Combining Push Notifications and Email Marketing

Push notifications and email marketing are two of the most powerful tools for directly reaching your audience – each offering distinct advantages. But when combined, these strategies can work wonders, boosting engagement and conversion rates like never before. 

In this article, we’ll dive into the unique strengths of push notifications, revealing how to leverage them effectively for your brand and blend them with your marketing emails for maximum impact. 

What Are Push Notifications?

Push notifications are short, clickable messages that pop up on a user’s device. These messages can appear whether the user is actively browsing your website or using your app, making them an incredibly effective tool for driving immediate action. Their effectiveness shows clearly in the numbers, as a recent study shows that the overall push notification opt-in rate is as high as 60%. 

Push notifications typically appear in real-time and are best used for delivering time-sensitive messages like product updates, flash sales, abandoned cart reminders, event notifications, and more. 

Why Combine Push Notifications and Email Marketing?

While both push notifications and email marketing serve different functions, together they can create a seamless and cohesive communication strategy that enhances user engagement. Here are several reasons why combining the two is a game-changer:

1. Increased Visibility and Reach

Not everyone checks their email regularly, but almost everyone sees push notifications—especially if they have enabled them on their mobile device or desktop. By sending a push notification to alert users to a new email or promotion, you increase the chances that they’ll engage with your email content.

2. Timely Follow-Ups

Push notifications can act as a follow-up reminder for emails. For instance, if you’ve sent an email offering a discount or limited-time offer, you can use push notifications to remind users to take action before the offer expires. This timely reminder can push hesitant users to click through and convert.

3. Personalized Messaging

Both push notifications and email marketing allow for personalized content based on user data, such as purchase history or browsing behavior. Push notifications are often more immediate and can be used to deliver time-sensitive promotions, while email campaigns can provide deeper, more tailored content. Combining both allows you to serve a highly personalized experience to your audience, enhancing relevance and encouraging conversions.

4. Omnichannel Experience

With customers interacting with brands across various platforms and devices, providing an omnichannel experience is crucial. Combining push notifications and email marketing creates a cohesive experience where users are exposed to your message in different ways. Whether they are browsing on their mobile phone, checking email on their desktop, or receiving a notification while using an app, the chances of engagement are higher.

How to Implement Push Notifications

It’s clear that using push notifications and email marketing together has many benefits and can significantly increase your brand visibility and company revenue. However, the question may arise as to how to get your brand messages on the mobile screens of your subscribers. To send push notifications to people, a brand typically needs to integrate with a push notification service. Let’s take a closer look at how it works and the steps involved. 

1. Choose a Push Notification Service

You can use various third-party services to send push notifications. Some popular ones include:

• Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM): Free and part of Google’s Firebase suite.
• OneSignal: A popular choice that supports web and mobile push notifications.
• Pushwoosh: A multi-channel notification platform.
• Airship: Used for mobile push notifications and in-app messaging.
• Pusher: Real-time notifications for web and mobile apps.

2. Set Up Push Notification Infrastructure

• Integrate SDKs: To start sending push notifications, you need to integrate the necessary SDKs (software development kits) into your website, web app, or mobile app. For example, if using Firebase Cloud Messaging, you’ll need to integrate the Firebase SDK into your app or website.
• User Permission: The user must opt-in to receive push notifications. For web apps, this is typically a browser prompt asking users if they want to allow notifications. For mobile apps, it usually comes as a system-level notification asking users for permission.

3. Segment Your Audience

There’s no denying that appropriately targeted marketing messages are a self-evident demand from people these days. Brands often use segmentation to personalize notifications. 

Segmentation examples:

• By user behavior (e.g., recent purchases, page visits).
• By demographics (e.g., location, age).
• By engagement history (e.g., active users, users who haven’t interacted in a while).

4. Create and Send Notifications

Once the service is set up and users are opted in, you can send notifications through your platform:

• Content Creation: Craft the message, including the title, body text, call-to-action (CTA), and any images or media.
• Targeting: Define who should receive the notification based on the criteria mentioned earlier.
• Send: Use the service’s dashboard or API to send the notification in real time or schedule it for later.

5. Monitor and Optimize

Of course, you need to keep an eye on these processes, firstly to make sure everything is in order technically and secondly to get an idea of ​​what content is the most effective. Do the following: 

• Track how many people open, click, and interact with the notification.
• Analyze user behavior based on push notification interactions to optimize future campaigns.

