At Pushwoosh, we believe that user segmentation is the best way to provide personalized and engaging user experiences. But how do you identify the most effective segmentation criteria for different industries?
We analyzed 50B mobile push notifications to understand how criteria for market segmentation, push notification copy, personalization, and other factors influence CTR.
In this blog post, we are sharing the frameworks that resulted in the highest CTR and engagement for the apps we analyzed.
Data-driven approach to effective market segmentation
We analyzed 50B mobile push notifications sent via Pushwoosh in Q4 2024 across the following industries: e-commerce, retail, news, gaming, transportation, and finance.
During our experiments, we discovered the more and less efficient segments along with other factors that apps from different industries used:
- User segmentation criteria
- Content formats and personalization
- Days of the week
- Emojis in titles or copy
In the study, we broke segmentation down into three conditions:
- No segmentation, which is all users
- Broad segmentation (e.g., all women = 1.5M users)
- Narrow segmentation (e.g., all French speakers in Belgium = 10k users)
Findings & trends
In the data study, we went beyond raw data to provide actionable criteria for effective market segmentation and fostering user engagement.
The key trends that the study revealed are:
Segmentation criteria play a crucial role in CTR and engagement, according to the data:
Key factors influencing engagement
The data shows that the greatest impact on push CTR comes from:
- Segmentation criteria
- Personalization
- Copy format
- Day of the week
- Emojis
Segmentation criteria
The more local and personalized the notification is, the higher its potential engagement and CTR. Let’s see how data proves it.
Here are the segmentation criteria that the apps in the research used:
- Broader segmentation means more users to reach out to at once (e.g., all women).
- Narrow segmentation: one criterion (e.g., favorite category) or a combination (e.g., country + favorite store) allows for more pinpoint communication.
The data comparing no segmentation vs. broad segmentation shows that messages sent to a broad segment resulted in a 3x higher CTR compared to those broadcast to the entire audience.
5 criteria for effective segmentation
Different segmentation criteria have different impacts on push CTR.
The most engaging criteria for the e-commerce apps is interest-based segmentation. In the research, it resulted in a 10x higher CTR.
The transportation apps showed similar results: the favorite service criterion gained a 2x higher CTR.
For the news & media apps, we noticed a different level of engagement for local and worldwide media, with town being the most engaging criterion—a 15x higher CTR.
The financial apps from the research only sent segmented messages. We didn’t detect broadcasted messages to all user bases.
One of our previous data studies showed that financial apps had the highest opt-in and CTR compared to other categories.
Personalization
What if we replace segmentation with personalization?
One of the experiments revealed that sending the same message to all users, with and without personalization, resulted in a 2x higher CTR for the personalized one. It means that personalization can sometimes drive similar results to narrow segmentation.
Copy format
How does copy affect CTR and user engagement?
The results of the two experiments with copy showed:
- With no segmentation, copy in a question form outperforms copy in an affirmative format.
- With the same push copy sent to both no segmentation and narrow segmentation, the latter consistently outperforms.
Let’s break down both experiments in detail.
Experiment 1
Sending similar news in different formats without segmentation resulted in a 20% higher CTR for the copy in question format.
Across the retail apps, the framework [clear CTA in copy + interest-based segmentation] resulted in a 5x higher push CTR than messages without segmentation and a clear call to action.
Experiment 2
The same content, delivered to different segments, showed drastically different results: user segments who invested time into setting up the account—KYC, city, favorite team, etc.—showed 2x higher CTRs.
Day of the week
The gaming apps analyzed didn’t show any correlation between push copy and CTR. However, the same copy sent on different days showed drastically different results, leading to a conclusion: sending a message on the right day can drive similar results to broad segmentation.
Monday is the highest-performing day for mobile push CTR. Our guess is that, during the first half of Monday, users prefer scrolling over working. The only exception is transportation, where we see the highest engagement with the apps on Sundays, when people travel.
Thursday is the worst-performing day for mobile push CTR across all categories we researched. Our guess is that Wednesday and Thursday are typically the busiest workdays, with less time to engage with apps.
Emojis
Some of our customers, especially in gambling, report higher open rates when using custom sounds and emojis. How do emojis influence CTR?
Emojis in copy on average result in a higher CTR than emojis in title. However, it works differently across the categories.
Recommendations: Putting data into action
The research shows that criteria for effective market segmentation differ depending on industry. Effective segmentation criteria often relate to user interests and location.
However, not only segmentation results in a higher open rate. Simple personalization, such as [first_name] or push copy sent in a question format, can bring similar results to segmentation.
Based on the data, we highlighted several frameworks for you to refine and test:
- Broader segment + day of the week
- Broader segment + personalizations
- Narrow segment + emoji
- Narrow segment + day of the week
Making it more industry-first, we prepared some recipes you can test out right away:
E-commerce & Retail: Country + gender + Sunday or Monday
Media & News: Country + language + News as a question
Many Pushwoosh’s customers have succeeded by adopting the interest-based segmentation strategy. GB News and FIBA have seen the most engagement out of segmentation criteria reflecting the content, e.g., Barcelona FC fans receive news about their favorite team.
