Push Leads [review]
POS:
Can be a great way to build a list and contact them without or (in addition) to traditional email.NEG:
Has some minor quarks that could be improvedToday Im doing a review of a new web based software called Push Leads. Before I review this I think the best thing is going to be to explain exactly what push leads is. More specifically I think I need to explain what push notifications is. Almost all of us have seen push notifications. Normally […]
Today Im doing a review of a new web based software called Push Leads.
Before I review this I think the best thing is going to be to explain exactly what push leads is. More specifically I think I need to explain what push notifications is.
Almost all of us have seen push notifications. Normally you see these on mobile devices where an app sends you a notification. They are a great way to get a message to people as they are very prominent and few people can ignore them. However something I did not know was that all three major browsers (FireFox, Chrome, Safari) can send these kinds of notifications as well. This is what Push Leads allows you to do. To send push notifications right to peoples browsers. Ill explain how it works in a second but first I want to show you what a push notification on your browser looks like.
The graphic above shows me sending a notification to my FireFox browser. The notification will work on all 3 major browsers and it will get sent to me no matter what website I’m actually on since its a browser function and not a website function. The notification pops up for a few seconds, it can be clickable. If the user clicks it or ignores it for about 3-5 seconds it will go away on its own.
So in order to be able to send these kinds of notifications with Push Leads there are a couple of things you need to do first. To begin with you need to set up your ‘app’ in the Push Leads system.
All apps are sub domains of the Push Lead domain. The sub domain will show in your notification as can be seen two graphics up, it will say via {your subdomain}.pushleads.io. While I can understand that this being a cloud based SaaS they need to have some domain for these apps I really wish they would have used a non branded domain to host them so that your not advertising their system every time you send a notification.
Setting up the app takes all of about 10 seconds. Enter a name for your app and then enter your sub domain and press save. That’s it.
One thing I did notice is that the input field that ask you for your sub domain will let you enter non valid characters in it. Domain names are allowed to have letters, numbers and while technically not allowed just about all browsers are ok with underscores as well. Characters such as ?@#$.&*! etc are not allowed. However the PushLeads system lets you enter these into the field for the sub domain. It wont actually save them, if you press save with these characters in the input field you will get a generic error that says “Oops something went wrong”. However the issue might not be obvouse to everyone who does not know that these characters are not permitted. To avoid this the developers really should have used JavaScript to avoid to prevent this kind of characters from being typed in the first place. This might seem like a minor thing, but as a developer myself it annoys me to see that they didnt do much in the way of sanitation at the user interface level.
After your app is set up the next step is probably the hardest. You need to wait! Since this is creating a sub domain for your app you need to wait for DNS to propagate. This can take up to 24 hours but is often much faster. However to be safe I would suggest that everyone wait at least 24 hours before sending any notifications.
In order to send people notifications they need to optin to receive them. This is not a spamming tool. Below is an example of a optin box.
In order to get these optins to show you have two basic choices. You can copy and paste the JavaScript code snippet they provide and put it into your site or you can use the WordPress plugin they provide if your site is a WordPress site. They also have a very basic landing page creator built into Push Leads but honestly, while functional, it was not very exciting so I really don’t consider that a viable option. Fortunately most existing page builders are going to let you add your custom code so if you don’t have a website and want to build a nice landing page you can use one of those and just add the code snippet they provide.
After people optin to get your notifications you can instantly send them a ‘welcome’ message. Since the messages are linkable this is great for a ‘squeeze page’ style optin where you give them a freebie in exchange for agreeing to get your notifications.
Sending a notification to your subscribers with Push Leads is very easy. Its just a matter of filling out a simple form.
Enter your title, body, link if you want your notification to be clickable, and enter a link to an image if you want to brand your notification with a logo or something. One thing I did notice though is that if you dont enter a optional link the notification will still be clickable only it will link back to the Push Leads site, specifically the log in page. Im not sure if this is a bug or what. I will be reporting it to the vendors, however either way it can be avoided simply by making sure you always enter a link. In practice you will most likely want to have a link anyway.
You will notice that you can set a delivery start time. This is in effect scheduling when your notification goes out. But what might be confusing is the delivery end time. Why do they have this? Its because people might not be online or might not have your browser open when you send your notification. If this is the case then the obviously cant get your notification. Push Leads keeps track of who your notifications are delivered to and it will continue to send them to those who are not online through the delivery period at set intervals. This way its the number of people who get it is higher than if it was just sent once.