6. Bonus: Advanced Features of Push Notifications

When choosing a service, also look at its additional options. Some services offer advanced features such as: 

• Rich Media: Including images, videos, or action buttons in the notification.
• A/B Testing: Testing different versions of push notifications to see which one performs better.
• Automated Campaigns: Setting up notifications triggered by user actions (e.g., abandoned cart reminders, special promotions).
• Location-based marketing: Geotargeting is a very valuable activity for improving marketing efficiency, especially for larger companies that have customers around the world. With this, you can send notifications when users are in a specific geographic location. 

Setup 101: Short Summary of the Steps

1. Select a Push Notification Provider.
2. Integrate SDKs into the app or website.
3. Get User Permission to receive push notifications.
4. Create and Send Notifications based on user segments.
5. Analyze Results to optimize future campaigns.

Best Practices for Combining Push Notifications and Email Marketing

Now we reach the point where email marketing comes to play. To effectively leverage both push notifications and email marketing, consider these best practices. 

1. Coordinate Your Messaging

While push notifications and emails can be sent separately, it’s important to coordinate the timing and messaging so that both channels work together rather than overlap. For example, if you’re sending a product launch email, consider sending a push notification a few hours later to remind users to check it out. Make sure the messages are aligned in tone and content but not repetitive. 

2. Segment Your Audience

Both push notifications and email campaigns perform best when they’re tailored to specific segments of your audience. For example, send personalized push notifications to users who have shown interest in a product category, while sending a more detailed email to your active subscribers. Use both channels to create a dynamic, segmented communication strategy.

3. A/B Test Your Campaigns

A/B testing is essential to understanding what works. Test both your push notifications and emails to determine what type of messaging, timing, and content resonates best with your audience. For example, test the copy in your push notifications, as well as the subject lines and content in your email campaigns.

4. Optimize for Mobile

Both push notifications and emails are most often read on mobile devices, so it’s crucial that your messaging is optimized for smaller screens. Ensure that your emails are mobile-friendly and that your push notifications are brief but impactful. Keep your CTAs clear and easy to click, whether on email or a notification. 

5. Use Push Notifications for Time-Sensitive Offers

Push notifications are perfect for driving immediate action, so use them to highlight flash sales, limited-time offers, or important reminders. This works well in tandem with email marketing, where you might provide more information and details, while the push notification sparks urgency.

The time of day you send these notifications is important, and while you should research your industry, market, and subscribers in more detail (also pay attention to separate customer segments), you can check out the following table for guidance. The better the time, the darker the square: 

When it comes to the day of the week, the CTR is as follows: 

6. Don’t Overdo It

This is probably one of the most important points to keep in the back of your head at all times when using push notifications and email marketing. While push notifications are very effective, getting them too often is frustrating for people, most likely resulting in ignoring these messages or unsubscribing from them altogether. 

When subscribers want to check out ads and articles that interest them, they go specifically to their inbox with a ready mindset. However, push notifications are more intrusive in this regard, as they come directly to the person’s mobile phone or computer screen; in other words – they slightly invade the personal space of people. Therefore, carefully choose the most important messages that deserve a place on your subscribers’ screens and refrain from sending them too often.  

📍📉 A statistic from Business of Apps 2025 research for reference: 1 push notification per week results in 10% of users disabling notifications, and 6% uninstalling the associated apps. 

Push Notification to Email Integration

• Capture Email Addresses from Push Subscribers: Use your push notification system to encourage users to sign up for emails. For example, after sending a push notification, include a CTA (Call to Action) like: “Want more details? Sign up for our email list.”
• Use Push as an Email Trigger: You can set up push notifications to trigger email actions. For instance, after a user clicks on a push notification, an email could follow up with a discount code, product recommendations, or further information.

Examples of Push + Email Sequence:

• Push Notification: A flash sale alert pops up on a user’s phone with a CTA saying, “Flash Sale! 20% off today only.”
• Email: The same user receives an email a few hours later, providing more details about the sale, product recommendations, and a countdown timer to create urgency.

or

• Push Notification: Send a reminder about an event or limited-time offer a few hours before it expires.
• Email: Follow up with a detailed email reminder about the same event/offer, giving more context and extending the offer for an additional time frame, if appropriate.

When sending push notifications and email content, be sure that they match in terms of tone, branding, and design to provide a consistent experience to your audience.

In Conclusion

By combining push notifications and email marketing, brands can create a multichannel strategy that keeps users engaged across different platforms. This synergy ensures you reach your customers through engaging and relevant messages that resonate with users at the right moment. 

When done right, this strategy drives higher engagement, greater customer retention, and ultimately, more conversions. So, get into planning mode, lean back in your chair for a moment, and devise a strategy that effectively pulls in customers and pushes your sales to new heights.