Not so long ago, PropellerAds launched a new super-cool feature for exceptional user engagement – Push Notifications Badges. If you have already seen this beauty in your PropellerAds account, you must be wondering why you need it and how to make the most of it. Well, we are right here to answer these questions and give you some practical advice. 

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Main things first: Why do you need Badges? 

Before we get to the instructions, let’s discuss the main reasons why you need Badges and ways they can make your ads more efficient. So, here we go:

Impressive CTR boost

Compared to regular creatives, Push notifications spiced with Badges can increase your CTR from 10% up to 200% and even higher.

Low User Activity cohort comes to life

One of the best things we noticed about Badges is that they work perfectly with the Low User Activity cohort – “old” visitors start clicking and converting more eagerly. Why is this the best part? Well, because the Low User activity cohort is the biggest and the cheapest one! You pay less and get more. 

Significantly more traffic

High CTR is a straight path to more traffic, since our system considers well-performing campaigns as interesting for users and therefore – delivers more traffic to them. This way, you beat the competition and get more traffic without extra expenses. 

So, this means that you can improve your ads performance in just a couple of clicks – no additional effort or investments needed. If this sounds interesting to you, then stay tuned, and let’s find out more about PropellerAds Badges and their capacities! 

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How to test Badges properly? 

Okay, the aim of your test is simple: you need to find out which of them can bring you the highest CTR. And we have invented a working scheme for your testing. To get the most objective results, you should create: 

One campaign with eight same-like creatives, where two creatives don’t have any badges and six have different badges relevant to your offer. Make your tests on the CPA Goal or CPC model. 

At this point, we rush to suggest the best badges for different verticals. According to our inner tests, these combinations work the best: 

• Finance: Voice, Touch, Cup, Monetization, Diamond, Cart, Swipe;
• Dating: Notification, QR, Touch, Bounce, Announcement, Fingerprint, Like;
• iGaming: Cup, Bounce, Touch, Swipe; 
• Utilities: Config, History, Swipe, Fingerprint, Bounce;
• eCommerce: Cash, Verified, Cart, Shop.

Now let’s see the example of creatives with Badges. Here is the one for Utilities with a thematic Config Badge:

And here is the Dating creative, plus – Notification Badge:

And here is how an eCommerce ad with a Cart Badge might look like:

You need at least two days of testing to see which Badge suits your offer. After that period, you should go to your Statistics and check the campaign by creatives to see which ones brought you more conversions and higher CTR.

When you figure out which Badges work the best, you can start launching more campaigns with them. If you want to get larger volumes, you can use the CPM or CPC model. 

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Testing one creative with different Badges

We have launched a couple of tests to show you how Badges perform in practice. So, we took the Sweepstakes offer and tested it with six different Badges and launched two no-Badge campaigns. Take a look at the results:

Badge name	Impressions	Clicks	Conversions	CTR
Announcement	1 397 313	2 391	23	0.171
Cup	400 962	671	4	0.167
Verified	272 391	411	2	0.151
Touch	262 806	441	2	0.168
No-Badge 1	271 647	431	2	0.159
No-Badge 2	90 161	167	0	0.185
Shop	90 956	157	0	0.173
Monetization	99 298	141	0	0.142

As you can see from the data, Announcement, Cup, Touch, and Verified Badges performed great in terms of Impressions and Clicks compared to other Badges and creatives without them. Namely, the Announcement Badge brought the highest numbers by all indicators. 

You can use our experience as an example, but we also recommend you to test your own creatives with Badges (and without) to see which one is perfect for your particular offer. 

And here are the creatives used.

The Finance banner and the Announcement Badge, the first one in our table:

And here is the Cup Badge:

A verified badge was used with this banner:

The Touch Badge:

And the No-Badge variant:

And here is how a push notification with a Badge appeared on the website: 

The text on the banners is translated as: “Earn money with Crypto! One lady from the {city} makes 2 735 euros per day”. It is encouraging + refers to the real-life experience of a person. And, yes, when you mention the target city in brackets – it potentially increases users interest.

