The Best Alternative to OneSignal

Email is one of the most important ways to continue to connect with and bring users back to your site after they’ve left. That is how most companies make announcements to draw users back in. Though still the primary way most are used to, email is losing effectivity. An open rate of just 10-15% for an update email and even fewer click throughs is the norm and actually pretty “good”. That’s a disappointing amount of work for not too great of a result. Less than 10% of the users you’ve managed to get contact information from ever see your updates or make it back to your site after leaving!

Push notifications are offering a more effective, direct way to engage with users and bring them back to your site. OneSignal is a push notification service that is fairly popular choice for reaching users off your site. However, Beamer is more effective, with much more functionality than OneSignal that is even better for boosting engagement on your site:

Get users engaged while on your site with Beamer, the best alternative to OneSignal:

Beamer is an intuitive newsfeed you can install on your website or app that is a central place to make announcements to users. What’s great is that no matter whether they’re new users or returning users, they can explore all of your updates in one place. With OneSignal, just the users that have visited your site and opted in ever get your push notifications. Even then, they are sent once and then disappear. If they didn’t click them, that’s it. Beamer is a permanent, rolling changelog that any user, brand new or returning, can easily find and explore.

Beamer blends right into your user interface. All users have to do is click the “What’s new” tab on the navigation or an icon in your interface and a sidebar stream discreetly opens no matter what page they’re on. With OneSignal, once people click on an update, it goes to your site with little explanation or further information. There is no place to see all updates and catch up on all updates. You’re missing a huge audience and opportunity to draw users back in with your improvements and news.

Create visual and engaging updates, not just short notifications, with the best alternative to OneSignal.

Beamer updates are more visual and engaging that just a quick push notification. You can add screenshots, photos, videos, GIFs, and CTAs to encourage engagement. You can add a ton more information and instruction on how to use new features or what changes you’ve made with an update rather than hope users figure it out after clicking your push notification. The feed is interactive and can be scrolled through on any page without leaving that page so users can explore and click through multiple updates while never leaving the page they’re on.

Create push notifications for all of your Beamer updates.

You can even create push notifications for your Beamer updates so you do draw users back to your site even when they’re not on it just like OneSignal. You don’t lose this functionality with Beamer, you just gain more! Every time you create a Beamer update, you can send an automatically generated push notification that matches your update. Users that have opted in will get your push notifications no matter where they are online and be drawn back to your site. Once clicked, it will bring them to the site and open up the Beamer feed where you can display your full update, more information, photos, CTAs, etc to encourage immediate engagement. It’s more effective than dead-end push notifications like with OneSignal.

Get specific data on how users feel about your updates and news.

Unlike basic push notifications, users can actually interact and leave feedback on Beamer updates because they are permanent. The Beamer feed is intuitive like a Facebook feed. Users can leave comments and “reactions” just like Facebook. You get direct and immediate feedback on how users feel about your updates and changes without having to decode open and click through rates which could have to do with a ton of other factors. You don’t have to try to guess how users feel about your news or ask  for feedback that is rarely answered.You can also comment back to create two way conversation between you and your customer base. Behind the scenes, Beamer Analytics display a ton more useful data on how users interact with your site your team can take advantage of including location, language, and personal data.

Sync your Beamer updates across all social platforms.

With Beamer, you can simply the process for notifying users of your updates, new features, news, etc across all social platforms and even email by taking advantage of integrations like Zapier. With Zapier, you can create “zaps” to link Beamer with Facebook, Twitter, email management tools like MailChimp. Whenever you post an update to Beamer, it is automatically sent out across all your social platforms and via email even to simplify the amount of work you need to do to keep users updated! So you only ever need to update Beamer on your site.

For a more effective way of reaching users, boosting engagement, and collecting insightful data, try Beamer free on your site or in your app with a simple install.