How to get free impressions in front of your best customers

Today I’m going to start a five-part series on the most underused channel in ecommerce.

Native push notifications are underused for a reason - you need a mobile app to send them.

That’s a much larger bottleneck than collecting an email address or a phone number for SMS, or sending direct mail to someone’s address (which you already have, if they’re a customer).

But many still don’t realize how strong a channel push can be. And how it’s basically worth the cost, on its own, of building and launching an app.

(Of course, that depends on the cost. If you’re spending $150K on an app, perhaps not. But if you’re doing it a more efficient way, spending a few thousand at most, it’s a completely different story.

Here’s what David Cost, the VP of Ecommerce at Rainbow Shops (a billion-dollar retail & ecommerce brand), told us a while back:

The fact that other channels are getting harder is part of it. You’ve probably noticed email open rates declining. SMS can get expensive (as well as annoying), and there are mounting regulatory concerns.

But these are still strong channels, with a great ROI.

Push is not about replacing email and SMS. It’s about adding to these channels.

It’s about getting more sales from high-margin, low-lift sources, which will make a small but significant shift to your overall business economics.

And push is the ideal channel for this.

What makes push different

On a message-for-message basis, push is the highest-ROI channel you have.

A large reason why is that there’s no per-message cost. The cost structure is like email: you pay a service based on the # of subscribers you have, and then you’re basically free to message them as much as you like.

Yet the visibility and engagement is like SMS. Perhaps even better. You land on the lock screen, instantly, with messages with your brand’s logo attached, and that are almost guaranteed to be seen.

You’re not getting mixed in with other texts, like SMS. Your notifications stand on their own.

(Again, SMS has its own benefits. The reach is much wider. But the point is that in a vacuum, a push notification is usually a more effective way to reach someone).

Cost-wise, it’s realistically less than email, because email comes with more creative and labor lift. Copywriting, design, scheduling. There’s much less work with push - it’s short, snappy, and the kind of writing that AI is actually good at.

And the limitation of push - the fact that the customer needs your app installed - is actually a benefit in a way.

The audience quality is different. Someone who installed your app has already made a commitment. They gave you real estate on their phone. That's a fundamentally different relationship than someone who opted in on your site in exchange for a 10% discount.

It’s just easier, and your efforts go further, when you’re marketing directly to your best customers.

A different mindset

The tendency is to compare push to email & SMS.

And that does make sense. But it’s not the only way to look at it.

Another way: compare it to retargeting ads or display ads.

Here, you’re paying for impressions. You’re paying a lot for them.

Push is essentially a display ad on your customer’s lock screen. It’s, at worst, a constant reminder that you exist.

How much would you pay for ad space on your customer’s phone?

I gather it would be less than what you’d spend on push.

The math

Let's put some rough numbers on this.

Say you have 10,000 app users with push enabled. You send 3 notifications a week.

That's 30,000 impressions a week. At zero cost. With near-guaranteed visibility. In front of your best customers.

Now compare that to getting 30,000 impressions through paid social. Or through email, or SMS. You’re paying a lot less, or (in the case of email) sending a lot fewer messages.

And because push has a fixed cost, you just need a relatively tiny conversion rate to come out ahead.

A 1% conversion rate on your push notifications, assuming the above numbers with a $75 AOV, is $22,500 in weekly revenue.

A 5% conversion rate (not a crazy benchmark) equals $112,500 in weekly revenue.

Scale it further, with more app users, higher push opt-in rate, more impressions, higher conversion rate or higher AOV, and the profit increases while overhead doesn’t. The only cost is whatever you're paying for the app itself.

That’s not nothing. But, again unless you drastically overpay for your app, you’re looking at a relatively minor cost for the potential return.

The bottom line

The core takeaway is that it’s hard to argue against push notifications. The economics, at no fixed cost and guaranteed visibility, are just too good.

The most common arguments are some form of “no one downloads apps” or “I hate getting push notifications”.

But the key thing is that not all shoppers think this way. You may not be your ideal customer.

