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App Everywhere Mobile Apps Push Notifications Radio

Mobile Apps Reach Everywhere

The most difficult challenge for radio stations is to be able to reach their listeners’ whenever and wherever they are. It can be even more difficult when stations are in smaller communities where signals can be tricky. But, no need to worry, we have the solution that can help your radio station achieve its optimal coverage.
A mobile app is the ultimate tool to put your station in the palm of your listeners’ hands on their smartphone. Cell signals can reach where your broadcast doesn’t reach. Having a mobile app for your radio station will allow you to engage with your listeners wherever they are.
With the world becoming mobile obsessed, mobile apps allow you to connect with your community.
Here’s how:

  • Local news alerts
  • Local sport score alerts
  • Weather alerts
  • Contests
  • Program alerts
  • Coupons and discounts

Push notifications functionality to reach your audience directly anytime.
Our V4 and custom mobile app solutions will create the best possible solution for your radio station, no matter what your location is. From big city to country roads – we can create a successful mobile app that your listeners can tune in whenever and wherever they are!
Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin to learn more about how to take your radio station mobile! sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030

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Push Notifications

Push Messaging: After you hit send

Once you have created the push messages and sent them out, it is important to remember that the process doesn’t stop there! There are some key elements you want to track to help you create more effective push notifications in the future.

Here are the key metrics to track:

 
Opt-ins
Watch for the changes in this number. If it goes down, that’s a warning sign. This means you are doing something wrong, which is probably a problem of frequency and relevance. Therefore, you will want to change up the times you send your notifications and create topics for people to opt-in to.
 
Delivery Rate
The sent and delivered totals should be close to equal. If not, this could be issues with the message length, link or image on the message.
 
Clicks
See how many people truly engaged with the message. This is the statistic that will matter the most to you when you are tracking these messages. This allows you to see if you got the right number of clicks to your push message to lead your mobile app to success.
 
By tracking all three of these key metrics it will show you what you need to improve to engage your audiences. By having strong calls to action, it will truly help all of these three metrics be on track. Messages that are purely information are fine, but it’s hard to tell if you message lands at all. Therefore, overtime you need to look for trends from message to message.
Here’s some questions to consider overtime:

  • Are your messages too long?
  • Are the messages opened at a certain time of the day?
  • Does a shorter message open more rather than a longer one?

These are the kinds of things you want to look at! The object is to continually improve your messages to improve your results! And remember it does take time to nail this down!
Check out our webinar on Push Messaging 101 and contact Sari Zalesin to learn more about our push messaging solution!

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Push Notifications Radio

Event Announcement: Catholic Media Conference

We are excited to announce that we will be attending and presenting at the Catholic Media Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida June 18th – 21st. The Catholic Media Conference is one of the top religious radio conferences of the year… you won’t want to miss it!
This Catholic Media Conference offers: Networking with the leading Catholic media professionals, hear from national and international speakers, unite as one in faith, as well as a great tropical destination for you to have fun in the sun!
Along with our excitement of the attending the event, we are excited that our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin will be giving a presentation as well as providing breakfast to the attendees on Wednesday, June 18th from 8:00am – 9:30am! 
Here’s what you’ll learn:

  • Mobile apps in the religious radio industry
  • Revenue and underwriting opportunities
  • Push Notifications
  • Smart Speakers
  • Connected Car

This presentation will not only give you insight on how to reach and engage with your listeners on a daily basis, but Sari will also be providing you with details on what has worked in the past for religious radio stations and how they have success with their mobile app, push notifications and smart speakers.
Mobile is the #1 platform in the world and it’s the key element for you to take your listener engagement to the next level. We have limited spots for our presentation, please contact us today to reserve your spot!
If you are unable to make it to our presentation, we would like to schedule a FREE one-on-one meeting with you!
Contact us: erin@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030

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App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

Push Messaging: Before you hit send

Push messages can be one of the most beneficial elements to your mobile app, but you need to make sure you are creating and checking them correctly! Remember, you are interrupting someone with your message, so you need to make sure that you aren’t making any mistakes.
Here are a few common mistakes we have found in push messages that you should double check and avoid.

Sending too many messages

The main thing to remember, don’t get carried away and start sending too many messages – you don’t want to spam your users, this will push them away.

Messages with typos

Remember to proof read your messages! Make sure it is correct, the details are accurate and there aren’t any typos. It won’t enhance your user’s feelings about the brand or the message.

