Pushes go out from your own app, on the Branded app plan, and never through the Places 360 app. Open any push you have sent in Marketing and its Results show where it went. The first number is usually the surprise.
Why a push reaches fewer people than you have members.
- Made for: the customers you picked who said yes to pushes from your app. Not everyone with your card: someone who collects stamps but never said yes is not counted, and never gets one.
- Delivered: it reached a phone. Each delivered marketing push uses one credit; one that is not delivered costs nothing. Reward-ready, card-complete and order updates never use one.
- Opened: people who tapped the notification.
- No phone to send to: they said yes, but your app is not on a phone of theirs with notifications on. They may have deleted it, turned notifications off, or not opened it since it was updated.
- Not subscribed any more: they turned pushes off before it went. The app checks again at the moment it sends.
- Weekly limit reached: they had already had 2 marketing pushes from you in the last seven days.
- Couldn’t send: Apple or Google turned it away. Usually that is for a moment, or a phone that is no longer used.
So two things decide your reach: how many customers said yes, and how many of them have your app on their phone with notifications allowed. Both can grow.
Getting more people to say yes.
Nobody can say yes for a customer, and the box is never ticked for them, so the yes comes from asking. These are the asks that work.
- Ask at the counter. When someone taps for a stamp, ask if they have your app and whether they said yes to offers. The counter is where people already have their phone in their hand.
- Make sure your sign-up asks. On the business side of the app, turn on Settings › Sign-up questions › Marketing emails. In your own app that one tick covers your offers by email and by notification. It needs your privacy policy first, in Settings › Your website › Legal.
- Tell people where the switch is. Anyone who skipped it at sign-up can turn it on later in your app: Profile › Marketing › Offers as notifications.
- Give a reason. Say what they get for saying yes: first word on new bakes, a treat with the first push, an offer only subscribers hear about. An offer set to “Only for customers who subscribe”, in Offers, trades a reward for a yes. In the latest version of your app, that one yes covers your offers by email and by notification.
- Ask after a reward. In the latest version of your app, when a customer has redeemed a reward and the redeem screen closes, the app asks them once whether they’d like your offers by email and by notification, with your privacy policy linked. It asks only customers who haven’t already said yes to both, never anyone who has turned your offers off, never anyone more than once, and only while Sign-up questions › Marketing emails is on. If that reward also asks for a review, the review comes first and this waits for their next reward. The reward is already theirs, whatever they answer.
- Let the tag and the QR do some of the asking. They bring people into your app at the moment they are standing at your counter. A small card beside the tag – “Tap for a stamp. Say yes to offers in our app.” – asks for you when the queue is long.
- Use the list you already have. Customers who said yes to your emails can be asked by email: one line in your next one, with a link to your app, asking them to turn on offers as notifications.
- Chase the No phone to send to. If you moved to Places 360 from an earlier app, a push only reaches the customers who have installed or opened the new version. “Have you updated our app?” at the till moves them into Delivered.
Tip from Dalve: ask at the counter for one week before your next push, then compare its Made for with your last one. That number is your list, growing.
Tell your team this: “Have you got our app? Say yes to offers in it and you’ll hear about our deals first.” One sentence, said the same way by everyone, while the order is being handed over.
Writing pushes people open.
- Keep it short. A phone shows the title and about the first 150 characters of the message. Put the point in the title.
- One clear offer. “Free pastry with any coffee before 10 today” beats a round-up of news.
- Open the offer, not the home page. In Send a push, set Opens to the offer, menu or stamp card the push is about, so a tap lands where they can act on it.
- Send it before the visit. Half seven for the morning coffee crowd, late morning for lunch, Thursday for the weekend. Schedule it and it goes at your venue’s time.
- Sound like you. Write it the way you would say it across the counter.
- Spend the two a week well. Each customer gets at most 2 marketing pushes from you in any seven days. Spend one on a small notice and only one is left for the offer that brings them in. Order and reward updates do not count towards the two.
- Fewer, better. People who get pushes they do not want turn them off, and that yes is hard to win back.
Tip from Dalve: before you send, read the title on its own. If it doesn’t make you want to tap, the message won’t either.
The rules, and why the app works this way.
Marketing by push is covered by UK GDPR and PECR, the UK’s rules on electronic marketing, and by Apple’s App Store rules, which say marketing pushes need customers to opt in through wording in the app itself, with a way to opt out in the app. Places 360 is built so that following them is the default. This describes how the app behaves; it is not legal advice, so for your own situation, ask an adviser.
- Each customer’s own yes, given in your app. Pushes go only to customers who said yes to pushes from you, in your own app. A yes given to another business, or in the Places 360 app, does not count for yours.
- Never pre-ticked. The box at sign-up starts empty, and it names your business and both channels: email and notifications. The phone’s own “Allow notifications” prompt is not a yes to marketing on its own.
- Off at any time, straight away. A customer turns it off in Profile in your app and it stops at once. The app checks again at the moment each push is sent, so one you scheduled earlier does not reach someone who has since said no.
- At most 2 a week from you. Marketing pushes only. Order and reward updates are not marketing and do not count.
- A reward for a yes, never a cost for a no. You can offer something for subscribing. Saying no costs a customer nothing, and someone who unsubscribes later keeps what they were given.
- What came across from your old app. If you moved from an earlier app, customers who had said yes to marketing there were brought across with that yes, for your app. Everyone else starts at no until they say yes. It is good manners for your first push after the move to say where they can turn offers off.
More on the day to day is on the help pages
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