Your best customers do want an app. They do want to get notified that there’s a sale on or a new product launching, or that one of their favorite lines is back in stock.

You’re not trying to get in front of your whole audience, just your top 10-20%.

For a small number of brands, apps and push notifications legitimately don’t make sense. If you’re a furniture company, sending three push notifications a week asking someone to buy a sofa may not be a winning strategy.

But for consumables, for businesses with high repeat purchase potential (beauty, fashion, F&B, home & kitchen, pets, baby & kids, hobbies, automotive), or for businesses with high AOV and moderate repeat purchase potential (luxury fashion, jewelry, electronics), it’s an oversight not to have an app.

Even if zero people ever open the app on their own accord, push notifications alone are likely to cover the cost of launching 100x over.

As David from Rainbow Shops says - push notifications are the reason to have an app.

And as getting in front of your customers gets harder and more expensive every day, the case for push notifications only gets stronger.

The Smarter Way to Launch An App

The economics of push notifications only work if you’re not spending six figures per year on a complicated custom build.

Luckily, you don’t need anything like that. MobiLoud turns your existing site into a mobile app, in 30 days, with minimal lift.

The best part? It takes very little ongoing work to manage, since your website and app are fully in sync.

You get the ROI of push notifications, amplified because the overhead of your app is so much less.

If you've been thinking about an app but haven't pulled the trigger, this series might give you the push (pun intended) you need.

Go to our site to get a free preview of your app or DM me on LinkedIn to learn more about how it works.

Quick Hits

Shopify Launches Agentic Storefronts Across ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Google AI Mode 
Millions of merchants can now sell directly through AI chatbots, with products, inventory, and pricing syncing automatically across all surfaces. They also launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with backing from Walmart, Target, Etsy, Amex, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa. The pitch is that merchants keep ownership of their customer relationships while gaining access to new AI channels. Whether that promise holds as these platforms mature is the real question. Either way: agentic commerce just went from theoretical to live.

Walmart and OpenAI Team Up on Agentic Shopping 
Walmart is working with OpenAI to build agentic shopping capabilities. The details are still emerging, but the direction is clear: the largest retailer in the world is betting that AI agents will handle a meaningful share of purchases. If you're a DTC brand, this is the environment you're competing in. Another reason to invest in channels (like push) that reach your customers directly, without a platform in between.

OpenAI Is Testing an Ads Manager (With $200K Minimums) 
OpenAI is quietly building an ad business inside ChatGPT. Early testers get a dashboard for running campaigns with weekly CSV reports on clicks and impressions. The catch: $200K minimum spend, and one retail advertiser reported a 0.91% CTR (vs. 6.4% on Google Search). Over 100 brands have already advertised, 44% in retail. It's early and expensive, but OpenAI is clearly serious about making ChatGPT a commerce platform, not just a search tool.

Visa Launches "Agentic-Ready" Programme for AI-Driven Payments 
Visa is preparing banks and merchants for autonomous AI transactions. The programme helps financial institutions adapt their systems for agent-based payments. When the biggest payment network on the planet starts building infrastructure for AI agents to spend money, it tells you where things are headed. The plumbing for agentic commerce is being laid right now.

Google Expands Agentic Commerce Standard 
Google is expanding the capabilities of its agentic commerce standards, building on the UCP co-developed with Shopify. Between Google, Shopify, Visa, and Mastercard all moving on this in the same month, agentic commerce just had its "infrastructure moment." The question for DTC brands isn't whether this is coming. It's whether you'll have a direct customer relationship when it does.

That’s all for now.

Next week we’ll dive into push from another angle - looking at the different roles each of your direct marketing channels play in a healthy retention strategy.

If you have any thoughts on what we discussed here, or anything else (in general) you’d like me to cover related to retention, CX and growth, just hit reply and let me know.

Until next week,

Pietro and The Retention Edge Team

PS: go to our website to get a preview of your app for free, or shoot me a DM on LinkedIn to talk about it.