Vague call to action

Make sure your call to action is clear and compelling. A vague call to action is not going to get the click that you are hoping for.

Message isn’t relevant to the people you are sending it to

Make sure your message is relevant to your audience, this is very important in order to get the successful click rate. One thing we offer is creation of topics. We can create topics that your users can decide what type of messages they would like to opt-in to, therefore, you will be able to reach the right people for the right reasons. This is an important technique because when people get messages that are not relevant to them, your push messages will not be successful.
It is important to keep all four of these mistakes in mind when you are creating your push messages, in order to have that successful click rate! Check out our Push Messaging 101 Webinar for more information and contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin to learn more about our push messaging solution!

Categories
App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

Push Messaging: 4 Ingredients of a Good Push Message

As we have covered before, push messages are one of the key elements to your mobile app to engage your listeners and users. However, there’s a technique behind push messages that help you create the most successful messages to send your listeners and users.

Here are the 4 ingredients of a good push notification:
  1. Relevance

Make it meaningful and personal. Make sure the message is import to your audience and not just to you. The topic must be relevant, actionable and timely to your listeners. Sending a lot of messages will reduce the impact, so you really got to nail down what your listeners what to know.

  1. Brevity

You have a very small space and people have very small attention spans, so this point cannot be over emphasized. Push messages are really consumed at a glance. The user probably only has a few moments when looking at this message, so you need to be quick and get straight to the point. Just because you have a total of 140 characters, doesn’t mean you have to use them. We have seen more successful push notifications with characters between 20 and 90!
Think more like a tweet than a Facebook post!

  1. Timeliness

When you schedule your message, it really matters! There is actually an optimal time to send your messages. It will be different from brand to brand, and station to station but you can look at your statistics of your push messaging and see when you get the most responses. It is important to keep track of this and overtime you can fine tune your strategy to get the most engagement possible with your audience.
As what we found so far, the most engaging time tends to be around lunchtime, between 12pm – 2pm!

  1. Call to Action

This really has to be an important element of how you use your messages. The whole point of sending these messages is getting your audience to do something. So, make sure you are clear on what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do it. Once your user does click on your message make sure your link has a clear connection to the message. In other words, don’t make your users click around your app trying to figure out where they need to go for that specific notification. Your message should flow naturally and clearly! Push messages are a strategy to make your listeners life easier and more engaged, don’t make it difficult!
By using those 4 ingredients you will create successful push messages to engage your audience. Check out our Push Messaging 101 Webinar and contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin for more information regarding push messages! sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030

Categories
App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

6 Key Signs Your Company Needs a Mobile App

With the world becoming more mobile every day, it is important to stay ahead of your competition. With more and more of us spending most of our days glued to our smartphones, a mobile app may be the best way to reach your target market.
You may not know how to dive into a mobile app or may not know why a mobile app would be useful for their company, but there are unlimited problems that mobile apps can solve, and they can be created to be the perfect fit to your company’s needs. Also, companies can learn a thing or two on how they can step up their branding and customer relations.

Here are some signs your company needs a mobile app:
  • Your competitors have an app 

It is important that you stave above your competition and with technology today, most companies will be investing in and creating their very own mobile app to be able to reach their customers no matter where they are. Investing in designing your company’s application and you will know you have the app that perfectly reflects your brand and ideals.

  • Your site is not doing well on search

Ranking high on the Google index often equates to brand visibility. If your website has not been ranking well, you may be close to becoming obsolete. With your very own application, you can become more noticeable in the public eye, especially when you offer everything your customer could ever want.

  • You don’t have customer or public engagement 

With a user-friendly application, you can send out push notifications which provide customers developments in your business. By keeping your customers and the public in the loop, you are creating a variety of engagement among the community.

  • Build brand recognition

Companies are always looking for a way to expand their brands, you want to be able to create an effective program and solution that is up to date with today’s technology and generations. Aside that point, you want a program that can reflect the values of ideals of your organization. By putting out a mobile app, you can provide whatever features you decide that will certainly get your customers to know your brand.

  • Gain customer insight 

Mobile apps have the power to let business owners know the patterns, performance, and preferences. Through the features put forward in the program, developers can monitor and track the behaviors of the users. This knowledge allows your company to fine tune your services according to your consumer’s tastes.

