Younger consumers are more comfortable leveraging location-based technology and allowing apps to access this information because they have grown up in the digital age causing them to become accustomed to this side of the tech world. Millennials understand the benefits of allowing their location data to be accessed and are much more willing to engage with this kind of app, allowing retailers a direct line to these young customers.

“Millennials are highly engaged with well-executed push notifications from brands and retailers,” said Pat Dermody, President of Retale. “According to our data, well-executed means two things.

“First, that the notifications are hyper-relevant, using contextual data like location and behavior,” she said. “And, secondly, that they provide actual value, in the form of coupons, circulars and discounts.”

Millennials and location
Retale’s study shows that 94 percent of millennials use location-based services through mobile. Both iPhone and Android users show significant use with these apps, but iOS users show slightly more with 97 percent use compared to Android with only 94 percent use.

Push-notifications are also highly effective for millennials, with about 84 percent of them claiming to respond to push-notifications they have received. This is seen much more prevalent in millennial men with 86 percent acting on notifications compared to 83 percent of women claiming to engage.

Millennials prefer push-notification content related to coupons and discounts and 61 percent of those responding are interested in notifications of deals in which they can redeem immediately, while 61 percent also like customer reward notifications.

This demographic of consumers is also highly loyal to their favorite brands. Millennials are much more likely to engage with push-notifications received from favorite brands, with 89 percent claiming to do so.

Millennial men who act on push-notifications from favorite brands make up 91 percent of those surveyed while women who claimed to do so consisted of 85 percent.

Importance of relevancy
Marketers must keep in mind that the content they are sharing through notifications must be relevant and something consumers are interested in. The most common reason for not engaging with push-notifications was that the information was not relevant, making up 39 percent of responses.

But many also claimed that the some notifications feel intrusive which causes users not respond. Millennials who responded claiming intrusive ads were a major cause in not engaging made up 34 percent of those in the survey.

“Millennials crave new product information and sale availability,” Ms. Dermody said. “After coupons and customer rewards, it was the third most popular type of push notification at 35 percent, more popular than getting receipts after completing a purchase.

“This is a huge growth area for brands and retailers,” she said. “They have become experts in coupon-based notifications, but millennial shoppers are also open to more. They want to know about new, relevant products.

“To truly connect with millennials, retailers need to continue investing in well-executed location-based alerts. That means identifying ways to make them more relevant and useful, either through in-house offerings or third party services.”

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer