Web Push Notification Frequency: Optimal Number of Campaigns To Send

Web Push 101
Asiya
July 17, 2023
About the Author
Asiya
Content marketer
Asiya handles all things content at PushOwl. Her passion to write has been a part of her for as long as she can remember. When she isn't working, Asiya spends time writing about culture, sci-fi, and life.

Web Push Notification Frequency: Optimal Number of Campaigns To Send

Sending web push notifications is tricky. Too many and you’re spamming your subscribers. Too few and they forget about you. And unfortunately, we can’t just recommend a number because the right web push notification frequency is subjective to the kind of store you run, what you sell, and numerous other factors.

But through a quick self-test, you can figure out how many web push campaigns you should be sending.

Wait, can’t I just send how many ever campaigns every week?

Creating web push notifications is easy and technically, there’s no limit to how many you should send. But, sending too many or too few notifications can ruin the experience for subscribers and affect your clicks and conversions.

If you’re sending too many web push notifications, you’ll face these issues:

  • Low CTR: Receiving too many notifications will annoy subscribers, causing them to swipe away rather than engage with it.
  • High unsubscribe rate: There’s no doubt that if subscribers feel like your notifications are spammy, they will opt out of receiving them entirely.
push notification campaigns 1

Sending too few campaigns can also affect your performance.

  • Low engagement: By sending campaigns sporadically, you’ll alienate subscribers and they’ll end up forgetting your store and swiping away on the rare instance that you do send a notification. This would lower your brand’s visibility.
  • Low conversion rate: The logic is obvious— the fewer campaigns you send, the fewer opportunities you have to turn your subscribers into customers.

What is the right web push notification frequency?

Like we said, we don’t know how many campaigns are right for your store. Finding the right frequency is subjective to specific factors about your store as well as some trial-and-error.

Once you’ve considered factors like what you sell and how you sell, experiment with the number of notifications you send per week to understand how many is the right number. For instance, you may find that the 3rd campaign you send in a week gets the least number of clicks while sending 2 campaigns hits the spot for you.

Let’s get into the different factors that determine the number of campaigns you should be sending.

1. Industry benchmarks

Here's how many campaigns are sent per week according to the industry you are in:

  1. Fashion: 2 to 5
  2. Electronics: 1 to 2
  3. Furniture: 1
  4. Cosmetics: 2 to 5
  5. Fitness: 2 to 3
  6. Art: 1 to 2
  7. Dropshipping: 3 to 7

2. Product price

If your inventory consists mostly of high-ticket items, shoppers won’t be buying as well so you can send fewer campaigns out.

3. Product type

Specialized and niche products like antiques and single stocks bring in high demand, requiring individual notifications for each. So, naturally, you'll need to send more campaigns.

4. Shelf life

Products with a shorter shelf life like food and cosmetics need to be sold immediately, requiring a higher frequency.

5. Product purchase frequency

If you sell products that require repurchase like fitness powders, cosmetics, and food items, you can send more notifications and use campaigns as a reminder to repurchase.

Pro-tip: Use the Segmentation feature to target shoppers who bought from your store more than 30-40 days ago to effectively re-engage and get repurchases.

6. Sale period

When running a sale on your sale, you'll want to double the number of campaigns you send to increase the traffic on your store.

Pro-tip: Use the Segmentation feature to exclude shoppers who bought in the last 2-7 days so that you don’t spam them while promoting your sale.

7. Holiday season

Like the sale period, you can increase the frequency of campaigns that you send out to leverage the holiday shopping time and drive more purchases.

8. Product launch

When launching a new product, you would want to build hype leading up to the launch. Sending 3 campaigns around the product launch across a week is common practice. This would mean altering your frequency.

9. Sellout frequency

If your products sell out faster, you'll need to send out more notifications to build urgency and remind subscribers to get them sooner.

10. Existing campaign performance

If you have low CTR and conversions for your past campaigns, send fewer campaigns and diagnose why you have lower performance. While the issue could be due to too many notifications, other factors like unoptimized copy, low interest in campaign type, etc also play a huge role.

Ace your web push marketing strategy!

We hope this helps you figure out the right web push notification frequency for your eCommerce store.