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Push notifications – What to push, what not to push, and how often
- saagarjha 3y agoIf 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.
- justinl33 3y agoI think this was covered: > Another challenge is that irrelevant or unwelcomed pushes risk having the user disable notifications, uninstall apps, or start ignoring them due to low usefulness > most recommendation engines take a myopic view, over-optimizing on immediate user responses at the cost of long-term satisfaction.
- saagarjha 3y agoIt’s “covered” in that they write this and then immediately dive into an example where I buy a phone and start receiving push notification advertisements for buying cases. Do you think an app is going to ask me if I express interest in “related offers” or just start sending them unsolicited?
- QuadmasterXLII 3y agoI think it undersells how rage inducing pointless pushes are. Like you are barely, tangentially connected to this and I already personally despise you
- rochak 3y agoUber'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.
- vladvasiliu 3y agoIndeed. I still use Uber from time to time and don't want to have to wait around reinstalling it, so I took the time to go through the settings and disable this crap. The Uber eats app got the boot, though. I only ever used it like twice anyway.
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- saagarjha 3y agoI install it when necessary on trips and once I land at SFO I just delete it. During that time it generally sends me 2-3 unwanted notifications but there's not much I can do about that except grumble.
- seszett 3y agoI 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?
- iamdbtoo 3y agoPossibly. I'm in the US and UberEats is easily the worst offender on my phone. I get multiple notifications a day nudging me to order things.
- spacebanana7 3y agoSnapchat too. They always send me engagement marketing though push notifications like friend suggestions & team snapchat messages. It's hard to avoid because I need to have those notifications enabled for when I chat with friends on the platform. Instagram does this too, albeit with less intensity.
- georgel 3y agoInstacart was abusing push notifications with advertising. I disabled their notifications and forced them to use SMS. They haven't sent me any ads that way, because SMS would cost them a trivial but non-zero amount.
- justinl33 3y ago> Thus, as we go from search to recommendations to pushes, it becomes harder to understand the customer’s intent > Push notifications can be considered a form of recommender system Recommender systems can also be viewed as a marketing optimization problem, which I guess would be the step beyond push notifications; recommending to future rather than current users. Interestingly, it has been shown that ‘expert consumers’ prefer user-based recommender systems https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0969698921000941#:~:text=We%20define%20recommendation%20marketing%20as,personal%20interests%20or%20purchase%20history https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09696....
- gdeglin 3y agoOne detail not covered as much in this article is that many options are now available to users and apps to control the push notifications they send and receive. For example, on iOS, when prompted for notification permission, users are now asked to choose if they want the notifications sent to a summary view. iOS will also invite users to disable notifications from apps they haven't interacted with recently. Here are a few of the options available for each operating system. Many of these were introduced within the last 1 to 3 years. iOS & Android: * Apps can choose to send notifications without sound/vibration. These are less disruptive and less likely to result in an uninstall or disabling of push. * Apps can customize which sound is sent with the notification, if any. On Android, the vibration pattern can also be customized. * Apps can choose to replace an old notification with a new one. This helps prevent multiple updates from crowding a user's notification center (e.g. Order received, Order Arriving, Order Delivered) * Apps can send notifications at different priority levels. On iOS, apps can even send notifications that break through a user's focus mode settings (e.g. for emergency alerts), but this requires special permission. * Apps can group multiple notifications for easier readability (e.g. chat messages from different contacts) * Apps can set a visual badge on their application icon, indicating the presence of new content, with or without also sending a push notification. iOS * Apps can choose between sending a push notification or starting a Live Activity. Live Activities have more visual customization and can show real-time updates such as sports scores or the status of a food delivery order. Starting with iOS 17.2, released in Dec 2023, Live Activities can be started remotely, just like push notifications. Prior to 17.2, users had to open the app to start them. Android * Apps can implement Notification Channels, a way to categorize different types of notifications so that users can enable some but not others.
- david_allison 3y ago* On Android, Notification Channels are immutable to developers once created (besides the name and description)
- the_gipsy 3y agoPermissions don't matter much. Of course you need to be able to disable permissions for specific apps, but if you want to receive e.g. user messages but not promotional spam, there is nothing you can do.