  • Stand out from the crowd

Not only will having a mobile app create a competitive edge in the industry, but it will also have the public in aw about the way you approach your venture.
Working with a reliable and highly advanced local app developers and designers is well worth your investment. If you aren’t offering a mobile app to the public, seeing the wealth of advantages these companies bring might be worth considering.
We would love to talk to you about mobile strategy and help you take your company mobile. Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin at sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030.

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App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

Push Messaging: How they work and how to use them

Push messaging, also known as push notifications are one of the strongest tools to engage listeners.
Before we get into the “hows” of push messages, let’s cover what a push message is exactly. Push messages are messages from an app publisher that are “pushed” directly to the user’s notification tray on their mobile device. Therefore, the notification pushes them to open up your app and engage.
But, before you just start sending out a million messages to your listeners, it is important to know how they work and exactly how to use them.

How Push Messages Work:

When a listener clicks on your push notification message they’ll land directly in your app or web page. You can set up your notification to either take your listeners to your home page or send them to a specific page that relates to the push message.
Push messaging works for three reasons:

  1. Urgency
  2. Timeliness
  3. Call to action

All three of these elements create engagement with your app and your listeners. Check out our webinar Push Notifications 101 to learn more.

How to Use Push Messages:

It is important to know your listeners and to know what they would like to receive from you through push notifications. Some ways to use push messages include:

  • Breaking News Alerts
  • Event Reminders
  • Program Alerts
  • Weather Updates
  • Contests
  • Coupons and Discounts

These are just a few of the common push messages that have seen successful open rates. These types of messages will pull in your listeners to your app and keep them engaged and excited for future events and reminders. Check out our webinar Push Notifications 101 to learn more.
Push messages are the tools that will help take your mobile app to the next level and we’d love to help you do it with our push notification solution. Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030

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App Everywhere Mobile Apps Push Notifications

Another Step Towards A Fully Mobile World

As you may know, today’s world is becoming more mobile each and every day. This could be scary for some people but, it is a huge benefit for most and for business efficiency.
What is the big new invention that is getting people talking?!
Apple recently announced their new credit card, the Apple Card! This credit card really kicks it up when we are talking about turning our world truly mobile. As Apple says, “There’s never been a card this smart.” Apple Card lives on your iPhone and makes your life easier. Some of the hardest and most annoying tasks you had to do in the past are now done in the palm of your hand with just a click of a button.

Here are some of features the Apple Card has:

 
Tracking and Reporting:
This Apple Card has one of the easiest tracking systems to keep you updated and alert to what you are spending, when you are spending and where you are spending.
The Apple Card Wallet app on your iPhone will allow you to see weekly summaries and monthly summaries. There is no need for you to have to have separate banking apps or websites, it is all totaled and laid out for you in your mobile apple wallet that you can decided if you would like weekly or monthly reports.
And if you didn’t think that was easy enough… it gets even easier! Apple Card makes it easy to spot trends in your spending, so you can decide if you need or want to change those trends.
 
Maps:
Have you ever gone back to your bank statement and wondered, wait, where was this $50 charge from? Well, you don’t have to worry anymore… Apple Card pin points the exact address of the charge that gives you the name of the store, restaurant, building, etc and locates it the map for you!
 
Daily Cash:
Apple Card has created one of the easiest systems for cash back, and as they say, “Daily Cash that’s even easier to spend than cash”
No matter where you are using you Apple Card it gives you Apple Cash on every single purchase you make and goes into your Apple Cash card in your Wallet app, and you can just spend that cash with just a tap.
 
Payments Made Simple:
Well, we all know the worst thing about having credit cards… the payments. But, Apple Card has made payments a little less stressful. On your mobile Apple Card Wallet app, it clearly shows how to save on interest. Apple Card helps you by keeping track of your payments and also gives you suggestions of when you should pay them off. It also will notify you when your payments are due. No more stress of rushing to meet your payment deadline!
These are just a few features of the Apple Card that can make your life more efficient and less stressful through mobile. With mobile becoming the most popular and efficient tool it is helpful to stay on top of all the latest trends to help keep your business performing efficiently!
We would love to talk to you about your mobile strategy to help you take your company to the next level in the mobile world. Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin. sari@jacapp.scom or 248-353-9030

Categories
Alexa Amazon Echo App Everywhere B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications Smart Home Voice Commands

3 Reasons Why Radio Stations Should Have an Alexa Skill

Smart speakers give radio the chance to bring back in-home listening. Listeners can now engage with their favorite radio stations by just using their voice to ask Alexa to play their favorite radio station in their bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, etc.

