Webinar

How to Use Rich Push

04/26/17

Meet Your Hosts

Aaron SawitskyLocalytics

Head of Product Marketing

Kristina LisackiLocalytics

Account Manager

Agenda

Intro

Best Practices

Sending Rich Pushes

Q & A

The Basics

The Basics

What is a Rich Push?

• A rich push is a push notification that

includes “rich content” (a picture, GIF,

video, or audio file)

Why send rich pushes?

1. Rich visuals make your notifications more

interesting and engaging

2. With rich pushes, you can bring content

outside your app, removing a barrier to

consumption

3. They produce results:

Increase in Open

Rate

30%

Source: Localytics, 2017

Rich Pushes on iOS vs. Android

Both iOS and Android support rich push. However, there are some differences

between the two platforms:

• Supported content:

• On iOS, you can include images, GIFs, videos, and audio files in your push notifications

• On Android, you can only include images

• On iOS, only users running iOS 10 can see rich push content

• Users on an older version of iOS will still receive the message, they just won’t see the

rich content

• With the stock Android notification style, you can only display one line of text with a rich push

• There are also slight differences in how rich content is displayed

iOS Android

Preview

Expanded Expanded

Preview

Preview vs. Expanded

• When a user first receives a rich push, they generally see it in the preview format

• In order to view the expanded version, the user must tap or swipe the notification

• The one exception is on newer versions of Android, the notification at the top of the

notification drawer will automatically appear as expanded

Best Practices

Stay True to Your Brand

Make sure that the rich content you use matches the rest of your brand:

• Memes in particular are tricky – they can give your app more personality, but they

are also not a good fit for many brands

Don’t Rely Exclusively on the Rich Content

In case the rich content doesn’t load, you want to ensure your notification still makes

sense with text alone. Rich content might not load because:

• It takes too long to download the content

• On iOS, a user doesn’t have iOS 10

Think About File Size

Many users are sensitive about data usage

• If you chew up too much of your users’ data with rich content, they will disable push

notifications

• Take the time to compress and optimize your rich content before uploading it

• iOS has hard limits for file sizes – 10MB for images/GIFs, 50MB for movies, and 5MB for audio

files

• Although Android has no hard limits, we recommend that you adhere to the limits above

Movies vs. GIFs

In general, we recommend using GIFs instead

of movies for the following reasons:

• GIFs have a smaller file size

• GIFs automatically start animating in the

expanded view – with movies you must press the

play button

• The lack of audio in a GIF can be a pro in some

cases (less chance of embarrassing a user with

unexpected audio)

• Having said that, there are certainly times when it

makes sense to send a video

A/B Testing

Especially when you start using rich push, use

A/B testing to determine what types of

imagery you should use:

• Does a certain background drive higher open

rates?

• Should you include people in your imagery?

• Should the image have a natural setting or be set

in a studio?

• For iOS, do users respond differently to GIFs vs.

images vs. videos?

All Other Best Practices Still Apply

Rich pushes are exciting, but don’t lose track of standard push best practices:

• Target your messages at specific groups of users

• Make sure that the content you send is relevant for the recipients

• Don’t over-message users

Sending

Rich Pushes

Setup

There are a few integration requirements before you can start sending rich pushes

using Localytics:

iOS

• Must be running SDK Version 4.1+

• Must add a snippet of code to your app (found in our Dev Docs)

Android

• Although we have had some form of rich push support for years, we introduced a new level of

native support with the recent release of SDK Version 4.3

• We will also be adding enhanced Dashboard support for Android rich push in June

Sending Rich Pushes

Once you have done the necessary integration work, you can send rich pushes through the

Dashboard or using the Push API

• Instructions for sending rich content using the Push API can be found in our Dev Docs

• Right now, let’s look at how you send rich content using the Dashboard

Demo

Questions?