Push notifications for coworking spaces: tips and best practices

Coworking spaces are skyrocketing in popularity, providing freelancers, business owners, and remote workers with adaptable workspaces. 

Because many operators are using white-label apps to manage their spaces, push notifications have become a crucial tool for operators to connect with their members in real time. 

When used correctly, they can help coworking operators enhance member engagement and retention, whether used to announce events, provide updates, or send reminders.

In this article, we’ll offer a few tips to help you use push notifications in a way that benefits both the space and its members, from creating compelling messaging to audience segmentation, and success measurement.

What are push notifications? 

Push notifications are messages sent to users’ devices including smartphones, tablets, or desktops, via a specific application. Whether the user is actively using the app or not, a push notification will display as a brief pop-up or banner on their screen. 

Coworking owners and operators frequently utilize push notifications via their coworking mobile apps to interact with users and deliver them updates, reminders, and other important information. 

Push notifications typically have a short title followed by a slightly longer piece of text. There is also the option to add images to the push notifications.

Because push notifications show in a small amount of space, they should be short and to the point. Ideally, your push notifications will be between 40-120 characters.

Types of push notifications

Coworking spaces can serve a variety of push notifications to their users. Here are a few of the most common types of notifications. 

Informative notifications

Mobile push notifications are frequently used to provide users with important information. This could include anything from app updates that may affect app use to upcoming space closures to new onboarding processes that users need to be aware of.

We often see Optix clients using push notifications to notify members of upcoming happy hours or networking events so they always know what’s coming up in the space. 

Informative notifications should be timely and relevant to ensure members get the most out of them.

Example: 

Tonight is our monthly happy hour! 🍹

Meet us in the common area for drinks and small eats from 4-6.

Location-based notifications

Location-based notifications are alerts that users receive based on where they are located geographically, such as a notification about a deal at a store they have previously visited. 

This may be relevant to coworking spaces that offer discounts with other local businesses. For example, you could send a push notification when someone gets near to a business that you have a partnership with, reminding them they can get 10% off.  

Example:

You have 10% off 

Don’t forget: Co-Lab members get 10% off at The Great Deli every time they go! 🥪

Call-to-action notifications

Call-to-action (CTA) messages are designed to get users to take a specific action. Coworking space operators find this helpful to encourage users to book a desk, view new content, subscribe to a newsletter, and more. 

A special deal or discount may be offered to encourage the desired action to be taken. Your CTA’s propensity to spur action improves, and its probability of being swiped away decreases when your CTA is straightforward, desirable, and easy to understand. 

Example:

Did you check in today?

Tap here to check into the space. 

Alert notifications

Alert notifications inform users when a situation that directly affects them happens, for instance, when someone comments or likes a photo you posted.

They are most common with popular social media applications, however, they may be used for coworking space apps as well to encourage community engagement within community building features like a Community Feed. 

Example:

1 new comment

Your post has a new comment!

Personalized notifications

Personalization can be very beneficial in relating to members if you have a good understanding of your user.  

Addressing users by their first names and giving them content relevant to their interests are good examples of personalization that can be easily implemented using Custom Properties in Optix.

Example: 

Lisa, this one’s for you! ⭐️

Renew your monthly membership and get 10% off as a thank-you for your loyalty. 

Notifications requesting opinions or ratings 

Users are often very open to providing reviews or ratings for a product or service that they enjoy. However, they’ll usually need a bit of a nudge to get them there.  

Make it as simple as you can for your users to provide feedback. Send them a notification asking if they are enjoying your space and the app, prompting a response with a thumbs up or thumbs down.

If they provide a thumbs up, you can direct them to the App Store or your Google Business Profile for a rating. If they offer you a thumbs down, ask if they would be comfortable with providing more feedback as to how to improve the space.

Example:

Are you enjoying the space? 👍👎

Take 2 minutes to answer a quick survey. Your feedback will help us provide a better experience for all!

Tips for Effective Usage of Push Notifications for Coworking Spaces

To use push notifications in marketing your coworking space effectively, specific knowledge is required. Let’s have a look at some tips and best practices for making the most of the push notifications you’re sending. 

