Urban Airship Releases Findings from Study of In-App Message Centers

Urban Airship released key findings from the app industry’s first study of in-app message centers, which are dedicated messaging destinations within apps.
According to the press release:

Analysis included more than one billion message center messages delivered over two months, and compared direct interactions with message center messages versus push notifications. Benchmarks for high, medium and low message center read rates were calculated using the performance of apps in the 90^th, 50^th and 10^th percentiles. Complete results and best practices are available for download.
For iOS apps, key findings include:

• Eight times greater message center read rates than direct taps on a notification for medium-performers (the 50th percentile).
• Message center read rates more than double when used in combination with a push notification, and increase 23% when used with a home screen badge.
• High-performing apps see average message center read rates of 44%, increasing to 49% for retail apps, meaning nearly half of all messages sent are opened and read.

Unlike push notifications that only reach opt-in users, message centers reach all users and offer marketers a designated content marketing channel within apps where messages persist. High-performing apps see opt-in users reading 52% of all message center messages, while opt-out users read 25% of all messages. These messages can be highly targeted, and can include rich content like photos and videos, forms and surveys, and mobile wallet passes and social feeds. As a result, message centers support a wider variety of experiences and use cases than other more temporal forms of in-app messaging or push notifications — from promotional and editorial content, to lifecycle campaigns and transactional order and shipment confirmations that recipients may want to refer to repeatedly.

Click here to read the full press release.