Also you might notice that it says when your last message was sent. This is an important thing to keep in mind. In my testing if you send out your notifications to fast (every few minutes like I did when I was testing) the browser can get confuses, the notifications can get out of order, or repeat and desirability can suffer. Really this should not be a problem though because you should not be sending out notifications every few minutes like I did when I was testing. People are just going to see that as spam and unsubscribe. Yes they can opt off your notification list at any time.
The system tracks how many people are set up to receive your apps, as well as which browser they are using and the country they are in. It also tracks notification statistics. Telling you how many where sent, successfully delivered and clicked.
There does not seem to be any way to track unsubscribes other than to note the number of subscribes you have and compare that to a future number. If it goes down people have obviously unsubscribed.
So what do I think if this system over all? Well there where several bugs when I first started testing a few days ago. The vendors have fixed all of the major ones and while there are still a few minor quarks over all the system works well. As for the notifications themselves, I believe they can be a powerful tool however I think your going to have to give people some kind of intensive to agree to accept them. You can post great content to a site that will make people want to know when you post more content, you can go the ‘squeeze page’ route and offer them a freebie in order to get them to accept your notifications. One thing I will say though is make sure you respect people no matter how you get them on your send list. Resist the urge to spam them and only send them a notification when you have something relevant to say that they will be likely to want to hear. If you can follow this simple rule I truly believe this can be a great marketing tool worth considering.
BONUS: The vendors have allowed me to give the following bonuses to anyone who picks up Push Leads through my link. They will be right in the software members area for you to access.
A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.
About the Author
Thanks for the review Brett.
I have to say there are a few similar products out just now, one of which I recently purchased but had to ask for a refund.
I think FB really has cornered the market with this. It’s not for me.
I will continue to read your reviews.
Alan.
Im not sure what Facebook has to do with this. But of course if this is not for you dont buy it. My goal as always is to make you informed, not to convince you to buy something you dont want 🙂
I was thinking along the lines of FB’s push notifications.
I appreciate your goal 🙂
The problem I see is that inevitably, sooner or later (most likely sooner) marketeers will abuse this to the point people will either ignore the notifications or disable them. You know — the guys who send 5 emails a day about the same offer…
Well thats only a problem for the people who do it. How people treat their notification subscribers has no bearing on you. But you are right, there will be some who will abuse it and get unsubscribes, just like there are some who will abuse email (and some who dont).
Brett,
Thank you for this review. It’s definitely interesting – however, the hardest part would be to convince website visitors to subscribe to push notifications .. people may find it intrusive. However, some incentive could help in convincing them.
Is there a way to send push notifications on FB if you have a target FB list obtained through lead ads ? I mean, if you haven’t taken route of creating your app and having people give your app permission, would there still be a chance to send FB notifications in any way to FB ID’s or FB Users who have subscribed to learn more through FB Lead ADs ?
And would it be in line of FB T&C ?
Although this question has nothing to do with this product, however still appreciate if you can share your views on this. I am looking for ways to send push notifications on FB using FB ID’s and / email ID’s of FB users who have opted in through FB Lead ADs.
No you cant end them through FB to an existing FB fan pages, and yes people will have to subscribe, there are 2 ways to get them to do that, A) You can have a good website with valuable content (so people will want more) and B) You can offer the a freebie in exchange for opting in to get your notifications. Honestly I think option A) is going to be best, if you run a good site, that people want to read / visit, its going to be valuable to them to know when you post additional content.
Hi Brett. Thanks for the review. You are spot on about having a valuable website. Good eco merge sites will do well with this! I am writing today because there are two competing solutions and I am having a hard time evaluating them. You have covered the first one. However there is another called Push Response that is being equally promoted. I would LOVE your thoughts and feedback.
I believe Push Response is not even live yet, and its just being ‘pre-sold’ .. ie they are selling it without even having it completed yet. I really cant review something that is not even completed 🙂
Push response could probably be a white label of push leads, they wait when this launch is over and will sell rebranded version? Could be?
No they are different products.
Well that is silly on their part! They must feel they had to to counter their competition. Thanks for the fast response!
Honestly those are my thoughts exactly.
Hi Brett. I HATE it when vendors use their own domain! So glad I came across your review, I was looking for exactly that answer. For a few bucks, they could have put it up on a private registered “vanilla” domain.
The Minute I try go offer this to my clients, they / and or subscribers can go have a look at the main website to see what I paid for the software and question my price etc.. Opens up the biggest can of worms ever.. On top of that, they try go buy and set it up themselves.
I wanted the 100 site developer/agency licence however am very reluctant to purchase as its probably still on the pushleads domain..
