What a year! In 2021, businesses and customers cautiously transitioned back to the offline normal — whenever and however it was possible. Yet, online communications stood their ground: media and sports apps had to broadcast the news fast on the scored goals and won medals, while e-commerce apps satisfied the appetites of Black Friday bargain hunters. Food delivery services and carsharing apps catered to the needs of those who respected social distancing. The app industry kept evolving, and Pushwoosh went on developing new solutions to the arising business challenges.
We set another deliverability record (see the numbers below) and were honored to be named Top Performers among 17 other push notification software businesses.
And if we are to name one thing we are proud of the most, it will be every time we helped you, our dear customers, improve your day-to-day performance and ultimate target metrics.
Now let’s have a look at the most noticeable Pushwoosh product updates that saw the light of day this year. If you haven’t tried some of these features, go ahead: you still have time to get use of them in 2021.
Enhanced Omnichannel Messaging
Advanced Segmentation
Campaign Management with Less Friction and More Efficiency
Even More: Streamlined App Management
Fast News Distribution
iOS 15 Special Features
SDK Updates
CTR Changes
Enhanced Omnichannel Messaging
“Go omnichannel” is the one piece of advice from 2021 that we certainly recommend you keep following when the year ends.
Here is how Pushwoosh Team has up the truly omnichannel messaging game:
1. Push Open Tracking: Next Step to Relevant Omnichannel Messaging
Pushwoosh users now have access to the information about their push notifications being opened (or not) and can react accordingly.
You can set the time you’ll wait for your push to be opened. When the time is up, you’ll auto-send different communications to those who clicked on the notification and to those who ignored it.
You may have another try at conveying your message via email, for example, increasing its reach and conversions.
2. Webhooks: Extend Your Choice of Messaging Services
Launch a message from Pushwoosh Customer Journey Builder to the moon — or to WhatsApp, or send an SMS, or connect any third-party service you use for analytics and automation. Benefit from any of these options that are made possible with Webhooks.
Available as an element of your Customer Journey canvas, Webhooks extend your choice of messaging channels and make integrations easier.
The feature is open to Pushwoosh Custom plan users, so if you’ve been considering a subscription upgrade, here is another reason to finally do it.
Advanced Segmentation
High-converting personalized communications are born here: at the stage where you segment your audience granularly. You’ve got all the means for it in Pushwoosh:
3. Dynamic Segments: Made Possible with Set Tags
Starting 2021, Pushwoosh Customer Journey Builder users can enjoy the combined advantages of behavior- and attribute-based segmentation (brush up on the concepts in this blog post).
With the Set Tags element, marketers can easily create and update customer segments based on real-time triggered events. So once a shopper adds another item to the cart or completes another purchase, for example, they’ll immediately join a corresponding segment you’ve created for them.
Such effortless automation helps marketing campaign managers to keep their target groups straight and ensures the relevancy of each message.
Segment with Set Tags4. OR Segmentation for Easy Yet Precise Targeting
For keen users of Pushwoosh Control Panel, there are some novelties too. Most importantly, you can now build segments based on alternative conditions.
When you create a new Segment, you can choose whether you want it to include the users that meet both conditions or either of them. This way, for example, you can target your customers tagged as having an annual OR paid subscription.
Without any further ado, you can deliver your message to all the relevant audiences.
5. Even More Sophisticated Geo-Behavioral Segmentation
How about going even further (and more intelligent!) in your segmentation?
As a Pushwoosh customer, you can now add advanced location-based filters to your automated behavior-based push campaigns. Geo-behavioral segmentation is made possible with the Crowd Connected partnership with Pushwoosh.
Such advanced location-driven segmentation will be especially relevant for organizers of major events — hopefully, the world will enjoy them at their best in 2022!
Get More Detail from PushwooshLearn how to master omnichannel messaging and do segmentation of any complexity — watch our newest Pushwoosh Advanced webinar on demand
Campaign Management with Less Friction and More Efficiency: Customer Journey Builder Updates
6. Comments in Customer Journey: Collaborate Effectively
By popular demand, we’ve added the ability to write comments to your visual workflows in Pushwoosh Customer Journey Builder.
