Push Notifications vs Email: All You Need to Know

For online businesses (eCommerce stores, for example), finding the most effective ways to communicate with and engage your customers is crucial.

Email has long been known as the most flexible, low-cost marketing and communication tool. But today, with more and more business taking place on mobile every day, push notifications have emerged as a worthy rival.

In this article, we’ll look at the differences between email and push notifications, explore the advantages of each, and discuss which use cases each communication channel is best suited for.

We’ll hopefully help you gain a better understanding of both push and email and how they fit into your marketing strategy. Keep reading to learn more!

Email vs Push Notifications: Key Differences

Let’s start with the key areas in which email and push differ.

We’re all familiar with email. With an email marketing tool, you can contact users who have opted in to receiving your emails (typically through opt-in forms on your website, or when a customer creates an account on your website), with marketing content, order updates, etc.

Push notifications are a shorter, more direct form of communication, in the form of short pieces of content sent to a user’s mobile device.

Note that, with push notifications, we’re typically referring to mobile push notifications, sent via a mobile app.

Push notifications can be sent through the browser as well, but with limited scope and customizability.

Here’s some of the most notable points of difference:

Delivery method

Emails are sent to an email client, such as Gmail or Outlook. From there, the user has to log in to their email account and manually open the email to view it.

With push notifications, the content appears directly on the user’s screen. The notification may be truncated (for longer notifications, the user may need to swipe down to view the entire content), but they don’t need to open another program or application to see a push notification.

Discoverability

Push notifications are visible to the user as soon as they look at their lock screen.

In most cases, the screen will light up as soon as the notification comes through, thus catching the recipient’s attention instantly.

Emails typically come to the user’s attention only when they go into their email inbox. And even then, they can be buried in different sections of their inbox (e.g. the “Promotions” or “Updates” folders), or sent to the spam folder, where it may never be seen at all.

Length

Emails can include short or long-form content. There’s essentially no limit to how long an email can be – it could be 10,000 words, 200 words, or even contain just an image and no text.

Push notifications, on the other hand, are brief and limited in space. There’s a limit to how many characters can show up on the notification, and best practices dictate that these notifications are short and sharp.

Flexibility

Along with being flexible on length, emails are much more flexible in terms of design and the types of content used.

An email could simply be plain text, it can be formatted with HTML, you can embed images, video or other rich media, and you have much the same freedom to customize your message as you do with a web page.

Push, again, is more limited. The styling is partly restricted by the operating system, and there’s not as much variety with what kind of content you can include (though push notifications can include rich content like images, gifs and videos).

Opt-in process

Email technically doesn’t require explicit permission to contact someone. You can send an email to someone as long as you have their email address – though if you don’t get their permission to do so, the email may end up in their spam folder, and you may also be in violation of the law.

Best practice is to get the user to opt in, in which they will provide you with their email address, and usually tick a box confirming they’d like to receive your emails.

With push notifications, the opt-in process is more concrete. Your app literally can’t send notifications to the user unless it has their permission to do so.

Depending on the operating system, the user may be opted in by default when they download your app. Otherwise, they will need to consent to receiving notifications.

The user can control their push notification permissions at any time through their device settings, and turn off notifications from an app in one tap.

Engagement (Push vs Email Statistics)

Because of their immediacy, higher discoverability and more personal nature, push notifications get higher engagement rates than emails.

The average open rate for emails, depending on the source, is quoted at anywhere from 2% to over 20%.

The average clickthrough rate – the rate at which someone clicks on a link in an email – hovers around just 2%.

With push notifications, the “open rate” (rate at which users see the content, as they do when they open an email) is near 100%, as the content is automatically displayed on the user’s screen.

The average reaction rate for push notifications (when a user clicks or taps on a notification), is 7.8%, rising as high as 16% for some industries.

Some sources have the average clickthrough rate for push notifications as high as 20%.

In summary, push notifications are more likely to be seen, and more likely to get a user to take action than an email is.

See more push notification statistics here.

Push Notifications vs Email: Which is Better?

It’s tough to say that either push notifications or email are definitively a better form of communication than the other.

Each has advantages in certain areas, and they can be used in complement with each other in your marketing strategy.

We’ll now weigh up where each method stands out, and lay out the best use cases for both push notifications and email, starting with push notifications.

The Case for Push Notifications

• Push notifications are better when you want to reach someone immediately, and have a higher chance of your message being seen/read.
• There’s no spam folder or secondary folders for push notifications; as long as the user is opted in, your notifications are less likely to be lost in the shuffle.
• Push is better at generating engagement, with minimal friction required to get the user to take action (especially in terms of generating app engagement).
• Push notifications are generally easier to customize based on user activity, or user attributes like their location.
• There’s a greater level of trust, as push notifications don’t have the same reputation for spam as email does.
• Push tends to be better with younger audiences, who are more mobile-centric and who typically use email less.
• When you contact someone with a push notification, you know you’re messaging them directly – users can sign up for email lists with fake/temporary/misspelled email addresses, in which case your email will disappear into the abyss.

