"The benefit of notifications for your mobile app is absolutely the fact that you are keeping in touch with your audience," said Eric Reinert, Director of Digital Media for WFMZ-TV. "You are actively asking them to engage with you."
Engagement from the station's mobile apps, 69News and 69News Traffic, continues to more than double as WFMZ-TV grows their audience and increases push notifications. The two BLOX mobile apps cover the greater Lehigh Valley area, Philadelphia, the Pocono Mountains, and parts of New Jersey.
"Every time your app sends a notification you're telling them: 'Hey take a look at this, this is something important we think you should know,'" Reinert added.
What to send and when to send it
One of Reinert's goals for WFMZ-TV's mobile apps is that they become an integral part of their user's lives. "My general manager told me years ago that push notifications should guide our users through their day. It's about figuring out the right balance."
For the newsroom staff, determining the types of notifications, and how often to send, took a bit of trial and error. "Notifications definitely increase engagement and opportunities for people to sample our site," Reinert said. "But you toe that line between getting someone to look at your app so you get pageviews and traffic, versus them getting tired of it and turning notifications off."
WFMZ-TV built their own traffic center to supply information for their website and broadcasts, along with the local area radio stations and other organizations. When a member of the traffic management team puts an incident into the database, it pushes out an alert through the traffic app using the BLOX Digital API. "Anyone who has the traffic app notifications enabled gets local traffic alerts automatically."
Eric Reinert, Director of Digital Media at WFMZ-TV in Allentown, PA, joins the show for a conversation about the ever-changing technologies we…
What makes a good notification alert
Reinert strives to help his team understand that alerts, as he likes to call them, are not just for breaking news. "Notifications are for alerting people to something—not exclusively 'take cover' emergencies. So it's the weather, it's news, it's our videos or live streams, occasionally a big sports score. Things like that, if it's important."
The newsroom staff also uses push notifications to promote special live programming and press conferences. Because some programs are broadcast on-air, and some stream on WFMZ.com, notifications can be used to direct viewers to the right place.
"Ten to fifteen minutes before, we'll send out a push notification that reminds viewers to tune in. We've also used it for those middle of the afternoon news conferences: 'State police are having a news conference at 2:15, we're carrying it live. Click here.'"
Localize it and make it personal
"Our audience could choose to download an app from New York, the Harrisburg market, or a national news outlet. But when one of our notifications goes out, they know it's from 69News and it means something. It's an important distinction, especially when you have competition in your area."
Due to WFMZ-TV's coverage area, the team also balances two distinct geographical regions. "Someday we'll get them together, and we'll meet in the middle. But we have to be careful. Too many alerts for the Lehigh valley area, the people in Berks county are going to turn it off and vice versa. It's a challenge to get that just right."
Reinert's team added national alerts from the Lee Digital Content Center in August of 2021. This frees up his local editors who may be away from the news desk or focusing more on local stories. "We were looking for an automated function for things of national importance. But anything you can do to localize it and make it personal is important. All our alerts have our icon and the station logo so people see that."
Start out slowly, but get started
Reinert's advice for new BLOX mobile apps: "Don't hesitate to use notifications! From our perspective, it seems intuitive. If you have an app, why not let people know what content and features you have available? Let them know of those one-off events that are coming up."
As a broadcast news organization, Reinert says WFMZ-TV tends to do the "breaking news" alerts more often. For a magazine, newspaper, or a print product that has a broader scope of material, he recommends thinking creatively for notifications. "On the first day of fishing season, if you've got a guide to where the fishing holes are, you could do a notification for something like that."
The other piece of advice Reinert has: "Step into app notifications slowly. It's important to avoid middle of the night alerts, gauge the response your notifications get, and learn what your particular audience is accustomed to. Break into it gently, and send notifications purposefully."
"I can't imagine a world where our app is silent and we just rely on people to go look," Reinert said. "I can't imagine that because we're trying to help people along and tell them about things."
