13 Creative Push Notifications to Inspire Your Next Campaign

Ting.

Excited much?

That’s the feeling push notifications are meant to evoke each time you hear your mobile beep or ping.

Yet, many marketers falter – using push notifications to share information than appeal to users’ emotions!

Let’s face it – almost every business is either already using push notifications to engage users or planning to do so in the near future. Consequently, consumers are likely to be bombarded with alerts throughout the day and likely to exercise the opt-out option unless you continue delighting them – just like the first time when they agreed to receive push notifications from you.

Creative Push Notifications That Will Bowl You Over!

Almost every marketer knows the importance of personalization in push notifications. But when everybody’s doing the same thing, your push notifications become another regular alert for users unless there’s something to delight, shock, or surprise them.

Eventually, the aim is to tickle the right emotions in your audience with your push notifications to encourage clicks from them. But where do you start?

Here’s a delightful list of creative, sometimes quirky, and legendary push notifications to inspire you. Who knows, you might even find an idea or two for your next campaign.

Let’s dive in.

1. Netflix

Netflix does a pretty good job of personalizing its notifications for users. As a result, each user receives unique messages about the specific shows they’re watching or might be interested in watching, according to their past behavior.

In the example shared above, Netflix uses a witty copy to inform the user of the release of the next season of Narcos. There’s also a mention of the release date and a call to action requesting the user to watch the trailor.

2. Swarm

Here’s an example of an interactive and highly creative push message triggered by user behavior. This push message was sent to the user when a local friend checked into a new location.

Swarm highlights the user and venue names to make the notification easy to read. The creative use of emojis adds to the appeal. For instance, Dinosaurs is a sandwich shop, and the bread emoji goes well with it.

Another aspect we like is the interactive nature of the alert. Users can either like the check-in or leave a comment without opening the app.

3. Quiz up

“We miss you,” said every brand ever in its win-back campaign. QuizUp decided to take a different approach. Instead of offering a discount or free shipping, they used this cheeky message to remind users how much fun it’s to be on Quiz Up.

Appealing to user emotions through push notifications can give some stellar results. At MoEngage, we sent four variations of the same message to a fintech client. One of the four messages combined a bright picture with an emotional message, “Split bills, not friendships,” and drove the maximum clicks.

The winning combination (V3) not only tugged at people’s hearts but also captured the most significant problem people face when they’re out in a group—splitting bills easily—and offered a handy solution.

4. Amazon

Users mostly welcome transactional push messages because they don’t need to open an app to receive an update. But nobody thought transactional messages could also be fun until Amazon sent this Star Wars-themed push notification one day.

5. Duolingo

Wondering what the text means in English? Well, here’s what it says:

“Mess with me, and your family won’t have fingers.”

While the translation is a little too violent for our taste, the alert does its job by challenging the user with only two ways to find a solution. Either open the app or retype the phrase on Google Translate, which is perhaps more time-consuming than directly opening the app.

6. Buzzfeed News

Here’s an example that’s informative but fun at the same time. Buzzfeed’s news alert delivers some exciting trivia along with the news without sounding dry or dull. The message uses a quirky yet straightforward copy and some cute emojis that perfectly suit the medium. Unlike the news alerts shared by most apps, Buzzfeed takes a detour from standard practice, putting great thought in its copy instead of simply repurposing headlines.

Evidently, it’s pretty important to plan the content that goes into your push notifications and how you present it. Read this push notification best practices guide for more tips on creating compelling alerts.

7. Ecommerce

Ecommerce players are increasingly using push notifications to engage, inform, and win back users. The following examples of rich push notifications include rich media attachments like photos, GIFs, video, and audio to create memorable campaigns that users tend to find more compelling than plain old text messages.

Also, read this post for some interesting push notification campaign ideas and free templates for e-commerce apps.

8. The Bump

The Bump app monitors a pregnancy week by week – sharing updates and factual information when a user hits various milestones during pregnancy. Of course, so much medical information can easily sound boring, but the app uses creative writing to make its posts highly engaging and fun. Think about it – did you ever consider using fruit terms to describe the size of a baby?

9. Sunshine

Sunshine is a weather app that’s different from your regular weather apps because it sends you personalized forecasts based on your tastes. So, it might tell a user that “you’ll feel cold today” but to another, it might say something like “it’s a pleasant day today,” depending on how a particular user felt in similar weather conditions in the past.  Additionally, it adds a line or two to personalize the message further, as you can see in the example below.

10. Level

Level is a money app to track your “spendable” money, which is the amount left after paying all your fixed expenses and keeping aside some savings. Despite being a financial app, Level spends a lot of time personalizing its notifications to keep users motivated, as you’ll see in the example below.

Now, we usually say that a good push notification must always include a call to action. But this notification by Level is a departure from that practice. While there isn’t anything actionable in the alert, a few words of encouragement are often adequate to delight your users, making them feel accomplished and happy. And, once they feel all these positive emotions, there’s a reduced likelihood of them pulling the plug on receiving your push notifications.

11. Hinge

Hinge is a dating app that matches people according to their networks. Basically, it analyses your social media friends and suggests matches with whom you have common friends but perhaps not met yet. In the example shared in this post, Hinge sent an extremely personalized push notification to a user, keeping in mind their hometown, current residence, and the likelihood of connecting with someone who matches in these two respects.

12. Delectable

Delectable is a wine database app that decided to offer wine recommendations to users more creatively than usual. So, instead of providing recommendations according to usage history, the app sends trivia-based notifications to catch users’ attention. For instance, why wouldn’t we want to know which Pinot was poured at the White House, and perhaps we’d like a taste of it, too!

13. Minibar

Following the above example, you might be thinking of using current events or trends to engage your users. If so, this notification from Minibar will undoubtedly inspire. See how creatively the liquor delivery startup encourages users to vote while slipping in an exciting call to action.

Final Thoughts

There’s no place for the mundane in the crowded world of digital marketing, and it’s time you let the creative juices flow into your push notifications to create a lasting impact. But before you don your thinking cap, there’s another factor you should be looking at – your push notification delivery rate.

Multiple factors impact the deliverability of your push notifications, and even the most creative campaigns will fall flat if they don’t reach your users promptly. So go ahead and download this whitepaper to learn more about push notification delivery rates and how you can maximize yours by focusing on the parameters that matter.