Turning Notifications into Conversations

Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Tell me, which notification are you more likely to click?

1. Hey there, your order is out for delivery and will arrive by 9 pm today.
2. Hey there, I have picked up your order from the warehouse and it will arrive at your doorstep today. Please share if you have any special instructions for me.?

Before we move forward with the psychology behind these messages, do share your answer with me. I would love to know if I am right or wrong in my hypothesis.

Based on the nature of the messages, chances are, you’d click the second notification. The reason is that the first notification acts as an update and may not require any input from your end. On the other hand, the second notification has a conversational tone and prompts you to respond, increasing the likelihood of clicks.

This type of conversational notification is recently becoming popular due to its higher engagement probability. In today’s edition, we are looking closely at this new trend and why I feel like this is the future of notifications.

Notifications but better

A few months ago, I shared how Duolingo raised the bar of push notifications. By using sarcasm to personalize their notifications to users’ activities, Duolingo became an internet sensation.

Zomato and Swiggy (India’s popular food delivery apps) follow a similar path and hence have a greater appeal to millennials and Gen Z. But even after so much effort, the outcome of push notifications is limited, with an average reported CTR of 4.6%.?

On the other end of the spectrum, there are messaging apps like WhatsApp that boast around 98% CTR on notifications. Simply because these apps notify you of new messages and who would not click on it? Unless you are ignoring that person!

Conversational notifications work as an extension of push notifications that instead of just informing, prompts you to engage in a conversation. This approach is highly effective because it:

• Humanizes your brand: When people feel they are engaging with a human instead of just receiving a robotic update, they are more likely to engage.
• Reduces decision fatigue: Notifications are often ignored because they’re not actionable. Conversational messages guide users intuitively, reducing mental load.

Zomato Utilising Conversational Notifs

Grrr. Grrr. Grrr. Grrr.

It’s probably your stomach making noises. Order something? ??

Zomato is known for its cheeky notifications which is also an ongoing meme on social media. If you haven’t noticed already, Zomato typically sends its notifications around meal times. Since its services are purely time-dependent, increasing the time spent on the app becomes challenging.

No matter how intriguing the notification is, people may not click on it simply because they don’t need to order something. This is an ongoing problem with push notifications. While you can grab the user’s attention, it’s difficult to receive a notable CTR or increase time spent on the app.

To resolve this, Zomato has changed its push notifications system to conversational. Now, whenever there is an update from the delivery driver, instead of a push notification, you receive a text message that opens in a chat interface. You can ask questions, give specific directions, or simply interact with the driver seamlessly.

How to replicate a similar infra?

Now, it would be remiss of me to talk about the benefits of conversational notifications and then not tell you how to implement one. So, here’s a quick guideline:

• Identify key moments where a conversation adds more value like order updates, delivery updates, payment reminders, etc.
• Since notifications are a game of content, make sure your message is concise and clearly depicts a text message and not an automatically triggered notification.
• Continuously test, analyze, and iterate metrics like response rates and session times to optimize.
• Finally, integrate this conversational notification with a chat experience that is easy to use. This will broadly take you around a year to build., or you can integrate our Chat SDK within 15 minutes.

Finally, if you wish to explore the use cases of conversational notifications for your business, comment below or DM me.

About LikeMinds

We enable businesses to integrate emerging social use cases within 15 minutes. Through our feature-rich Chat and Feed SDKs, transform your app into a social experience that drives higher engagement, retention, and conversions.

Until Next Discussion,

Nipun Goyal,

Founder & CEO, LikeMinds