You can now suggest edits to the campaigns, remind your colleagues of the tasks yet to be done, and receive guidance from Pushwoosh Team — all within a related sequence.
7. Repeat Segments: Schedule Regular Communications
Get in contact with every new user that reaches the next level in your game, gains a new status in your e-commerce app, or stops using the application.
Set a repeating Audience-based Entry in Pushwoosh Customer Journey — this way, users who have newly joined your chosen Segment will enter the same journey you’ve already activated.
Keep your entire target segment on the same page in terms of communications you send them — and get your statistics gathered within one and the same journey.
Even More: Streamlined App Management
8. Custom Data Builder and Data Keys
How many times did you, as a marketer, have to reach out to your development team for a minor app content update?
How many times did you, as a tech-savvy specialist, have to revise what your non-tech-expert colleague did to the app content?
No more issues of this kind; no more tension between teams — with Pushwoosh Custom Data Builder, any specialist can set safely modify the app’s content based on user reaction to a push notification.
For example, marketers can start a campaign rewarding the users who engage with pushes — a click on the notification will open a free trial or activate a discount.
The trick is, your development team will need to specify Data Keys first — and non-developers will further choose from their set values. This will allow marketers to accomplish their tasks all by themselves without the risk of making any code-related mistakes.
Best for Media and Sports Apps: Streamlined News Distribution
In 2021, we kept innovating for our numerous customers from the news industry. Apart from supporting our unique high-speed push technology (benefitting ONE.co.il, for example), we’ve come up with a new tool for editors. content managers, and app marketers:
9. Promote News Feature
When you only have seconds to promote the news, Pushwoosh comes to your assistance. The new Promote News feature helps busy editorial teams spread breaking news via push notifications in — literally! — two clicks.
Outrace your competition in high-impact moments. Save time on promoting editorials and opinion pieces. Serve your audience as perfectly as Pushwoosh is willing to serve your team.
iOS 15 Special Features
Both Android 12 and iOS 15 releases made a lot of noise in the app marketing community. iOS 15 brought a lot more stress, though, with its long list of limitations concerning push notifications.
To support your engagement and retention marketing campaigns, Pushwoosh Team introduced two new Tags specially developed for iOS 15.
10. New Tags for App Marketers’ Survival
- The Scheduled Summary Tag informs you of the users who have set up any specific timeframes for push notification delivery.
- The Time-Sensitive Tag keeps you posted on the customers who have marked your alerts as those who should be delivered immediately, regardless of the mode currently set on the customer’s device.
Analyze and use these Tags in your messaging flows to reach your audience at the right moments.
Use Tags for iOS 15Most Important Technical Updates
11. Huawei HMS SDK Support
The greatest news for Android app marketers: starting 2021, Pushwoosh has out-of-the-box integration with Huawei Mobile Services. This means you can extend your reach by 400M+ active HarmonyOS users.
Learn More About the Integration12. Pushwoosh iOS and Android SDK Updates
If you’re concerned about your messages being delivered and displayed correctly on devices with new iOS 15 and Android 12 installed, be reassured. Pushwoosh Team has been looking closely at every detail that could be and has been affected by the changes in OSs.
Visit the dedicated pages on GitHub to stay up-to-date on our iOS and Android SDK releases.
CTR
13. New CTR Calculation Formula
If you report on push notification metrics in your app, you must have enjoyed the new CTR calculation algorithm. As the formula has changed, your click-through rates have grown.
Starting July 19, the CTR metric you see in Pushwoosh is derived from the number of pushes sent to the users who can actually receive them.
Learn more detail about how the new formula works and why Pushwoosh decided to replace the old one in the first place.
14. Your CTRs vs Pushwoosh Benchmarks
Hopefully, you’ve seen real push notification CTRs increase this year thanks to the improvements you’ve made following our CTR guide. To be confident about your competitiveness, compare your performance with the industry averages and maximums — check out our exclusive benchmarks for media and e-commerce apps.
Here is our wrap-up of 2021. Let’s see what 2022 brings — and be prepared for anything!
Consider the trends that mobile marketing experts predict for the new year, and may your marketing communications work in concert in 2022. May your business see the growth you’re aiming at — know that Pushwoosh Team will always be there for you to help!
