Data Finds Pictures Boost Direct Response Rates for Push Notifications 56 Percent

PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwired - September 01, 2016) - Ahead of the final release of Apple's iOS 10 and its support for Rich Notifications -- where images, video, audio, GIFs and interactive buttons are embedded directly within push notifications -- mobile engagement leader Urban Airship revealed initial performance analysis of similar big picture style notifications on Android. Data from nearly 5 million messages sent August 5-18 show that big picture notifications see a 56 percent higher direct open rate on average than notifications without images¹. With Rich Notifications soon available across all major mobile platforms, marketers can gain greater response and engagement using rich media, while taking advantage of an even bigger opportunity to create powerful, streamlined customer experiences with more app interactions and content delivered to the lockscreen.

Urban Airship also announced the industry's first cross-platform support for all Rich Notification media types in Urban Airship Engage, which extends its years-long advantage in offering out-of-the-box functionality for interactive notification buttons and Android Rich Notifications. These new cross-platform capabilities will be available in the Urban Airship SDK 8.0, which will immediately follow the final release of iOS 10. In addition, Urban Airship offers a proprietary content delivery network to provide customers convenience and speed in serving up media for Rich Notifications.

iOS 10 will display accompanying rich media as thumbnail previews on receipt, and also offer better visibility to buttons contained in notifications. Combined with Urban Airship Engage's real-time marketing automation engine and its new Message Composer, marketers can easily create, test and manage an endless array of Rich Notification experiences to optimally engage users in key moments throughout their customer journey. For example:

• A retailer might determine an offer and product image with "View Details" and "Add to Wish List" buttons perform best for products customers recently browsed, whereas users showing deeper levels of product engagement get a demo video and "Add to Cart" button.
• An event could send attendees a picture of their mobile ticket with "Add" and "Remind Me Later" buttons.
• News organizations might find audio or video culled from social media drives more interest in unfolding events than a standard wire photo, adding "Follow" and "Share" buttons to amplify engagement and reach.

Every user action, such as taps on interactive buttons, will enrich Urban Airship's user profiles in real time and can trigger conditional follow-on automation. For example, hotels sending a receipt image with simple thumbs up, thumbs down emoji buttons to rate their stay, could then ask satisfied guests to share their experience with friends, whereas unsatisfied guests could be directed to an in-app survey to garner details.