their app users are under 35 compared to just 38% of their web users.

They also plan to develop their apps further to increase engagement. B2B publishers want to leverage valuable industry data with real-time dashboards and other interactive data features. Consumer publishers plan to increase the range and variety of content they publish in apps and use personalization so that audiences can quickly find relevant content in their apps. 

Several publishers have already added commenting functionality to their apps and are considering adding richer community features to support higher-revenue membership offerings. 

Hearst UK has launched new apps as a key element in its premium membership strategy. Women’s Health Collective and Men’s Health Squad members have access to members-only content including training plans they can use at the gym on their smartphones. 

“The new apps and enhanced membership offerings will allow us to create even stronger and deeper relationships with existing and new members, whilst building more opportunities for the future with premium content that people want to pay for,” David Robinson, Chief Customer Officer at Hearst UK, said. 

The report also covers how publishers can take advantage of changes in the regulatory landscape that are opening up Apple and Google’s app stores, and we look at the impact of AI on mobile apps. It is available for download now.

This is a summary of the recently published Retention Economics report, collaboratively written by Kevin Anderson, Consulting Director at Pugpig, and Laura Graham, Media Practice Lead at Manifesto Growth Architects.

For media organizations, 2023 has been the Year of Retention.

At the beginning of the year, research by Minna Technologies found that 37% of people had canceled a subscription in the last six months. Businesses took note and, in the same report, 68% of subscription businesses cited retention as their top priority. And for good reason – increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by at least 25% and up to 95%, according to research by Bain Capital. 

However, until recently, focus has been on churn management over retention. 

Media organizations have traditionally created dedicated teams whose sole focus is to stop subscribers canceling their contracts, often through discounting or by offering additional benefits. This not only risks the spiral of ever reducing subscriber ARPU and can result in a large proportion never paying full price, but it also dilutes the value proposition and chips away at brand equity. Short-term KPIs (usually monthly net churn) have been prioritized over longer-term lifetime value, because of an addiction to volume; these measures of success drive knee jerk reactions, and do not reflect the mix of audiences or how they are monetized.

Relationship Management – the new retention strategy

To manage the range of relationships that media businesses have with their audiences, the entire organization – including marketing, product, editorial, advertising and circulation – needs to be mobilized, not just a winback team. This approach will  help organizations maximize customer lifetime value, not just of subscribers, but also from audiences across the engagement spectrum. 

In short: shifting from funnel management (which goes one way, and tries to prevent cancellations) to constant engagement loops that aim to prevent audiences from leaving the ecosystem (even at a lower ARPU). 

In practice, this means that media businesses will need to maintain and nurture audience relationships at every level of engagement, from lightly engaged casual users to highly engaged known users and to users whose relationship with you might have cooled. It means being comfortable with the fact that not everyone will be a subscriber, and that retention efforts will be different depending on the type of relationship that an audience member wants to have.

> To read next: 10 ways to combat subscription churn

Four cohorts for relationship management 

The report divides audiences into four cohorts based on current and potential value:

• Ghosts – the large group of loosely connected, unknown users. Single visits, unknowns can make up to 90% of a publisher’s audience, Madeleine White, editor-in-chief of the Audiencers recently told Poool’s London conference. 

The goal with Ghosts: Keep Them Sweet with an experience that mirrors how the brand is portrayed to the outside world. In other words, continue to pique their curiosity.

• Friends – a smaller, but growing group of known, registered users who haven’t taken the plunge to become subscribers but who also have a lot of potential for the business

The goal with Friends: nurture the relationship. How this is achieved should be aligned to how they became a Friend in the first place: entice engaged social users to sign up to a newsletter; promote other products to registered users; or encourage event goers to bring someone along with them next time.

• Lovers – these are the closest and deepest relationships. They are a small but mighty cohort, because they are passionate about the brand and its proposition, driving the most significant levels of ARPU

The goal with Lovers: protect the relationship. The easy trap here is to assume that only subscribers can be Lovers; but they’re not mutually exclusive. ARPU is generated from ongoing interactions with a brand, across multiple platforms, regardless of whether they are behind a paywall or not. Therefore, fail to protect your non subscribing Lovers at your peril. 

• Zombies – you had a relationship with them once, but it has since cooled.

The goal with Zombies: an engagement strategy to reconnect. Being transparent and making it easy for them to walk away actually improves the likelihood of reconnecting in the long run, if CLTV is prioritized over shorter-term KPIs. The moral of the story is: i) Put in the effort to negate audiences becoming Zombies in the first place, but ii). Do not burn bridges by trying to hang on to a relationship that is not working for either party

While the North Star goal for most media organizations remains subscriber growth, there is revenue to be earned from all of these cohorts. 

Tactics for maximizing the value of each cohort

To maximize revenue across these cohorts, organizations need to offer a range of free and paid propositions, and those propositions should change over time depending on economic conditions and the publisher’s business. 

There is no playbook when determining which propositions should be available to whom; subscriptions are of course paid-for; social is 99% of the time free to access; but with podcasts, newsletters and events, things are more nuanced. However, they are all assets in the game of relationship management – we have 5 key principles for how to use them: 

1. Set expectations from the get-go

It is all about building the right, ongoing relationships for your audiences. At the core of any retention strategy are great products, and that requires empathy and a sense of what creates value for different audience segments. The result will be increased retention and higher revenues. 

2. The honeymoon will be sweet, but it does come to an end

News UK data shows it lasts about a week, in which readers either develop a habit or never do. For mobile users, the honeymoon is even shorter. Publishers have 48 hours to engage users, with 57% of users opening an app only a handful of times before deciding to delete it, according to push provider Airship. Publishers need to track what features and elements of their proposition are used most, when and how frequently and correlate that to engagement and propensity to churn. 

3. Everyone wants to feel special

With so much content, the challenge is to stand out and how your proposition fits into the daily lives of your customers. Customers are no longer satisfied with one-size-fits all products, including content. According to research from Salesforce, 66% of consumers expect companies to understand their unique needs, and 52% expect personalized offers. Data about technology, behavior, psychographics and behaviors is the foundation of delivering passive personalization. And personalization can deliver a five to 10 times increase in ROI, according to Harvard Business Review. 

4. Offer something that’s difficult to live without

As with any relationship, the more frequently you can connect with customers, the more embedded the relationship becomes, and therefore the higher the likelihood they will stay. Publishers like the New York Times have built a bundle of products that connect with their audiences multiple times a day. It allows them to upsell to increase ARPU, and they have found that multi-product users churn 40% less than news-only subscribers. 

5. Great experiences are the core of great relationships

Delivering great experiences need not be overly complex. It primarily involves getting closer to your users, gaining a deeper understanding of their needs, and taking proactive steps to serve them better. 

That’s just a taster of what is in the report, you can download the full report here from the Media Collective – Pugpig, Manifesto Growth Architects, InDigital Marketing and Piano.