Only the whitelabel offer talks of a private domain..
dissapointing….
Yep I agree, on my SaaS I create a generic / unbranded domain such as vsrv.us , csrv.us , pdsp.us etc.
Thank you for the review Brett!
This is a couple things I would personally be concern about.
1. If it is a subdomain needs to be created for every account and if Jay sells a thousands copies of this product and everybody creates at least one subdomain then he better have a good hosting account to make sure it doesn’t hit its bandwidth limits when people start using the platform.
2. Jay needs to guarantee that pushlead.io domain will be get updated at least for another couple of years. I saw so many products stop working after while because the developers or product vendors (will not name them here…) move on the next product and the next one etc. and stop updating or supporting the previous products And it did happen to one the recent Jay’s product which is not unusable now because they’re too busy with new launches… Or in some cases they even discontinue the old products.
And, also, of course one has to make sure he has a lots of traffic to the website to be able to build the optin list. Otherwise this product will sit on the shelf collecting dust 🙂
Thanks again Brett! Your review are always handy and intelligent!
1) Well his hosting is handling the tens of thousands hits an hour affiliates are sending without a hitch.
2) This is not even close to realistic. No one can even guarantee that the sun will come up. Who can make any guarantee about anything a few years in advance. If your looking for guarantees about the future your expectations are far to high. As for vendors ‘moving on the another project’, this does happen sometimes unfortunately, but honestly its the customers who make this happen, by refusing to accept that a SaaS should be a monthly fee.
Hi Brett,
I totally agree that a SaaS is helping a developer to maintain the product and support himself in business. But today we buy a lot of marketing (and other) digital products and if I pay monthly fee for every product I purchase I might as well to have another expensive house that’s how much money I would end up paying monthly. Unless there is reasonable ROE.
As of the J’s hosting. Glad to know he’s got a reliable plan. But his previous product is already abandoned and the issues it had even initially are still not being fixed making the product not usable. Event that they keep promising to fix the problem… Very disappointing…
I spend nearly $8000 a month on my business, enough to buy several houses. But I make $30K + from those expenditures. I can never understand why some people seem to consider a business expense a ‘cost’ and not an investment. ROI totally depends on the person, if you buy something, use it, take action, and put in the effort you will make money from your investment, if you don’t, you might as well not even run a business in the first place.
Are you talking about that app builder he made? I just checked my test app and it seems to still be working for me. If your having a issue put in a support ticket, if you dont get a satisfactory answer message me and Ill light a fire under his a$$ for ya 🙂
I buy the FE but without the OTO it doesn’t make to much. You don’t have statistics, acces to the subscribers, and your message are sent but just once so if you don’t get the users online they will miss the message.
But still, if you want to invest in oto too, then it might be a good deal.
What i like, is that unlike pushresponse.com here you don’t have a list limit (at least they didnt specify it on sales page)
I did not know the OTO was required for multiple sends. Though I can understand why they would make it an OTO, it takes more server resources to do that so its fair to charge more.
Seems like everyone is jumping on this band wagon there is another one just come out called Push lotus have you heard or seen it Brett?
No I dont believe I have seen that one.
Brett, very informative review! You’ve tackled most of the questions I had about this software.
Just to clarify… did you test out the Pro Version or just the FE?
My main concern now is the fact that {your subdomain}.pushleads.io. will show on each push notification, as you have shown on the sample screenshot. As someone has already mentioned, this just negates being able to resell the services to others who are now able to go directly themselves to the pushleads website and see where you’re sourcing the service (and possibly lose the clients in the process). That’s unfortunate!
Has anyone actually purchased the other OTOs (Pro, Developer, White-Label)? I am curious to see if using any of those options will display the same way.
Anyone? I need a glimmer of hope!
I believe I tested the PRO version, I normally ask for the FE version but it looks like I might have been slipped the PRO. The main difference being that the FE does not continue to resent the notifications to people who are offline.
Hi Brett sorry this is not about push leads I was just looking at a product called Commission Evolution and noticed your photo on it endorsing it but I don’t remember you doing a review on it is it one I missed
This question really upsets me. Not because you asked it. But because it shows how little some people actually pay attention to or take time to read sales pages. There is 100% for sure not an enforcement from me on the Commission Evolution sales page. There is a photo of me, in a section that says
“Super Affiliates Using BONUS PAGES Literally EVERY TIME To 10x Their Commissions & Revenue
NO EXCEPTIONS – THESE GUYS ALL USE BONUS PAGES For All Their Promotions – Are YOU Ready To Join The Party?
