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Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

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Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#41

Post by lozenge »

cypressious wrote: post #34
TylerE wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they added (and enforced!) a distinction between transactional notifications and everything else.

Android forces app developers to categorize notifications (the API is called notification channels). Each channel can be muted individually in the system settings. Though it's up to the app makers to correctly categorize their notifications, in my experience most apps do this. Whenever I see a spam notification, I immediatelly go mute the channel and the problem never repeats itself.

I have a Samsung and it doesn't show what channel a notification came from. Probably because of the amount of crapware Samsung bundles.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#42

Post by pitah1 »

Another side effect to take into consideration when offering notifications to customers is the impact on your services if customers action on those notifications.

At a bank I worked at, we enabled salary transaction notifications. Soon we found that because the salary was deposited into everyone's account at the same time from the bank, a large amount of notifications was trying to be sent at the same time which caused a bunch of services to suddenly receive a lot more traffic than usual.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#43

Post by cypressious »

lozenge wrote: post #41
cypressious wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android forces app developers to categorize notifications (the API is called notification channels). Each channel can be muted individually in the system settings. Though it's up to the app makers to correctly categorize their notifications, in my experience most apps do this. Whenever I see a spam notification, I immediatelly go mute the channel and the problem never repeats itself.

I have a Samsung and it doesn't show what channel a notification came from. Probably because of the amount of crapware Samsung bundles.

It shows, though it's a bit obscure. Long press the notification, then press notification settings. It will scroll you down and highlight the notification channels item. Press on it. After a second, it will highlight the channel the original notification was belonging to.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#44

Post by Irishsteve »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

> But with pushes, we have to guess what the customer might be interested in given triggers such as events, promotional offers No, you don't have to guess. You can correctly know that the answer is "no". If you're going to blatantly send unwanted marketing to the user, at least be honest with yourself and your audience about it.

Depends. We had a system that someone would favourite a product they are interested in, and when it went on a meaningful discount (20% or more) we would send them a notification letting them know. This had pretty good engagement compared to just shooting notifications out.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#45

Post by seszett »

rochak wrote: post #19
saagarjha wrote: post #2

If you send me a push and I can’t explain why I’m seeing it (for example, if it’s not time-sensitive or I haven’t done anything to indicate I want it) then I consider it spam. This is doubly so if you’re using it to send me an advertisement. That’s the easiest way to ensure your app is going in the trash.

Uber's Apps are so shit when it comes to that. I can rarely recall a time when I opened the app and closed it without finding anything useful and it didn't send me a notification within minutes.

I have the Uber Eats app installed and I don't receive unwanted notifications. I think I only enabled the channel for notifications on a current order, and I don't get anything else.

Maybe they are more careful because I'm in the EU?

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#46

Post by winkelwagen »

It’s not only push notifications, it’s the combination of everything communication channel combined. I recently unsubscribed to a services that kept spamming me their “lifetime subscription” product, while I already was on their yearly premium plan. Over the course of 2 weeks, I received 4 push notifications, 4 emails and 2 times when I opened the app it had a full screen ad. I’ll never use this product again. Ironically, this app focuses on sleep quality, focus and meditation.

4 years ago I was using a Fitbit, and for some reason they thought push notifications was a great channel to promote a new watch product. It blew my mind that someone at Fitbit thought that was a great idea.

Anyone considering using push notifications for marketing purposes, I’m sure you’ll make a couple of sales short term, but for me, you damage your brand

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#47

Post by el_oni »

kkarpkkarp wrote: post #16

Two years ago I learned from some Twitter post a new habit: every time you install an app on your phone, you must do one more step: block its notifications. You don't need any notifications from apps as long as this is not an instant messaging app. (You can make additional exception for your banking app, but that's it for 90% of users) My phone is now so silent.

the only apps that i have with notifcations are, as you mentioned, instant messaging apps and apps that i'm using to build a habit (language learning, meditation that sort of thing). everything else is turned off

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#48

Post by JoshTriplett »

Irishsteve wrote: post #44
JoshTriplett wrote: post #11

> But with pushes, we have to guess what the customer might be interested in given triggers such as events, promotional offers No, you don't have to guess. You can correctly know that the answer is "no". If you're going to blatantly send unwanted marketing to the user, at least be honest with yourself and your audience about it.

Depends. We had a system that someone would favourite a product they are interested in, and when it went on a meaningful discount (20% or more) we would send them a notification letting them know. This had pretty good engagement compared to just shooting notifications out.

If a user specifically uses a feature that asks for notifications about a product, then you're just doing what the user asked you to do. The problem comes in when sending such notifications without them being requested by the user, which includes if the user "favorited" a product but that "favorite" operation had nothing to do with requesting promotions of that product. ("This is a thing I like" is not an invitation for spam about buying it; "Help me buy this" is an invitation for desired messages about buying it.)

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#49

Post by lozenge »

londons_explore wrote: post #31

I'd much rather the OS have a "report spam" button on notifications, and if more than 5% of app users report spam then the whole app gets all notifications blocked by default. Both Apple and Google have strong controls on the apps identity, so it won't be like email spam where the sender can just send from a new email address to get around the filter.

The wording of the notification is enough to train a spam filter and determine the urgency of the message. Both companies should be in favour - Google because the feature makes push notifications less useful compared to their ads, Apple for user experience.

Re: Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often

#50

Post by sakjur »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #40
sakjur wrote: post #30

Something I wish Apple and Google would support is notifications that are only delivered if you’ve opened the app during the last 2 hours. Taxi and food delivery services for example have a reasonable usecase for push notifications, but only around the time when I’ve opened the apps. I think adding such dials to the operating system could help align the user interest of not being spammed with the engagement metrics u…

Don’t assume that a push notification is going to be shown to the user. It may be for consumption only by the app, to avoid the need for polling a remote server. I expected this article to discuss push-notification payloads and use cases, but no… it’s about spamming the user about products. It’s as if the author doesn’t even understand what push notifications are.

Good point, in my case when I say “delivered”, I primarily mean the phone notifying the user.
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