- Dalewyn 3y agoI default block notifs (no, I refuse to call them properly, they are not worthy of that respect) on any and all newly installed applications. I might unblock later if it's useful or worth my time, but don't count on it.
- forgingahead 3y agoBanking apps are the worst. They make us switch on notifications, else we can't get any confirmation notices for us to confirm transactions, then they proceed to spam me with credit card offers and other rubbish I'm not interested in receiving.
- Ayesh 3y agoThis is especially annoying when they don't use different notification channels so I can't turn off individual types of notifications.
- lxgr 3y agoIf any app does this, I revoke its push permissions (sometimes after very briefly checking if it has a “no marketing pushes” option). If that makes the app unusable, it goes to the trash. There’s more than one bank.
- new_user_final 3y agoFortunately, Android has notification groups. You can disable notification for certain groups such as promotional notification.
- janalsncm 3y agoWhat bank does this? I’m not getting any marketing spam from Chase or C1.
- ok123456 3y agoJust turn on SMS notifications of any transactions on the account and disable any "app" notifications.
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- JoshTriplett 3y ago> 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.
- pluto_modadic 3y agoyeah, I was like "you check the user's notification settings, right? right?"
- detourdog 3y agoThe problem starts with low opt-in rates. The assumption becomes the low response was due to the user not understanding how to opt-in.
- bostik 3y agoOr turn that around: the service was providing insufficient value for the user to bother looking at how to opt in for their notifications.
- rockskon 3y agoBy that same logic the present state can be described as most users not knowing how to opt-out which is predatory. Given the history of online advertising it can readily be inferred that ads do not provide enough value for almost any user to want to opt-in.
- cuu508 3y agoI think what they really meant there was > But with pushes, we have to guess what is the upper limit of unwanted marketing the customer will tolerate
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- the_gipsy 3y agoFunny that only Pinterest studied the rate of unsubscribe per (unsolicited) push. They even accounted for survivorship bias.
- kkarpkkarp 3y agoTwo 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.
- el_oni 3y agothe 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
- grotorea 3y agoI've had almost the same apps installed for years now, but is that really necessary? Just disable the notification channel after the app sends the first undesired notification.
- smoe 3y agoInstant messaging apps don't need notifications either. It upsets some people at first, but it is for the most part perfectly fine to just check and respond messages in your own preferred frequency.
- kkarpkkarp 3y agoI could agree: it always depends on personal preferences or usage scenarios. Even I have some IM apps' notifications disabled and I check them only once in a while. But some IM I treat as a really instant communication channel with my family: I don't want to miss any message from my kids or "I am at grocery, do you need something?" from my wife
- rcxdude 3y agoFor me this becomes worse: If I don't get (reliable) push notifications for things I want updates on, I tend to become obsessive over checking it. The more different things I am checking this way, the worse it becomes in terms of disruption to my focus. Push notifications unify multiple streams together and let me go 'I don't need to check this, I'll get a notification if there's any update'.
- ytch 3y agoIt is worse on web push notification. I don't know why anyone expecting clients are happy to watch random ADs popup on their computer.
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- rmholt 3y agoNothing. Everything. Never. /article In all seriousness, I recommend the app FilterBox, it allows you to set fine grained rules for notifications for each app
- mad182 3y agoTBH I don't need "fine grained rules for each app". There is only one rule I care about for most apps - block all notifications.
- sakjur 3y agoSomething 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 used to motivate the spamming a tiny bit.
- TylerE 3y agoI just wish they added (and enforced!) a distinction between transactional notifications and everything else.
- cypressious 3y agoAndroid 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.
- lozenge 3y agoI have a Samsung and it doesn't show what channel a notification came from. Probably because of the amount of crapware Samsung bundles.
- cypressious 3y agoIt 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.
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- londons_explore 3y agoI'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.
- TylerE 3y agoSeems like that would be a cheap way to destroy a competitor. Pay a bunch of people on some sketchy freelancer site to install the app, do whatever easily trigger notications.. and then report every single one. Sort of a spin in the concept that it’s much easier to create bullshit than debunk it.
