News

More than half of mobile app users opt in to push notification

June 10, 2014

Branding and marketing firm Urban Airship has released its latest Good Push Index data study, which tracks user behaviors on more than 70 apps that ask users to share their location. According to the report, 60 to 80 percent of users commonly allow it with an average location opt-in rate of 62 percent.

Opting into both location and push notifications is necessary in order to receive messages based on beacon proximity, current location or location history. With an average push notification opt-in rate of 51 percent, most apps in this sample can reach more than half of their users with location- and proximity-triggered push messages and in-app content.

Opt-in rates for push notifications and location sharing 

“Customers’ successes using location targeting and our aggregate data analysis show that assumptions around consumers being reluctant to share location are false and massively short-sell mobile’s unique opportunity,” said Scott Kveton, CEO and co-founder of Urban Airship. “Users obviously value apps’ location-based functionality to earn the opt-in, just as the best apps do with push notifications by explaining its value and using it in personally relevant ways.”

“We’re consuming media in all forms but mobile ties it together. Mobile is at the center as far as how we engage. We use it everywhere,” said Asif Khan, founder and president of the Location Based Marketing Association. “I think that location is the new cookie we’re all familiar with from the online world, only it goes beyond tracking user activity to add powerful, contextual user-centric information including beacon proximity.”

The company said that Urban Airship is currently working with partner Eventbase Technology to power beacon engagement experiences at an upcoming global industry festival, following a successful partnership on beacons and push messaging for SXSW and its official mobile app.

“REI’s core purpose is to inspire, educate and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship, which makes it critical to tailor messaging to our customers’ interests and deliver to them in a time and place that’s relevant,” said Chris Marley, mobile program manager at REI. “We recently ran a test in most of our retail markets, targeting users who had been near a store in the prior three months to notify them of a local in-store GoPro training class. Response rates to these messages, and similarly targeted REI Garage Sale notifications, were four times greater than non-targeted messages.”