1. Personalize your messages

For the sake of simplicity, many operators are frequently persuaded to use one push notification campaign for all users. While broad announcements are a good place to start with your notifications, they are unlikely to draw a response if they’re too generic. 

You may need to go further to engage your members on a deeper level. In this case, strategic personalization can be extremely useful.  

The most straightforward way to do this is to call each member by their first name directly in the push notification. 

Alternatively, you could divide your members into groups based on their interests, bookings, occupation, or other interactions with your company and send push notifications to these specific groups only. 

Whatever you do, make sure you are personalizing the message as much as you can to drive overall engagement with your messages. Otherwise, they are likely to get lost in your user’s stream of new notifications. 

2. Use actionable language

Messages that evoke a sense of urgency are more likely to be noticed and prompt users to take a specific action. By informing users of promotions, limited-time deals, or events starting shortly, you might trigger their FOMO (fear of missing out) and be more likely to get them to take the desired action. 

The choice of language you use also significantly impacts how your push notification is received. Power words are a great addition to any copy. They are phrases that make the reader feel something, psychologically or emotionally. 

Examples include: 

• Don’t miss out
• Fast
• Greatest
• New
• Now
• Ultimate

3. Ask for feedback

Another valuable recommendation on our list of best practices for push notifications is to solicit feedback from your users regularly. To do this, ask them to assess your website or coworking space by completing a brief online survey regarding their interaction with you. 

You can ask them for feedback on the space in general, as well as how you’re using push notifications to ensure they’re comfortable with the amount of communication they’re receiving. 

Your members will see that their opinions matter, and the feedback given will help you improve your services and your use of push notifications in the future.

4. Use A/B testing

You may determine precisely what your audience responds to the most by using A/B testing. When A/B testing your push notifications, you can test two slightly different versions of a message and examine key performance metrics to see which notification performed best. 

Push notification performance metrics that are most frequently tracked include:

• Click rate: The frequency with which your subscribers notice your push notification and subsequently click on it
• View rate: The frequency with which a subscriber receives your push message and views it before it expires
• Goal conversions: You may define campaign goals and implement goal monitoring for your campaigns. The metric represents how often you achieve your goals

For example, you may be wondering whether members respond best to notifications with or without emojis. A/B test the same message, one version with emojis and one version without, and compare metrics to see which one performs best.

As you continue to discover what kind of content connects most with your customers over time, push notification A/B testing can help your app achieve improved engagement and retention rates. 

5. Continually optimize your notifications

Don’t think of push notifications as a one-time activity, and don’t assume that just because something worked once, it will continue to work in the future.

Think of push notifications as a constantly evolving experiment that you can continue to learn and iterate on. To determine what works best for your push notification campaigns, the best thing you can do is keep trying new things and testing along the way.

6. Consider the timing

Users from various demographics may be more likely to interact with your push notifications at specific times of the day. Consider what time you’re sending your push notifications out and how that affects your various users. 

As a best practice, you typically want to limit push notifications to working hours, sending no earlier than 8:00 am and no later than 6:00 pm to avoid being overly disruptive to your members. 

Final Word

Push notifications are a powerful tool that coworking space operators can use to interact with their members and alert them of upcoming events, special offers, and significant developments in the space. 

You may improve the efficacy of your push notifications and raise engagement rates by adhering to best practices, including audience segmentation, message personalization, and relevance and timeliness of the message.

According to Invesp, a single push message sent to new users during the first week of their app installation may increase retention rates by 71% over the course of two months.

You may keep your members updated, boost their engagement with the space, and improve their feeling of community. To ensure the success of your coworking space, take the time to create smart and customized push alerts.

About the Author:

Kate Parish is a chief marketing officer at Onilab. She has almost a decade of experience in the company and is still enthusiastic about every aspect of digital marketing. Kate sees the marketing mission in ensuring sustainable business growth. For this purpose, she helps companies and readers create efficient campaigns, solve common problems, and enhance crucial website metrics, such as conversions, bounce rates, and others.