- carlosjobim 3y agoWhy is this argument always used against any kind of improvement beneficial for the end user? Let's at least try to improve things before giving up.
- twism 3y agoso many examples of this type of anti-competitive strategy already being used. why implement something with known deficiencies?
- joshmanders 3y agoBecause you're taking the solution to the absolute bare minimum implementation to achieve the desired result and then applying a ton of thoughts and considerations on how to get around THAT implementation and saying "Yeah this is gonna get abused" and throw your hands in the air. Or you could think just as hard about blocking it as you do about circumventing it, like in the case of this scenario, add weight to users. Obviously newly installed app users who are rating badly is a sign of something fishy, weigh their ratings a LOT lower than someone who has say many hours of usage in the app.
- janalsncm 3y agoThe model for me is duolingo. They gamified a thing I wanted to learn so I mostly didn’t mind the notifications. It’s still important to have timely and relevant information though.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoI was just pondering what kind of push notifications I’ll need for an app I’m writing, so I was pretty psyched to see this title. How disappointing to find that the title is BS, applied to an article that’s focused entirely on spamming. Push notifications might never even be shown to the user. They may be for the application’s consumption, to avoid polling a remote server.
- 082349872349872 3y agoEven The Onion was not willing to go so far in their satire as to suggest that someone might be interested in pushes: https://www.theonion.com/man-creates-account-on-ghostbusterbobbleheads-com-for-f-1851103196 https://www.theonion.com/man-creates-account-on-ghostbusterb...
- pitah1 3y agoAnother 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.
- winkelwagen 3y agoIt’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
- JohnFen 3y agoI agree. Push notifications could have been useful, but companies abuse them so heavily that they're the opposite of that, and I keep them disabled across the board.
- Brajeshwar 3y agoUnless an App/Platform/Service is an “if you miss the info, you/someone dies or might die or almost die,” then the notifications should be user-initiated. As a user, I should be the one who opted in to say, “Yes, I like this category of updates, and it is OK to send them to me.” Many an app/company assumes by default when I sign up or even use my email/phone to contact/connect for anything that, “Baaaaam, there you go -- fished another one -- send in the onslaught of our ads, hook, line, and sinker.” I need to update for the new pattern of notifications, but my article[1] from 2014 remains valid -- stop the notifications -- either as soon as you install an App or as part of your weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly digital cleanup chores. Many friends have thanked me countless times for this small suggestion I wrote down on my blog. These days, forget the idea of productivity; everyday/casual living can really benefit without the need for extra nosy/noisy push notifications. As an app developer, platform service provider, when you know you can but have a teeny-tiny bit of a doubt, do not push that notification. 1. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activities-stop-notifications/ https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...
- chris-orgmenta 3y agoThis interested me, as it would be a nice concept to build a manual around. On the face of it, it could have suited me ("What to push: Being helpful and engaging") But looking into it, I feel the writer has a more cynical worldview than me, and I found this a bit distasteful. I think that this resource is not useful to me, because it is undermined by greed. The end goal with this article is, IMO, people's pockets - not fulfilling people's needs.
- IncandescentGas 3y agoThey must know this right? It seems the "Be helpful and engaging" is a bit of self delusion to pretend they aren't having such a wide negative impact on all of humanity with this kind of research. If the premise is to determine how many alerts the user will tolerate before taking action to silence them, it's known up front the alerts are unwanted and harm the user. The alerts are intended to drive product addiction. By definition, that's unhelpful to the user. The user is tricked by their phone, using the same noise and vibrations a direct message from friends or family that requires immediate attention causes, to force the offending product's brand into the forefront of their mind and make them decide to ignore the notification, investigate the notification, or silence the app's notifications. They want to maximize the number they can send, because they are studying the individual recipient to learn what they're more likely to respond to. Once they know that, they can barrage the person with those things they can't resist until product addiction is achieved, and yet another smartphone zombie is created. Yet another person who will not put down their phone to drive their car, have dinner with their families or tend to their own needs. The author must know the damage their work has done to people's lives, and this "be helpful and engaging" nonsense must be how they rationalize it.