”
And I allowed Mario to include me in there because it not a false statement, I do use bonus pages with good results. However no where does Mario claim that I ‘endorse’ his product in any way. In fact he does not even claim that I or anyone listed there has ever even used his product. He simply says that I, and the other people listed use bonus pages, nothing more.
I’m sorry Brett but I do take exception to your comment I actually read and re read the sales page and watched the video. I know that some of those “super affiliates” are promoting Marino’s product and below that are photo’s of some first time users some of which are also promoting the product. You are right nowhere does he state that you endorse it but the innuendo is there. Anyway the main point of my question was wherever or not you had done a review and I missed it. I had read a couple of other reviews but I always respect your as being totally honest.
The point of my post is don’t invent things, if a sales page does not say it, don’t say it for them. A part of selling is to get people to think things without actually saying them. I’m trying to help you. I did test that product though. I was not impressed.
Thanks for the response! Hopefully, someone else who upgraded to the Developer or White-Label version can tell if the subdomain pointing to pushleads.io will still show on the notification screen.
I think this product is promising (at least for what I intend to use for… for a local community non-profit organization)
So now we’ve got Plush Leads, Pro Push, Push Lotus, and Push Response.
My personal view on these is that many people will think they are annoying and turn off notifications. It’s already bad enough with the FB push messages popping up every time someone posts a new comment.
Think I’ll leave this one alone.
People will think its annoying, if you annoy them, or abuse how you use this. Its not the tool, its what you do with the tool that will matter.
Yep. Somewhere, somehow that’s probably been said before. ????
Hello Brett. Great review. However there is a serious issue with Push Leads.
I purchased Push Leads and I got the FE, OTO1 and OTO2. However I’ve come across a serious issue with OTO2, the developer version. The domain used for setting up my clients is the same as pushleads.io. The issue is when I have a client and they look at what domain it is that I am using, they will be able to figure out in a heartbeat that they can stop being MY client and get access to Push Leads directly. So not only will I LOSE my client, but I will have paid for a developer license that is really of no use since I will continue to lose clients, PLUS I will have done essentially all the recruiting of clients for Push Leads with NO benefit to me. It has actually cost me money for the Developer license, plus all the time and expenses involved at developing a potential customer into a client that I will eventually lose.
The easy fix is a generic domain that the Client/customer will have no idea where the main domain is and therefore will remain a client of mine. Yes if they dig long enough they will find push leads, but if they really want to cut me out then at least make them work for it. I’m betting the majority of them can’t be bothered.
So that brings me to my point – can all the developer license people get a generic domain? Should be easy to do. If not I may have to re-evaluate how useful this software will be to my business. I’m sure that other people who have the developers license will have the same concerns. Can the domain be made generic/vanilla?
In addition to that what would to make it even better for developers would be to have all sales links related to Pushleads moved to another domain where sales, etc. could be put so that again, which would be unrelated Push Leads name so that the client has no way of of bypassing (ie. screwing) the people who bought the developer version.
These seem legitimate, logical concerns that anyone purchasing software that has a developer version (ie OTO) would have. It really is incredible that software developers don’t see or get this. I sent my concerns to the developer/support and the response was far from adequate.
The response was: You can create sub-accounts for your push leads applications, you can have as my sub-accounts as you want to, and you can limit each sub-account to certain functionality you want to offer them.
My concern wasn’t even addressed! It begs the question: Do developers really care about their customers and how their software actually HELPS the customer and not just put money in their pocket?
It still seems that this internet marketing industry still has to mature along with some of the developers in it. Unless I get a more positive, helpful reply to my concern, this software will be going back. In the end, poor service eventually will come back on these vendors that “just don’t get it”! That is the REAL reality on how good their software is.
Thank you for you reviews! Keep up the great work!
Well I do clearly say that in my review, that the domain is the Push Leads domain, so if you read my review before purchasing you are complaining about something that I told you about pre-purchase. Not sure how someone has a right to complain about something that they know about ahead of time.
If you didn’t read my review, then I would suggest you bookmark my site and make sure you read them before buying as I always point out things like this.
Also your making the assumption that your clients will leave your services and sign up for themselves. Your neglecting to take into account the price increase that will happen after the launch and your assuming that your clients will want to do this themselves. Part of what they pay for is your time. Not just the program you provide. Some may want to pay whatever the inflated price is after the launch and do the work themselves, but I think you will find that many small business owners are busy doing things like, running their business, and are more than happy to have someone ‘do it for me’
Finally Im sorry you are not happy with the support answer you got, but I don’t see any reason for you to turn it into a personal ‘developers dont care about their customers’ thing. Especially when the developers and the support people are very likely two different groups of people.
