Push notifications in local news delivery: boosting engagement and keeping people informed

🎧 Listen to this article here.

Local media are essential for building an informed society. They provide vital coverage of local issues and events that are often overlooked by national news outlets. However, the traditional approaches to local news delivery, such as television and print, are losing their reach. In today's digital age, people are increasingly getting their news from online sources, such as social media, apps, and websites.

This shift has created a number of challenges for local publishers. On the one hand, social media has made it easier than ever for people to access local news. However, social media can also be a source of biased, fake, or misinformed news. On the other hand, local publishers face the challenge of getting people to visit their websites. Many people are simply not willing to click on links to news articles on social media.

Push notifications offer a solution to these challenges. Mobile push notifications are messages that are delivered directly to a person's mobile device, even when they are not actively using the app. The other popular kind, web push notifications, are implemented on websites to serve the same purpose for both PC/laptops and mobile devices. 

This makes them an ideal way to deliver breaking news and other time-sensitive information. In addition, push notifications can help to build trust between publishers and their audiences. When people know that they can rely on a publisher to deliver accurate and timely information, they are more likely to engage with that publisher's content.

Engaging the readers with push notifications

In the United States, the traditional methods of local news delivery, such as print and television, are experiencing a decline in reach. Social media has emerged as a popular alternative, with an increasing number of people relying on platforms like Facebook and Twitter for their local news. However, the reliance on social media for news consumption poses the risk of encountering biased or misinformed content.

Source: Pew Research

While push notifications offer a solution to the challenges faced by local publishers, they are not without their drawbacks. Social media platforms, which were once valuable tools for publishers to engage with readers, now require payment to reach a significant audience. Additionally, the proliferation of AI-generated summaries and bad-faith actors seeking to spread chaos online further complicates the landscape for local news providers.

To combat these challenges, local publishers need to focus on building a loyal readership base by gathering subscribers willing to receive news directly from their websites. This approach ensures that readers have access to accurate and reliable information from a trusted source, which is essential for fostering an informed local community.

Web push notifications for building trust and habits

The first thing to note about web push notifications for local news publishers is the speed and ease of using them in everyday newsroom realities. The implementation alone is easy and doesn’t require specialistic IT knowledge. 

Source: CBS News site

Then, there comes the stage of collecting a subscriber base. Your users don’t need to leave any personal information to become push subscribers - all they need is to allow notifications in their browser settings. There are multiple ways to encourage opting in - from pop-ups, toggle switches, and bell widgets, to the simplest browser form to keep it easy. 

Once the subscription forms are set up, there comes a time to start pushing your notifications. A standard push campaign sent to all your subscribers takes just minutes to prepare and send. By adding a Chrome extension to their browsers, media workers can facilitate the process even further. 

Still, there are some subjects that won’t be popular among all the readers. Using segmentation, publishers can divide the subscriber base into smaller groups and address them with more tailored content. This might serve you to

• Send match results to people who were browsing the sports section of the portal. 

• Address subscribers living in a particular area with news coming from their neighborhood (if they allowed geolocation on their browser).

• Inform about local policies concerning specific aspects of living in the area straight to people who were previously interested in articles about particular projects. 

There are even more opportunities to build personalized communications with specific subscribers. Automations allow you to send push notifications in reaction to specific behavior of a user on the website (opening or closing an article, logging in to their accounts on the site, beginning the process of paid subscriptions, etc.).

Push notifications for local news alerts

As we’re regularly monitoring the push notifications’ statistics for PushPushGo’s clients, we’ve noticed two particularly interesting trends worth taking into account: 

• Overall, web push notifications sent by local portals achieve similar CTR to national services. 

• However, when it comes to the highest CTR for a single push notification, year after year we find a piece of local information concerning a topic that impacts the life of a certain local community. 

Web push notifications are a simple, fast, and reliable way of sustaining a loyal base of returning subscribers for media of every size. If you want to learn more about its possibilities, drop us a line at [email protected].