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Testing User Activity Groups

Now when we know which Badge works best with our creative, let’s check User Activity Groups. To find the optimal one, you should launch absolutely same-like campaigns for each Group at once and make an A/B test to find out the difference. So, yes, you need three campaigns – for High, Medium and Low Activity Groups separately.  

Again, to get accurate results, you should devote at least 1-2 days to testing. With received information at hand, you can push more traffic to the Activity Group that performed best. CPC and CPM are most preferable here, but CPA Goal is also suitable. 

For a test, we took a Dating offer for GB and tested three identical campaigns for various User Activity Groups. Let’s check the statistics: 

User Activity Group	Impressions	Clicks	Conversions	CPC	CTR
Medium	3 100 228	7 146	27	0.033	0.23
Low	1 507 720	6 005	21	0.031	0.398
High	381 430	2 999	17	0.049	0.786

In general, Badges are efficient for all User Activity Groups – each received a great amount of impressions, clicks, and conversions. The Medium Group showed outstanding results. For this Group, CPC is much less than the High Group has and a bit more than the Low one has, which is rather cost-effective.    

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Why should you focus on Low and Medium User Activity Groups?

Considering the results, it really makes sense to create more CPC or CPM campaigns for the Medium Group and receive more relevant and cheap conversions. Working with the Low cohort also makes sense here – numbers show that it brings great results as for the less active audience segment. And, as you know, Low cohort can boast of the cheapest traffic of all. 

We used to conduct numerous tests and realized that badges have a huge potential to increase your CTR, which is especially the case for Low and Medium Groups. Why does it happen?

Simply, because users from these cohorts have already seen the ads for a long time, so they got some kind of banner blindness. Badges refresh Push notifications and make them look more appealing. As a result, you get more user engagement, clicks, and conversions for a low price! 

But we don’t want you to take our words for granted! Instead, we have more statistics to show. This one was a Finance offer for DE:

User Activity Group	Impressions	Clicks	Conversions	CPC	CTR
Low	924 114	1 879	7	0.041	0.203
Medium	1 397 169	1 777	3	0.019	0.127
High	150 653	321	2	0.060	0.213

As we can see from the results, Badges brought the Low Activity Group to life – it has even a higher CTR than the Medium Group. Plus, it also has more conversions than any other cohort and all of this comes with a very low CPC! Pay less and get more – here is what you get with Badges and fewer active users!

And if you need more examples, we do have them! Here is the same test for a Sweepstakes offer:

User Activity Group	Impressions	Clicks	Conversions	CPC	CTR
Low	1 125 480	2 805	21	0.09	0.249
Medium	1 582 503	1 626	8	0.059	0.103
High	153 134	352	4	0.136	0.23

So, as we can see from statistics, Badges have a huge potential to refresh your creatives in just one click and evoke a new sparkle of users interest. As a result – minimal investments and more money!

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Let’s sum up

• You should test different Badges for one offer

You need to test a number of relevant Badges to find the best-performing one. Our tests show that some Badges bring more conversions than others, which means that your task is to pick the most successful option.

• Creatives with Badges show better CTR 

It’s true! Considering all of our tests and examples above, creatives with Badges always bring higher CTR than those without. 

• Specific Badges perform great for particular verticals 

As the tests show, you should choose Badges regarding your vertical. Some good combinations are: Finance + Voice, Touch, Cup; Dating + Notification, QR, Touch; iGaming + Cup, Bounce, Swipe, etc. Find a full list in one of the sections above.  

• Badges work efficiently with the Low Activity Group of users

It really makes sense to work with the Low Activity Group – Badges boost CTR and make creatives look new and fresh. This way, you pay less for traffic and get more impressions, clicks, and conversions. We find it a really profitable strategy. 

Now you saw how exactly Badges work, learned the best practices, and got some real examples. So what are you waiting for? Jump to your PropellerAds account now, create a campaign, and test Badges yourself! 

And if want to share your experience with Push Badges – welcome to our affiliate marketing Telegram chat!