While I rate products of Jai Sharmas highly, I do not rate his support desk so won’t go near his products anytime soon. A product he released not so long ago failed on me and the support desk either ignored my repeated requests for help or just paid lip service, got my hopes up and failed to deliver without so much as a word. One of their team contacted me finally via skype yet when I responded, I never heard back. I wrote to them again and again…nothing. I went out of my way to be extra cordial. The guys dragged it out well beyond the 30 day period. I eventually gave up. They retired my ticked but I reactivated it. It was as simple as an upgrade question based on a promise by Jai to upgrade too – nothing too technical
Serious quality control and prioritization issues over there. I simply will not risk my dollar on such poor post sales support again where Jai is concerned. It’s a shame, because he is a good developer in my eyes.
You should email him and let him know that his support has not been good to you. He may not even be aware, or if he was aware he might have already corrected the situation. In any company there are going to be bad employees. Judging an entire company based on a bad support employee is probably a little harsh, especially when you say yourself that they create good software.
Two support team members and Jai himself were even involved. I can only assume he himself had got sick of me. Buck stops with him on this occasion. Failed to deliver and be true to his word. He never delivered on an auto upgrade that he specifically represented to his list in a number of emails i.e upgrading/migrating previous buyers to the later version for free. Telling it like it is I’m afraid. No lies, no smear campaign intended, no ulterior motive, no business links, no affiliations whatsoever other than the customer/ vendor relationship here. I am clean, honest and being forthright – a disgruntled and formerly loyal customer of his here at most.
As you are honest with your reviews, Brett, I am honest with mine. I may start up a review blog that covers the post sales support side. They are equally as important, if not moreso than a review of the product itself – ya gotta admit? Something you could only cover properly if you anonymously bought the product – despite me seeing you do this on a number of occasions in the past – before you reached super affiliate status and people everywhere in IM knew your name.
No I don’t ‘gotta admit’ that the follow up support is equally important of not more important that the support. I dont see it that way. Thats like saying “Oh the software was junk but the support people are so nice” .. me personally Ill take a good software and bad support over a bad software and good support any day. (though ideally you would have both). As for reviewing support, that’s next to impossible and not nearly practical, the only way to do a review of support as you said is to buy the product after it launches under a different name, wait a few days and then write the review etc. Which also means your review is not ready for the product launch, since your review wont be complete for several days or a week afterwords while you ‘test support’. Which would mean you dont have a review ready in time to help anyone know if the software / product is a good one.
If you are unhappy with this vendor though, you should tell him, by not making future purchases from him, that is the best way.
PS) I have only ever bought products to do reviews twice that I can remember.
If I purchase the white label version then I assume I can use my own domain? Is that correct? And secondly if I have 100 white label licenses then because this is a wordpress plug-in then is my market for potential buyers restricted to those people with wordpress sites or is there a workaround there?
These are questions that are best to ask the vendor, if you already bought the FE, send them a support request and ask them. I would not want to tell you the wrong thing by mistake.
In testing PushLeads with only one subscriber, I am finding that the notifications don’t disappear after a period of time, are that a new notification is being delivered about once a minute. As a result, after sending a test notification last night I had to click on several hundred notifications to clear them.
I reported this to PL Support and was told this and a number of other less severe problems are due to the fact I have fewer than 5 subscribers.
Brett, did you experience similar behavior during your testing? If so, did adding subscribers actually fix the behavior? I am reluctant to have users subscribe and find that the explanation is as fishy as it sounds.
I didnt have any issues, except when I was testing I sent a bunch of notifications really fast to test (4 or 5 in a few minutes) and that caused some problems (though to be fair they warn about sending to fast in the software)
2 quick questions on this Brett
1. Will you use it on your site?
2. If you were using it what incentive would you offer for people to opt-in?
Frankly no I wont use it on my site. Not because I think its a bad idea, just because I already have a email list, a fan page, and several Facebook groups, as well as other things to do, software creation, reviews, support etc. I just cant manage more ways to contact people. If I did not have multiple ways to contact people already, or had more people to help me with my marketing, software creation, reviews or support I would use it. In short, honestly no I wont be using it, but not because I think its a bad idea, just because Im already spread about as thin as I can go with everything I do the way it is 🙂
I would probably give away JJ FREE though, and then upsell people to JJ Gold.
I don’t even want push leads. I’m waiting on the release of a competitor in a few days.
Can I just purchase your bonus?
If your talking about my limited time special bonus: In April you can.