• by Jess Nelson , March 16, 2017

Urban Airship announced the expansion of its Web notification solution on Wednesday -- a real-time messaging application email that marketers can leverage to target non-subscribing customers. 

Generally available in April, Urban Airship Web Notify enables marketers to send real-time messages to Web site or app visitors as they are actively engaging with the brand.

The notifications appear like any push app notification on Android devices or as a message on the top or bottom right-hand corner of desktop computers.

As in email marketing, Urban Airship Web Notify marketers can also conduct A/B test messaging to send interactive content that is most likely to encourage a customer to engage. Automation rules can also be applied to send triggered, personalized messages based on behavior.

Bill Schneider, senior director of product marketing at Urban Airship, says “marketers haven’t had a good way to engage with their web audience beyond email, where usually only around 2% of web traffic will sign up.” Schneider says that Web notifications make a good complement to email, providing "in-the-moment utility through short-form messaging to alert a website visitor about something new that's of interest to them. This could be that they have an item left in their shopping cart or that their order just shipped.”

Examples of additional Web-based communication presented by Urban Airship include educational content, transactional messages and promotional coupons.

Urban Airship Web Notify can also be used to supplement email marketing with email subscription sign-up forms, a solution that Schneider says could “absolutely” help email marketers grow their audience.

“Web notifications can surface benefits of signing up for email with simple 'Yes' or 'No' buttons,” says Schneider. “The 'Yes' button can be deep-linked to a landing page sign-up form that can be created within Urban Airship's platform.”