In this era of globalization, you can reach more people than ever with your app and website. It's safe to assume that not every user speaks your language. OneSignal offers a way to easily localize your push notifications through our platform. We help our clients engage with users in different languages every day.
When sending notifications, you can increase clickthrough rates by localizing your push notifications. By translating messages and using expressions that make sense in that given language, we make sure that the language your users see matches the language they set on their mobile device or browser.
1. Expand Your Reach Globally
Maybe you have a game app that doesn't require much reading to play the game - you could be a huge hit in Thailand. But if you send all your push notifications in English, they'll likely be ignored, or worse, turned off. Bring users back by only showing content in your users' native languages.
2. Boost ROI in Marketing
Rather than prepare a marketing campaign for all countries using one language, a more effective strategy would be to create multiple campaigns and narrow each to a subset of locales. This might take a bit more time, but tailoring each campaign towards local markets will likely result in higher engagement and sales.
3. Improve User Experience
Taking the time to personalize your notifications demonstrates to your audience that you are willing to go the extra mile to connect with them. By localizing the language, you build trust with your users and increase retention. Studies show that users are also more likely to spend money on products that are in their language.
4. Reduce Risk of Offending Users
Even if they speak English as a second language, your global audience might miss subtle nuances, cultural references, expressions, and humor that make your push notifications a huge hit with your native-speaking audience. For example, when KFC first opened in Beijing, their "Finger-lickin' good" campaign was poorly translated to "Eat your fingers off."
Localization helps prevent embarrassing marketing failures due to mistranslations. Here are more classic examples where even the biggest brands made their blunders.
How to Localize Your Push Notifications Using OneSignal
Localization may seem like a difficult task to tackle... How do you segment your users to know what language they actually speak? Don't worry - OneSignal has your back.
Identify your top countries and what languages are commonly spoken there. Then you just need to enter translations for those countries - if you're using puns or humor, it would help to have a human translator (you can use companies like Rev to translate materials for just $0.10/word). Otherwise, you can likely use a free translation service.
OneSignal’s dashboard allows you to send a single notification in multiple languages. Select the pencil in New Message, then Add Another Language, -here's a list of supported languages. Follow our documentation on localization for more details.
