Promoting news with web push notifications. PushPushGo & Dnevnik.si

Boris Upelj, Managing Editor of the online edition at Dnevnik.si, shared his experience of implementing and using web push at Dnevnik.si, one of the oldest and most popular online and offline news resources in Slovenia.

I'm really excited to talk about your experience of implementation and using of web push notifications in your company. And we can start from the very beginning, How did you find out about web push notifications? Why did you decide to try this technology?

If I remember correctly, I received a cold email message from one of your guys, I don't know if it was David or Dominik or somebody. At that point, I already knew that there were some services similar to PushPushGo since some other sites were using it. and since you guys were the first to reach out, we decided: 'Let's just give it a go'.

So did you have some problems you were trying to solve with push notifications?

Of course. One of the biggest challenges in the digital publishing industry today is how to build loyalty. Well, the obvious answer is through creating habits and that only happens through quality content. And the browser notifications are just another channel for us through which we can stay in contact with our readers, our users. And we use it to remind them constantly that our website is the place where they can find that kind of quality content.

Do you use web push notifications daily?

Yes. I wouldn't say that we use push notifications for pushing articles daily, but we have some automation in place that happens on a daily basis, it's triggered on a daily basis.

Did you have any obstacles or fears that made you delay the integration and using the application?

Not really. Some things just take time. [Those were] usual business obstacles of getting everybody on board internally in our firm. But that happened quicker than it seems.

And do you think this decision to postpone the decision was right in that situation?

I would say that it was inevitable from our point of view and I would think nothing of it. But if we could have implemented it sooner, that would be even better.

How was the implementation process? Was it difficult for you? maybe something surprised you during the process?

Not really. The implementation and guidance were very simple and straightforward. There were again some delays but they were on our side again, so nothing wrong from your point of view.

So it was pretty fast.

Yeah. It's simple you just take a code, you put it in your server on your website in HTML and everything works.

What have you been able to achieve since using web push? Does it help you to achieve the goals of loyalty?

Sure. The results of notifications were seen instantly. After every single push, there was a sudden spike in visitors and the people who read the certain article. And the number of subscribers started to grow from the minute we implemented it and it's growing to this day. 

From the point of making visitors return to your site - yes, that was our objective, one of our main objectives from the beginning. So we set automation. If a subscriber hasn't visited our website in a while, we send them a gentle reminder: 'Hey, we haven't seen you in a while, here’s content that we think you would like to read'. And for the people who are visiting regularly, we created another automated process that nudges them to becoming subscribers. Something similar to 'You are a loyal member of our community. Here are some options for you to become a paying member if you want to read more articles that are behind our paywall.

So as I understood web push notification doesn't require a lot of time to dedicate for it?   

No no. The whole process is, as I said before, pretty straightforward, easy to learn, and easy to use. So yeah, we're very satisfied with it.

What are the benefits of using web push? Based on your current experience with web push technology, which ideas would you like to test in the near future?

Most simply put, the biggest benefit is reaching our users that would have not visited our website on that day or read a specific article that we pushed to them. If you can convince your users so they return more frequently to your site, and you - your website - become a part of their daily routine, there,s a big chance that they will convert into paying subscribers. That's basically the Holy Grail of today's digital publishing. And PushPushGo is a great way that helps us achieve that.

What do you think about the expression that 'web push = spam', compared to other channels?

I don't really see it that way. It is true that browsing time is becoming cluttered as more and more websites are implementing these notifications. But only a few users subscribe to all of them indiscriminately. if you only subscribe to topics or websites that you know you want to receive notifications from, then it's a service that brings value. That's how I see it. It all comes down to user awareness or net-savviness basically. Just like with any other channel, be it social, newsletter, or app push notifications.

Yes, I agree with you. It also depends on what information you are sending to your subscribers.

You have to be careful that you are sending information that is useful to your subscribers.

In this case, we also have tagging that helps to monitor which pages the user was visiting.

I'm really surprised by the amount of data and targeting options on the preferences of our users that you offer without being invasive in regard to their privacy. That's one of the upsides of PushPushGo. 

I was also surprised by the limitless options of automation. You can basically make any action or event you can think of and serve an appropriate message based on the action or that data. So yeah, that surprised me and I am very satisfied - we are very satisfied.

Cool. Thank you so much for this insightful conversation and I wish you a lot of successful campaigns with your push notifications.

Thank you. I can only recommend PushPushGo to other people because it's a great product, great service, and great, responsive people. That's it.