A CRMs Guide to Adding Rich Media to your Push Notifications

Having rich media in push notifications is an effective way to entice players of your game to tap in and start playing. Rich media means adding any images or videos to a push, allowing you to stand out from other notifications trying to grab attention on a daily basis (and there certainly is no shortage!). But rich media is not something to add randomly - it’s a unique feature that has a lot of qualities and advantages. Today, we’ll dive into what those are and talk a bit about why you may want to consider using them.

Teak lets you easily add rich media to pushes through our dashboard by providing parameters and specs upfront, allowing you to focus on the creative side of things. You can include images, GIFs, or videos, all of which will live on our server so you don’t have to worry about asset hosting. You can even A/B test different sizes or variations of assets through our testing feature.

Be strategic about your audience ⚖️

Of course, all of this first requires some ideation around why you would send a rich push and how best to do it. At Teak, we see the most cost effective uses of rich pushes are for two cycles of the Player Lifecycle: New and Core. We say cost effective because rich pushes require some kind of imagery asset, which means more time, planning and money on your end to create - you want to make sure you’re getting the most out of that work.

For New Players, a rich push can be especially useful as an onboarding push. Welcome them to the game with imagery highlighting a unique aspect of your game while attaching a reward. As we said above, there is increased cost here, but you likely just spent a good amount of budget to acquire the player. For this reason, a bit of additional upfront cost to get a permanent increase to your new player retention is definitely worth it. For Core Players, focus on highlighting new game content or features. Rich pushes also allow you to elevate your usual Core reward pushes through fun imagery.

For every use case, the usual push notification best practices apply: keep it simple, attach a reward, and don’t beg.

However, we’d recommend a few other parameters specifically when it comes to rich pushes to layer on top of the general push advice:

• Your only text should be a CTA (Call To Action) - be direct and know what you’re asking them to do
• Keep it even simpler than you normally would. Use less characters and get right to the reward or point. 

Another way we would recommend using a rich push is to gamify a notification in a way that encourages tapping through. For example, you could create an image that looks like a branded button and attach that to a push. Then, ask a question through that push that encourages players to tap. You could also create an image that looks like a gift or present opening, and tell people to tap to “open” the gift, unlocking free coins in your game.

iOS vs Android 🍎🤖

Finally, you should know that iOS and Android have different rich push capabilities. This is a huge factor for these types of push notifications and one we need to dive into a bit further.

On iOS, a rich push is always an expanded view; this means the player can press and hold on the notification to see a larger image or video. The notification itself has a thumbnail image on the right hand side.

Left: An iOS rich push with a thumbnail. / Right: iOS expanded view.
Most players will only see the small version, so make sure it’s legible!

On Android, a rich push shows up a few different ways:

• A banner image: the entire notification is an image with text optionally overlayed
• What we call “iOS Style”: the notification looks like the iOS notification with a thumbnail, and the player can optionally expand it to the Android expanded view.
• An optional expanded view: the player can view a “larger” notification image in addition to their standard notification display.

Android “iOS Style” notification with a thumbnail.

Our Recommendations 👇

At Teak, we’ve learned a few things about the differences in these pushes and how to best use them. Here are a few pieces of advice we’d recommend following:

• Most people won’t expand an image in a notification, and that’s okay because our primary goal is for them to launch the game, not expand an image. Just make sure that the thumbnail always works on its own. 
• If you do want them to expand the image, directly ask them to through a CTA. For example, you could send a push that says something like “Press and hold for your reward”, revealing an image that shows how many coins they’ll get if they tap into the game.
• Rich push is generally more effective on Android, especially the “banner image” type. However, the “iOS Style” is a good middle ground where you can reuse one art asset while still mixing up the text so your notifications don’t feel too repetitive. This is especially helpful if you can’t get a lot of art assets.

Overall, rich push notifications are ideal for making pushes stand out, welcoming new players, and encouraging people to tap through. However like any push notification, they should be used sparingly and have strategy behind them. Attaching an image just for the sake of it won’t increase engagement and may even start to frustrate players. Think of them as exciting once in a while tactics to leverage in special occasions. 

Do you have specific questions about rich push notifications? Things you’d like to see us talk about more? Let us know!

Until next time,
Erica + Teak team