The trouble with email marketing service providers (ESPs) is that there has been very little innovation in recent years. The services offered by most of the email marketing services remain identical with no clear differentiating factor.
This is the reason why SendPulse caught me by surprise because this is one service that attempts to go well beyond email marketing to offer additional services. These additional services include the ability to send bulk SMS to subscribers and more importantly, to send push notifications to users. More on this aspect later!
SendPulse also offers a free plan which gives you access to all the features, including:
- Predesigned email templates
- Subscription forms
- A/B testing
- Analytics and reporting
- Autoresponders
- SMS
- Web push notifications
Under the free plan, you are allowed to send 15000 emails in a month to up to 2500 subscribers. When you exceed this limit, you can upgrade to any of the following plans.
But the real differentiator for SendPulse, as briefly mentioned earlier, is a technology called “Web Push” or “Push Notifications”.
What are Push Notifications?
Even if you are unaware of the term ‘web push’, there are chances you have interacted with these notifications while browsing before.
These notifications usually pop up in a non-intrusive fashion containing a message that the site would like to send you push notifications. Web push is supported by most of the modern browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Each browser displays these messages slightly differently. Here’s a sample push notification below:
When you click ‘Allow’, you give permission to the site to send you in-browser notifications. These notifications are often personalized, and can be any number of things, including news, sales, order status, latest blog posts, or other important events.
According to Loyaltics, 50% of users opt into push and find push messages useful. With this useful stat in mind, let’s examine how to enable these push notifications for your site using SendPulse.
Setting up Push Notifications for Your Site Using SendPulse
You can set up push notifications via SendPulse in 3 easy steps:
Step #1 Sign up for a free SendPulse account
Since this feature is available for free on SendPulse, you can start using it right after registering for a free account with SendPulse.
Click here to create your free account with SendPulse.
Step #2 Enter your website details and welcome message
Now login to your SendPulse account and navigate to ‘Push’ from the top menu bar.
Click on ‘Add Website’, enter your URL, add an image (preferably your logo), and other details and hit ‘Next step’.
Step #3 Add the JavaScript code to your website
Next, you’ll be asked to add a line of JavaScript code into your website template before the closing </head> tag. If you use WordPress, simply install this WordPress push notification plugin and it will add the code automatically for you.
That’s it!
You’ll now be able send personalized push notifications to your subscribers through SendPulse.
Click here to start using SendPulse for free
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