When to Use Push Notifications

Push notifications are best suited for the following use cases:

• Time-sensitive promotions (e.g. flash sales, limited-time discounts).
• Messages utilizing scarcity or urgency (e.g. limited stocks left, breaking news).
• Order updates (shipping notifications, delivery confirmations).
• Location-based prompts (e.g. localized alerts or promotions).
• Engagement prompts, reminders, recommendations.
• Abandoned cart notifications.

Want to learn more about the different ways to use push notifications, including real-world examples from successful brands?

If so, check out our ultimate guide to push notifications for eCommerce here.

The Case for Email

Now let’s dive into where email has the advantage over push notifications.

• Email offers the flexibility to send much longer, more detailed content than push notifications.
• It’s more versatile and easier to set up an account with an email marketing provider than to install and configure push notifications.
• You can reach all your users with emails, not just those who download your app.
• Emails are more permanent, and easier for the user to find and revisit, making them a better fit for information that users may need to reference again in the future (such as login details or itineraries).
• Email is less intrusive, and less likely to bother users if overdone or sent at inappropriate times.
• Users can reply to emails and continue the dialogue.

When to Use Email

Consider using email for the following use cases:

• Material featuring detailed product information, like comprehensive product guides or in-depth promotional messages.
• Newsletters or content-heavy messages.
• Account updates (e.g. signup or order confirmations, welcome/onboarding messages).
• Non-urgent communications.
• Formal communications (e.g. legal updates, policy changes).
• Communications where you want the user to reply (e.g. feedback requests).
• Permanent messages (e.g. records, receipts).

Getting Started with Push Notifications (How to Send Native Mobile Push Notifications)

As we’ve established, there are pros and cons to both email and push notifications, and both are effective tools for any online business when it comes to marketing and communications.

But the biggest difference is one we haven’t really touched on.

Most businesses already utilize email marketing, but relatively few are using push notifications.

If you’re one of these businesses that’s not using push, there’s significant upside to be had if you add this to your marketing toolbox.

If you’re unsure how to start using push notifications, here’s all you need to know to get the ball rolling (it’s easier than you think).

Step One: Create an app (if you haven’t already)

While you can send push notifications from your website, the real power of push is in sending native push notifications from a mobile app.

If you don’t have a mobile app, you can create one right now with MobiLoud.

MobiLoud helps you turn your website into native mobile apps. It’s fast, affordable, and requires almost no work from you.

As long as your website is fast, responsive and mobile-friendly, it’s easy to convert it into a mobile app.

We do all the technical work for you, and ship iOS and Android apps that look and feel like fully custom native apps (check out these examples for an idea of what’s possible).

The apps update automatically with your website, meaning there’s little to no upkeep and overhead. You get all the benefits of having an app, with none of the risk.

This is by far the best way to start utilizing push notifications to boost purchase rate, AOV, CLV and more key business metrics.

To learn more about how to go live with your app, get a free demo now.

“The power of push notifications is so strong. In a world where people open email less and less each day, everyone is jumping into SMS which is crazy expensive, and people are starting to tune these out too, being able to do push notifications is the reason you do an app.”

- David Cost, Rainbow Shops

Step Two: Integrate with a push notification service

Once you have an app (or, if you decide to go ahead with sending push notifications from your website), you’ll generally want to sign up for a push notification service and integrate it with your app/website.

Like email marketing providers, push notification services handle all the technical aspects of serving messages to users, and give you a simple, non-technical interface to set up and configure your notifications.

A few popular push notification service providers include:

• OneSignal
• AirShip
• Braze
• CleverTap

If you build your app with MobiLoud, this is already done for you – MobiLoud apps are integrated with OneSignal for push notifications, right out of the box.

Step Three: Set up automated push sequences

After you’ve installed push notifications, you can start creating push campaigns to drive revenue, engagement, and other business goals.

A great way to start is with automated sequences. Much like you’d set up with an email marketing tool, you can build automated drip sequences and workflows that send push notifications based on certain triggers and actions.

Some examples to start with include:

• An automated welcome message after someone downloads your app.
• Order confirmation/update notifications sent when a customer’s order status changes.
• Abandoned cart notifications (another thing we set up for you when you use MobiLoud).

Step Four: Test and experiment with more push-driven marketing campaigns

Along with automated push notification sequences, start trying out other ways to utilize push notifications to grow your revenue.

• Use push instead of (or alongside) email for your next promo campaign.
• Set up and send personalized recommendations with push notifications.
• Use push notifications to launch or promote your loyalty program.
• Notify customers via push next time you drop a new product line, or restock on a best seller.

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The possibilities with push are endless. They’re the perfect tool to use with mobile commerce, a market worth over $2 trillion worldwide, and growing at a rate of >15% year on year.

Get a demo now to see how MobiLoud can help you build an app and start harnessing the awesome power of push marketing for your business.