The Secrets Behind Shein and Temu’s Push Notifications that Drive Repeat Sales

Push notifications are a secret weapon for eCommerce brands. They’re cheap, direct, personal, and all in all, a super-effective way to build relationships with your customers and drive sales.

But push may not be such a secret for much longer. Shein and Temu, the fast-rising giants disrupting the eCommerce industry, both rely on push notifications as a core part of their strategy.

Their users receive frequent notifications with discounts, gamified promotions, abandoned cart reminders, and much more - all of which help retain the customer’s attention and form a long-term habit.

Shein and Temu wouldn’t be the two fastest rising names in eCommerce without push notifications. Read on and learn why push notifications are so important to them, and get a peek into how these two brands utilize push to deliver sustained, long-term revenue.

The first goal: getting you into the app

One of the first things both Shein and Temu do when you visit their mobile website is try to get you to download their app.

There are banners across the top and/or bottom of the screen and the offer of an exclusive discount on your first app purchase.

On some of their ubiquitous “spin to win” games, you win an amazing deal that you can only redeem in the app.

A large part of their long-term success is tied to getting you into the app, where they can start leaning into powerful engagement tools like push notifications.

The crucial role of push notifications in Shein & Temu’s engagement strategy

The first thing most people think about with Shein and Temu is price.

They’ve become known for offering a huge range of products at basement level prices (you can scroll for some time before even coming across anything that costs more than $10).

And that’s before you take into account all the discounts you get from their in-app games.

There’s no way Shein/Temu can make money if every customer just took advantage of the great introductory offers and bought only one or two things. 

The key is to generate purchases at a high volume and high frequency.

They need you to come back and shop regularly – as much as multiple times per week – and when you do, you load up your basket with multiple products.

Push notifications are key to making this happen. They command the user’s attention, ensuring the brand remains top-of-mind and shopping on the app becomes a habit.

Attention-grabbing and habit-forming

Shein and Temu’s use of push notifications are designed to constantly get your attention, so that you never go a day without either thinking about them, or (ideally) opening the app and looking around.

You get notifications for new rewards, new promotions and offers, abandoned cart notifications, browse abandonment notifications and more, all letting you know what you’re missing out on by not using the app.

Terms like “now”, “don’t miss out” or other words used to convey urgency are used in almost every message, playing on the user’s innate fear of missing out (FOMO).

The message doesn’t necessarily need to convert. It’s enough to get the user into the app, and over time, build a habit of using the app every day.

Their apps feel at times more like a gaming app or social media app than a shopping app, with the heavy gamification and the infinite scrolling product feeds, similar to a social app’s news feed.

Like Instagram or TikTok, they’re designed to become a routine part of your day. When you’re bored, when you’re on a break from work, on the train, you open the app and scroll away – and after enough time, you’ll probably end up buying something.

Push notifications play a huge part in building the foundation of this habit.

High frequency, increased retention

An interesting thing to note about Shein and Temu’s push notifications is that the copy is not brilliant.

Though urgency and scarcity tactics are used well, the copywriting itself is very basic, verging at times on being poorly written.

This shows that it’s not about coming up with the perfect message to convert the reader right there on their lock screen. It’s about occupying their attention.

Best case, the user opens the app and starts shopping. If not, the push notification at least ensures that the brand is never far from their mind.

This is perhaps a key reason why brands who send more frequent push notifications have higher retention rates.

Data shows that retention rates for retail apps are 2-5x higher when the app sends weekly push notifications, and 3-6x higher when the app sends daily push notifications.

With push notifications being so cheap to send, with such high visibility, every message doesn’t need to result in a sale. They already pay for themselves by the impact they have in capturing a small part of your customer’s headspace, and building the foundation for a fruitful and valuable long-term relationship.

How your brand can leverage mobile apps and push notifications for long-term revenue

Whether or not you aim to disrupt the global eCommerce market like Temu and Shein, your brand can still take some insight from what these brands have done to build a name for themselves.

They utilize mobile apps and push notifications brilliantly, and use these tools to build habits and occupy far more of their customers’ attention than would ever be possible with only a website and email marketing.

Today, every brand should be doing the same, offering a mobile app alongside their website and using push notifications to grow brand awareness and drive more engagement.

MobiLoud makes this easy, by letting you launch an app for minimal effort, an affordable cost, and low overhead.

You’ll be able to use push notifications, and hold more of your customers’ attention than ever before.

Just see some of the other successful brands we’ve worked with, helping them build amazing apps that drive long-term revenue.

If you want to learn more about how MobiLoud can help you build and maintain low-cost, high-ROI mobile apps, fully synced with your existing website and tech stack, get in touch with us and book a free demo now.