Last week we ran a test of a new Facebook Notifications feature we're working on for JFBConnect, the social network integration extension for Joomla. The test was a resounding success with a 28% engagement rate, and now we'd like to have your feedback on it, how you'd want to use it, and, in general, let us know what you think.
With Facebook App Notifications, you can send a custom message with a link to any page on your site, to any Facebook user that's previously engaged with your website. We used our test to send an App Notification to all users on our site to let them know about the new JFBConnect v5.1 release, and it showed up in each user's Facebook Notification area like the image below:
For our first notification test, we had an astounding 28% click-through rate over the first 2 days. That's a higher rate than most newsletter campaigns and most other forms of re-engagement with users. Best of all, Facebook does not charge to use the notification service so it's completely free to use.
According to Facebook, notifications are meant to be used to "communicate important events, invites from friends or actions people need to take". In our test case, we were communicating "an important event" (the release of a great new version of JFBConnect) to all of our users.
However, notifications open up a huge new avenue of abilities to communicate events to your users. Instead of emails for smaller events like new forum posts, why not notify relevant users with an App notifications. Some possible examples:
App Notifications are coming to JFBConnect later this year and we want to know how you'd use them. At first, and with our test, they'd only be available to send to all users of your site (like in our test above). With time, and feedback, we want to know the best way that our users would want to use this great new engagement feature.
With your feedback, we'll know the best way to implement Notifications from the start so that it best leverages what you're looking for.
Let us know in the comments below how you'd like to use App Notifications. Now's your chance to shape one of our great new upcoming features.
