Marketing notifications for messaging apps: Everything you need to know!

Sending marketing notifications on messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or iMessage is a huge opportunity for companies. They offer top click-through and open rates, high engagement, and (almost) real-time delivery. This makes notifications on messaging apps the ultimate tool in your mobile marketing kit!

The e-mail notification is out, the messaging notification is in! Why? Because instead of despairing over low click-through rates with e-mail newsletters, marketing notifications sent on messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or iMessage offer your company a channel where incredible open rates and high engagement are guaranteed.

In this guide, we'll explain why that is, which messaging apps you can use to send marketing notifications, and how other companies are using them to better reach their customers.

Which messaging apps can you use to send out marketing notifications?

With the growing popularity of messaging among users, messaging apps have started offering various ways for businesses to send out notifications to customers directly in-app. From WhatsApp and Telegram to Apple Messages for Business, just about every messenger service nowadays offers a push notification option.

Depending on the use case and app, you might see different names, such as newsletter, broadcast, marketing notification, or push notifications. The idea is always the same, though: using messaging apps send out push notifications to interact with (potential) customers.

Each service has certain advantages. While Apple Messages for Business is ideal for easily reaching Apple users, WhatsApp allows you to reach people throughout the UK, India or Brazil on their favorite messenger, and Telegram offers marketing notification free of charge.

So, depending on the target group, company and market, one service may be more advantageous than the other, or it might even be worth considering a combination of several services.

Why should you send out push notifications on messaging apps

Notifications that businesses send out to customers proactively are considered push communication in messenger marketing, and they refer to regular information that companies send out to interested users, such as a news updates or a special offer. They help build a long-term relationship with customers and strengthen brand awareness. The only problem is that the traditional messaging channel in marketing, e-mail, is currently going through a crisis.

Overcrowded inboxes, a massive amount of newsletters every day, and users who don't have time or don't want to read through all the newsletters they've subscribed to at one time or another, mean that e-mail notifications are increasingly being ignored or even perceived as spam.

Advantages of notifications on messenger apps

Messenger app notifications, on the other hand, have a major advantage: they land directly in people's most-used apps, typically on the lock screen — and there they get the users' full attention. Accordingly, messaging apps offer incredible open rates of over 90 percent and click-through rates of 35%. In comparison, the click-through rate for e-mails is just 3%, and on social media channels it's only 5%.