Here are 3 reasons why radio stations should have an Alexa skill:

 
1. Engage your listeners by bringing back listening to your home
Alexa skills are giving your listeners the opportunity to listen to their favorite radio stations in their home! One key trend to keep in mind is that consumers are forming new habits and radio broadcasters have an opportunity to benefit from the changes in technology, voice, and interactive audio devices. Consumers today ask their Alexa device what the weather is like, to set a timer, or make a grocery list. They also want to listen to music while cleaning their house, cooking, relaxing, hanging out with friends… and now they have the chance to  just ask Alexa!
2. Control the Listener Experience 
Many radio streams are available today on Alexa through TuneIn. So, one may ask, “Why do I need an Alexa skill if I’m already on Alexa?” There are so many stations on TuneIn that many have the same name and you cannot be sure listeners will find your stream. Additionally, with TuneIn there is no opportunity to offer on-demand listening to your shows or your podcasts.
Having your own Alexa skill allows you to showcase your station’s personality right up front. It allows you to truly connect with your listeners and control their experience by making sure they are tuning in to your radio station.
3. Claim your name
When dealing with Amazon Alexa, you will ask for the radio station by name and Alexa needs to know the right phrase or “invocation”. Searching for content by voice doesn’t let you show the top ten search results, instead if offers only the top search result. So you have to get it right!
When you are thinking about getting an Alexa skill for your radio station, keep in mind the invocation names of the voice web are assigned on a first come first serve basis.
UX
 
Here’s a little fun fact to wrap it up…Some stations are finding that as much as 25% of their streaming is on smart speakers!
Smart speakers are truly taking over. They help build your audience, engage your audience, and connect with your listeners now more than ever.
We would love to talk mobile strategy and Alexa skills with you to help engage your audience. Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin. sari@jacapps.com or 248-353-9030

Categories
B2B Apps Mobile Apps Push Notifications

Push Notifications 101: Webinar Recap

Recently, jācapps COO Bob Kernen presented a webinar about push notification and how  they create powerful engagement with radio listeners.  Like any aspect of a mobile app, function needs to support a larger strategy.  Push notifications are exactly that – they empower a radio station to connect directly with the audience to drive engagement as well as listening.  They are simple and effective, and every mobile app should include them in their app.
Throughout this webinar Kernen talks about the basics of push notifications, best practices, common mistakes and our effective push notifications solution.

Here are some of the key findings you’ll hear on the webinar:

 
Why push:

  • They increase engagement
  • They increase ratings
  • They increase revenue

Great uses of  push notifications:

  • Breaking news
  • Event reminders
  • Program alerts
  • Weather updates
  • Contests
  • Coupons and discounts

How push notifications work:

  • When a listener clicks on your push notification message they’ll be sent directly to your app or web page for more information, to register for a contest, or to engage with some content, like a podcast or video.
  • Push messages are also effective alerting the audience to something coming up on the air (a special guest, a contest, or even a special song) or an event or concert that is about to start.

Why push notifications work:

  • They appear on the most important device a listener can have (and sleep with) – their smartphone
  • Urgency
  • Timeliness
  • Call to action


The four crucial elements to developing a good push messaging strategy:

  1. Relevance
  2. Brevity
  3. Timeliness
  4. Call to action

Having these four key ingredients will help stations create the most effective and successful push message to radio listeners. Download our webinar to see how each of the ingredients are broken down further to be sure the perfect message is created.
One thing to remember is that you still need to do a little maintenance with your push notifications after you hit “send!” This will help you track and create the best push notifications possible. This deals with the analytics of push notifications. As Kernen states “The objective is to continually improve your messages to improve your results…and it does take time”
One last thing to touch on…our team has built a push notifications solution that truly fits the radio and media industry, here’s why:

  • Affordability
  • Simple and easy-to-use
  • Use topics to target just the right listeners
  • Schedule messages in advance
  • Analytics package.

We’d love to help you take your mobile app to the next level with our push notification solution! Contact our Director of Business Development, Sari Zalesin sari@jacapps.com 248-353-9030
Don’t forget to check out Push Notifications 101 Webinar to get the full details on our affordable, easy-to-use push notifications solution!