What is a push notification? A push notification is a way for an app to send you a message without you opening the app. Hence the notification is “pushed” to you without needing you to do anything about it. This is very like an SMS or email appearing on your smartphone. When given permission by the user, apps can obtain the user’s geographical location. As a result, when the user is inside a specified geofence, the app can then trigger a push notification with a highly relevant message, piece of information or a discount. Some examples of location based notifications are:

When an user enters a mall, they receive a notification on their smartphone with coupons for stores closeby based on preferences they indicated when they first installed the app
When an app users arrives at a metro station, they receive a notification on their smartphone informing them that there are severe delays on a specific line. The notification asks the user to open the app to find an alternative route

How are location based push notifications used? The message in your location based push notification can be anything. Notifications are best utilized when they provide users with information that leads to them taking a certain action e.g. redeeming a coupon. Because you can target the app user at a specific location when they enter one of your geofences, you can provide them with highly relevant and timely information. This means your app users are more likely to engage with your message and thereby are more likely to take a suggested action.

Some example of how push notifications have been used with geofencing technology are:
Capture Real Time Feedback
Gathering user feedback on their experience immediately following a meal, movie or grocery shopping trip is more authentic than waiting for consumers to fill out a survey days later.
With geofencing, companies can trigger a few simple questions to appear on a user’s smartphone as soon as they walk out of a specified geofence. For example, Ryanair app users are automatically asked a few simple questions on their flight experience as soon as they land at the airport of arrival. Offer Hyper Local Deals
Instead of sending emails with coupons, companies can directly send promotions to a consumers’ smartphones the moment they enter the vicinity of a retail store or restaurant.
The consumer is no longer tasked with remembering to bring the coupon and as the coupon is presented to the user at the most optimum time and in the most optimum location, the redeem rate is much higher.
Offer An Order Ahead Service
Trigger app users to order as they are approaching a store. This can be very useful for businesses such as coffee shops, where users can avoid queues and waiting time, but ordering and paying for a coffee in advance through the app and collecting in store. It can also mean that customers don’t go to a competitor when they see long queue.
Provide Relevant And Timely Information
Instead of relying on passengers at an airport to search for the checkin desk, departure gate and keep themselves updates on last minute changes, this information can be provided directly to user’s phone as soon as arrive at the airport. It provides as much better user experience and can lower the risk of late passengers, which are a major cause of delays.
Retargeting
You can target people that have visited certain locations previously. By utilising your app user’s location history, app administrators can make their mobile targeting a lot more effective. For example, if an app user has visited a store and received a push notification that was not acted upon then you might want them to receive a different message for the second time round.