Types of User-Oriented Push Notifications in ELearning

Push notifications are a perfect solution to keep informed about what’s going on in the world. These clickable pop-up messages appear to notify, remind, offer, or boost an action. Push notifications are necessary for the client-oriented service, for building strong relationships, increasing engagement, and leveraging awareness of your product.

What about adding push notifications into your eLearning software? Considering the fact that online education is a real-life process relocated to the webspace – it requires full interaction between student and tutor. This way online education won’t suffer from the lack of real-time communication. To do so, your eLearning software needs to have push notifications, covering all possible processes while studying, and even more to advertise the online learning platform.

When we look at specific numbers to explore how app notifications affect engagement in online education – we can notice that they increase app engagement by 88%, and 65% of users return to an app within 30 days. The numbers are comparably high, which makes the choice easier from the angle of an eLearning software owner. Plus, from the other side, everyone, once and then, gets various app notifications. Some of them make you ignore an app, and others vice versa, involve you in some kind of process. So it is easier to build a structured scheme of push notifications, relying on your experience as a client.

Read also: Online Tutoring Platforms in 2021: Key Features to Consider

What to Choose: Browser or Web Push Notifications?

Besides a selection process of which notification types to choose, there is one more thing you should consider: browser push notifications, and web push notifications. Below we described both of them, to help you decide which option fits your eLearning software better.

When utilized appropriately, browser push notifications can turn out to be a useful marketing tool because they can approach your leads even when they aren’t viewing your online learning platform. Browser push notifications are alerts that a platform delivers to its subscribers’ browsers. The nicest part about these messages is that they reach the intended recipient even if the online learning platform is not open in their browser. And also they allow you to connect with your clients and leads without their contact information. This increases click-through rates and makes it more efficient than emails.

Web push notifications are the messages that users could get on the website or mobile device. These are alerts that display in the corner of a desktop screen or appear on a mobile device in a way similar to app notifications.

Browser push notifications work the same way they do for smartphone apps in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and other related browsers. Because of this distinction, browser alerts can be sent to subscribers even while they are not accessing the web page. Web notifications, on the other hand, need the user to be logged in to the platform.

Despite the choice of browser and web push notifications, they won’t bring the advantage to your eLearning software, if you don’t clearly define notification types and their context. You should ensure, you cover all the interactions between online learning platform and student, student and tutor, along with platform and tutor. The list below could help you decide which messages are required for your idea, and which are less likely to operate.

Reminders

Online education consists of various tests, virtual classes, assignments, and tutoring. All of that shouldn’t pass without a reminder. Send a push notification to your learners to guarantee that they stay on track with the training programs. Whether it’s traditional classroom instruction or blended learning, both need students to be there at a specific time as well as do specific tasks.

Reminder to complete a training/lecture

Depending on the payment plan, sometimes students need to finish up their weekly training before the deadline because after that the access to the materials disappears or the teacher needs to check the progress or do a homework review. Either way, set a reminder so the students could examine learning resources before the due date.

Calendar reminder

When there is a lesson, a deadline, or an appointment in the calendar, all the users involved in that activity, need to be informed properly with a calendar reminder. Massive absences and missed deadlines would immediately affect the learning process, thus just make sure that everyone gets a calendar reminder, even twice if needed. But do not exceed! Once you got even a slight reaction from the user, even though it is a closed notification – you can finish the mailing.

Reminder of a deadline

Once again: deadlines are important! If the students miss deadlines because they were not notified, you can count them as unsatisfied customers and wait for a bad review. To prevent such kinds of unpleasant experiences, set a reminder to inform users about the necessity to submit tasks on time.

Notifications

You can utilize app notifications to connect with your users online, deliver real-time updates to students, or encourage the target audience to take lessons and interact. You should learn how to design an appealing app notification within the character limit (the best response is for 20-25 characters). Personalization is crucial in this process. As an option, you could also offer questions to re-engage your users.

New Content notification

Definitely, one of the easiest ways to attract interested individuals to the new product on the online learning platform, whether it is a new course or short video training, is to interact with existing members of the platform. First, they are already familiar with the platform, and probably loyal, if they use it. Second, you have their contact details and easily can send updates to them.

Notification of the received mark or reward

Virtual prizes could be a good motivation to complete training. Gamification is the process of putting these game mechanics to use. Create push notifications for students to notify them when they gain extra lives, medals, or records. You can also let them know where they stand on the ranking.

Besides rewards, there is also a homework review, which result is important for every student involved. This is why a notification of the homework review should be on the top priority list when creating push notifications.

Money withdrawal notification

Usually, online learning platforms for online education offer users to connect their cards to the system, so the subscription would be withdrawn automatically. Even though the users agree to skip the confirmation process of the payment each time, it is better to notify them before money withdrawal. This way you will build transparent relationships and increase trust.

Action boosters

Isn’t it true that we all need a little nudge now and then? Push notifications can act as a personal trainer, appearing just when you need it to give you a boost! In addition, this is only one of the notification types, that is focused not just on providing useful information for the users, but also to get some beneficial action from them. Action boosters motivate users to purchase, to write a review, to find new products, to interact with an online learning platform.

Training motivation

Getting a bit of friendly motivation is vital for some users on their way to achieve new knowledge. Besides, it’s a perfect approach to build informal interaction with clients. By decreasing the distance between the platform and users, you can get more of their attention during other types of communication.

Discounts

By offering discounts each side of the business benefit: both users and the platform. Users get cheaper service, while your eLearning software receives more engagement. So, adding such app notifications is a must!

Suggests

Here it is important to analyze previous services and courses the user purchased. Set up your eLearning software to automatically generate similar content for each client, by exploring his/her preferences. Then create a template of a message, where different suggestions can be fitted in. This way you won’t need to create tons of variations for each type of user.

Review request

The reviews are crucial for every service. Elearning software is not an exception! Try to unobtrusively implement this part into the interaction with a client. Find the time, when the user might be satisfied with a service: it could be the ending of the course or just a video conference with a tutor.

Estimating the Push Notifications ROI

The most useful metrics to track for illustrating the efficiency of your push notification campaigns are:

• CTR – This may be the best measure to look at if your purpose is to merely educate users of anything.
• CR – If you want to get users to do something specific in your app, you should put CR first.
• ARPU – When measuring the ROI of your push notification marketing initiatives, the average revenue per user is a crucial metric to consider. Low ARPU could signal that more in-app purchases, subscription upgrades, or upsells are needed.
• Opt-outs and uninstalls – These are two metrics you’d like to never increase. They display the number of users that were unhappy with your push notifications.

To invest wisely, and benefit from push notifications, you should review all mentioned criteria, conducting a deep research of engagement reach. A step-by-step approach, that will allow you to add notifications one after another, is going to lead to a strong communication strategy.

Last comments

Obviously, push notifications are the best way to communicate with users during online education. But to have an advantage of them, take into account 3 simple rules:

• Do not exceed: Irritating users is not your key goal, so try to send notifications or reminders when the customer needs them and they would be helpful.
• Allow notifications adjustments: Users will be more likely to use your platform if they have a choice of configurations. It is a nice gesture to allow users to set their boundaries.
• Send relevant data on time: Create high-value notifications, so there would be a stronger chance of user response. This way users will rely on your platform regarding deadlines, updates, and important information.

Feeling overwhelmed with all that notification types and multiple nuances? We would be glad to help you pick up the right fit for your eLearning software. So, do not hesitate and fill in the contact form.