Election Night Push Done Right, the ABC News Way

When something big happens, news brands need a way to let their audiences know. Back in the day, that may have meant kids hawking papers on the nearest street corner, but the rise of modern technology has made it possible for news organizations to use push notifications to get breaking news alerts into the hands of their users in milliseconds.

Unfortunately, misuse of this powerful engagement channel has led lots of users to disable push, making it harder for news brands to reach their audience with breaking news alerts in real time. To get the full benefit of this channel and to get important new alerts in front of your audience, it’s important to take a proactive approach. One brand doing it right? ABC News.

ABC New’s Ryan Cardone speaking about their election night push strategy

In the run-up to election day 2016, ABC News used an an in-app preference center to allow users who were interested in in-depth coverage of political news to sign up for more frequent messaging and took advantage of location-based personalization to target notifications about local Congressional races to individuals based on their location and previous engagement. That made it possible to use push notifications in a nuanced, thoughtful manner, while ensuring that each member of their audience received the election-related updates that mattered to them as individuals.

Looking to learn more about push notifications and how to make the most of them in your customer engagement efforts? Check out our piece on 13 push notifications dos and don’ts for every marketer to know.