Leanplum Study: Top Reason Brands Fail Is Annoying Communications

Mobile phones are an integral part of our lives, and brands rely on a multi-channel solution to build and maintain relationships with their customers via notifications. To garner insight into people’s engagement preferences (whether via email, push notification or in-app messaging), Leanplum commissioned a survey of 1,000 mobile phone users in the United States. Highlights of findings are below.

Irrelevant and Frequent Notifications – #1 Reason to Delete Apps

The number one reason people delete apps is too many and irrelevant notifications clogging up their inboxes and notification feeds. Across all generations, from Gen Z to Baby Boomers, the most common reason to delete an app was because of copious notifications. Over 75 per cent of Millennials are deleting apps that annoy them with unnecessary notifications. Brands are consistently having to navigate the fine line between keeping their users informed and notified while being sensitive to over-communicating.

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Facebook, Wells Fargo and Bank of America Win at End User Communication

Surprisingly, respondents reported that the brands best at communicating with their users are social media and financial companies. From a list of popular companies, people selected Facebook, Wells Fargo and Bank of America as being the best at communicating with their users. Users who consistently disregard and are unenthused by notifications find that social media and financial brands send the most helpful notifications. Over 30 per cent of people reported that they like to receive notifications for financial alerts, and over 25 per cent of people think that Facebook does the best job at communicating with their users.

Email Is Not Dead

Interestingly, respondents said they prefer email notifications to other forms of app communication. In other words, email is not dead; people just have a preference for when and how they like to be notified. Forty-six (46) per cent of respondents reported that they prefer to receive notifications in the form of email, while only 15 per cent prefer push notifications.

Even across generations, email is the most liked form of communication for brands on mobile devices. Forty-three (43) per cent of Millennials prefer to receive emails from brands compared to 28 per cent of Gen Zs. As email transitions to being easily accessible on mobile devices, it has reemerged as the most liked form of communication from brands.

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“Through our research, we are finding more and more that email is stronger than ever before,” said Momchil Kyurkchiev, CEO and founder of Leanplum. “Because email is so accessible on our phone, it is being used in combination with push notifications, allowing for brands to craft communications with their users that are thoughtful, personalised and based on the unique characteristics of each customer.”

Other interesting statistics include:

• Sixty (60) per cent of people have a preference for what time of day they receive notifications. Of those who have a preference, the split between morning (27 per cent), afternoon (38 per cent) and evening (34 per cent) was fairly even
• Seventy-two (72) per cent of Gen Z (compared to only 43 per cent of Gen X’s) like to receive messages/updates from friends/followers on social media
• The least annoying push messages to receive were from email/messaging apps (9 per cent found them annoying) and financial apps (only 13 per cent of people found these annoying)
• Forty-nine (49) per cent of people find financial/banking alerts helpful
• Fifty-four (54) per cent of people say they are most likely to open emails from messaging companies, and forty-one (41) per cent are likely to open financial emails

For more details on the report, click here.