As the number of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases continues to increase worldwide, publications of all sizes are doing everything they can to keep their readers informed of the latest updates. One way they are breaking through to their readers is with the use of web push notifications.
Here at Pushly, we are tracking how our network of nearly 50 U.S. news publishers have increasingly dedicated their push content to coverage of the coronavirus outbreak, and the spike in notifications has been considerable.
The overall percentage of push notifications sent about coronavirus has more than tripled since the start of the year. In the first week of March alone, half of Pushly’s news publishers’ notifications were solely dedicated to the outbreak.
| Percentage of Push Notifications Sent | ||
| Other News | Coronavirus | |
| January | 97% | 3% |
| February | 89% | 10% |
| March | 68% | 32% |
This deployment volume of coronavirus-related pushes are translating directly to increased clicks and site traffic.
In February, 20% of clicks came from coronavirus content, and that share has more than doubled in the first week of March, resulting in direct traffic back to the sites of our publishers. We also saw similar behavior from news organizations during Hurricane Dorian, a major natural disaster in 2019, where breaking news alerts dominated the overall share of content.
The increase in site traffic is due to smart segmentation of coronavirus content. In fact, 75% of publishers’ notifications covering the outbreak have been deployed using Pushly’s best-in-class segmentation tool. This enables our publishers to continue providing follow-up stories to their subscribers, who are monitoring coronavirus developments closely, while only sending the most urgent news to their entire audience. Ultimately, this has led to better engagement, more site traffic and lower audience attrition.
What is your team doing to deploy coverage of the coronavirus outbreak? If you’re using web push, is your provider working hand-in-hand to ensure the most effective deployment of notifications?
Schedule a demo today to see how Pushly can help your team breakthrough the noise and win audience engagement when it matters the most.
