The following is a guest contributed post from Momchil Kyurkchiev, CEO of Leanplum.
With iOS10 set to launch sometime in September, let’s deep dive into some of the updates most important for mobile marketers around iOS 10 push notifications and how it can contribute to your marketing success.
These platform changes provide a big opportunity for mobile marketers to create richer conversations and interactions with their app users through push notifications. Marketers and developers that get creative with these capabilities could stand out from the noise and provide helpful, fun, and engaging push notification campaigns.
Here are four of the biggest advancements coming to push notifications in iOS 10.
Replace Outdated Push Notifications
In iOS 10, you’ll be able to see pending notifications and replace them with new ones that have updated information. This is a useful tool for mobile marketers who provide breaking news or up-to-the-minute information via notifications. When updated, the new notification ID will replace the old one and push it to the top of the stack.
Not only will this help mobile teams provide the most up-to-date information for their users, but it will also push their notifications to the top of the list. So for example, if you are following your favorite baseball team, the most recent game scores will rise to the top so you won’t need to scroll through several messages to find the latest updates.
Interaction Intelligence
Mobile teams will also be able to get more information on how customers are interacting with the notifications. You will now be able to see whether users dismiss a push notification via a new signal built into the notifications framework in iOS 10. This will allow marketers to better gauge how users react to the alerts they are sending. Instead of repeatedly sending notifications with which users don’t interact, mobile pros can use this data to A/B test which alerts lead to action and engagement, and which don’t.
Rich Content
Users will be able to download photos, audio, video, and GIFs directly from a push notification, and this content will be displayed alongside the notification. In other words, images and videos will be immediately viewable, without having to actually open the app.
For example, when you receive a push notification that someone sent you a photo or tagged you in an image, you’ll be able to see that image and take action (reply, like, untag, etc.) directly from the notification.
Custom Layouts
Context and engaging design is critical now. Notifications are getting “rich”, meaning pictures and imagery are more important than ever. With iOS10, push notification authors can now manage title, subtitle, and customizable media fields. This allows mobile marketers and developers to provide more information and interaction to their users. Some apps already support quick actions like a reply, like, etc., but in iOS 10, you’ll be able to add rich media as well.
For example, a push notification for an event invite could include an event photo, a customized text field including a personalized message to the recipient, as well as an accept or decline reply option.
These layout updates will drive greater creativity from mobile marketers and empower teams to execute more powerful and impactful push notifications.
What’s Next?
Marketers and developers may be anxious to get started with these new features, but iOS 10 won’t be released until mid September. Until then, the public beta is available now for developers, and mobile professionals can start dreaming up creative ways to take advantage of these new features and capabilities to engage and interact with their app users.
About Momchil Kyurkchiev
Momchil Kyurkchiev is the CEO and co-founder of Leanplum, the only fully integrated optimization solution for mobile apps. The San Francisco company enables developers, product managers and marketers to unleash the value of customer data by easily optimizing mobile content and messaging via flexible A/B testing, marketing automation and powerful analytics. Prior to Leanplum, Momchil was a tech lead at Google where he optimized video ads. Follow the company on Twitter @leanplum.
