//

PushEngage has a WordPress integration feature, where one can send push alerts at the time of publishing an article without having to click on additional buttons

While working on a push notification tool for two of his B2C portfolio firms, Srijan Capital’s Ravi Trivedi saw RoI increase multiple times over email. This got him and his team excited, and they decided to make this tool open for all.

Enter PushEngage.com, a platform and campaign management tool to allow websites to easily send push notifications on desktop and mobile browsers.

“Initially, we built the tool for our sites including CouponRani.com, but when we saw a RoI for the channel to be 2x to 10x of e-mail, we made this tool available for all,” says Trivedi, who has funded and incubated close to a dozen startups through Srijan Capital, a Bangalore-based seed fund-cum-accelerator.

“We see a much higher click-through rate on each of the push campaign. The user who comes back is interested in the content being pushed and thus has much higher conversion rate,” he adds.

What is a push notification?

A user visiting your site is asked to subscribe to push notifications. Once the user confirms subscription, he is added to a subscriber group.

As a website owner, you can now go to the dashboard and create and send a notification to all your subscribers. The subscribers will get the notifications as long as his browser is running in the background. This will get your subscribers to come and visit you again.

Pushing the envelope

Trivedi claims that PushEngage has the ability to have an expiry time for notification. “For instance, If you are a deals or coupons site and decided to send out a limited time offer as push alert, you can do so by using our tool. Now, if someone logs into his/her browser after the deal expires, we would not show the alert.”

“Our product also has some personalisation features. Push notifications work best when personalised. For instance, if you subscribe to a news site and want to get alerts only on sports, it is possible using our tool,” he continues.

PushEngage was launched only a few weeks ago, and the product has been in beta since. According to Trivedi, the startup has already seen several hundred customers adopting the platform, and bagged a few paying clients as well.

Also Read: Wingify launches PushCrew for push notifications from any website

“We also offer a WordPress plug-in and are working on other integrations to make the tool widely available as well as easy to use. With the WordPress integration feature, one can send push alerts at the time of publishing an article without having to click on additional buttons,” explains Trivedi.

Trivedi says that PushEngage follows a ‘simpler pricing’ model, wherein it can support up to 2,500 subscribers in the free plan, with no limit on notifications sent.

A SaaS product, PushEngage charges monthly/quarterly/annual subscription fees from the clients to use the platform to manage their push subscribers and send push notifications.

“We have US$49 plan for websites who have more subscribers and need more features. We are transparent in our pricing. Since Google, Apple or Mozilla (through which the notifications are sent) do not charge us, our pricing is not dependent on number of notifications or subscribers like other players,” he adds.

The corporate pricing starts from US$150.

While the product is still in beta, the company hopes to commercially launch in the next three-four months.

Firefox fires up the game

The startup sees massive opportunities for its product, with Firefox joining the push notification bandwagon recently. “Chrome push notifications became a reality in April 2015. Now, push for browsers will be available on Safari, Chrome and Firefox. This will offer a market reach of over 75 per cent, based on the browser market share, and the push notifications reach will become meaningful,” Trivedi believes.

“Basically, we want to become the Mailchimp for push notifications,” he says.

The startup, which received initial capital from Srijan Capital, will now be looking for next round of funding.

In this segment, PushEngage competes with GoRoost, PushCrew (Wingify), and MobioPush.

How email notification is different from push notifications?

As for email notifications, only people who open the email get to see the message, but in push, all users who are online or have browser on will see the message. This has an impact and leads to much higher “open rate” for push.

Given the push has higher open rate, this trickles down to higher click rate. The subscriber will get the notifications as long as his browser is running in the background. This will get your subscribers to come and visit you back.

The post This Indian startup wants to be the MailChimp for push notifications appeared first on e27.

from e27 http://ift.tt/20XlQGi