- chris-orgmenta 3y agoConcur. And, I think a lot of it is simply "other people do it, so I have subconsciously justified it" Similar to how easy it is for our society to eat meat from factory farming.
- ranting-moth 3y agoI might be in the minority group. But any app that sends me a push notification that I haven't specifically opted in for is going to have all notification privilege removed right away. A lot of the time it's actually a reminder for me to uninstall the app.
- joshmanders 3y agoYou're not alone. I do the same thing. Maybe not so overzealous though. I'll let a few through because I know it CAN be abused but some don't abuse it so badly. A marketing notification here and there is fine, but a few of them send me multiple DAILY. Those get muted and then the next time an app causes me to go to my notification settings, I notice the previously muted one and I determine "Have I used this meaningfully lately?" if not, after muting the current notifications app, I go an uninstall the previous ones.
- JohnFen 3y ago> A marketing notification here and there is fine Not to me. Any use of push notifications for marketing purposes is an abuse of push notifications in my view.
- gruez 3y ago>But any app that sends me a push notification that I haven't specifically opted in for is going to have all notification privilege removed right away. I thought both android and ios has opt-in notifications? In other words if you're receiving a notification, you already explicitly opted into them at some point.
- grishka 3y agoAndroid does have opt-in notifications now, but it's a very recent change.
- EdgeExplorer 3y agoGlad I'm not alone. Any notification (or sms, email, phone call, etc) I didn't specifically, proactively seek out and ask for is spam, period.
- dsign 3y agoI'm trying to think of necessary push-notifications, and all I can come up with is "stuff from loved ones, but not spam of whatever mom finds in Facebook." This is an area where a user-focused app would let me use an AI to classify what bubbles up to push notifications. Alas, the incentives are wrong for that. App-makers will use the tiniest, tiniest excuse they can make up to solicit attention from a user.
- ProxCoques 3y agoFascinating the sort of elephant-in-room ignoring bubble that articles like this inhabit. What next? How best to drive cars down residential streets at full speed? How about how to slap people around the head without them doing the same to you? I agree it's a good intellectual challenge, as far as mental gymnastics go.
- mkoubaa 3y agoWhen in doubt, don't push. When not in doubt, you should be.
- mercurialsolo 3y agoWhile we think of push more in context of notifs - this same logic can be applied to any recommendations that come over a channel where intent is to be inferred based on past behaviour versus determined based on user input - be it on email, or any messaging channel or even on a subsequent visit to a page. While we can debate the merits/demerits of push - for practical commerce, a large part of the world still switches on push, and relevant push will deliver more concrete and better ROI.
- xivzgrev 3y agoMarketer here. I’ll add how my company does it (10m+ list size) 1) we limit promotional notifications to one per user per day. All campaigns that target a given user are ranked based on expected monetization or engagement. This involves a large batch scoring job that runs overnight 2) we also limit promotional messages to one every x days, where x is personalized to the user. The more you open/click, the more you get and vice versa. employees sometimes complain about the amount of email they receive - it’s because they are naturally power users, opening everything. On top of that, we’ve built levers to temporarily boost revenue by targeting a given opt out rate. Say our baseline is 1%, we may be ok with temporarily having a 1.2% rate to get $x more revenue. This involves an opt out prediction model as well.
- malfist 3y ago> we limit promotional notifications to one per user per day That's insanity. Do you really change your prices so often that you have to get that information to users every day? Marketing push notifications are absolutely the worst part of spam because you HAVE to interact with them.
- KOTYAR 3y agoShows you've never used Poco phone. Old ladies at my job use weird no name phones, which are 120$ tops, and amount of ads they're getting is 10x times more than what Poco has. They all have ads on their lockscreen.
- Workaccount2 3y agoUsing my mothers phone is terrifying. Her philosophy for using her phone seems to be "Just press OK until I get what I was looking for".
- malfist 3y agoWhat does my comment have to do with poco phones at all?
- barryrandall 3y ago
- IncandescentGas 3y agoThese regularly spaced and frequent junk notifications are so important to tech companies because they drive product addiction. Interrupting your day 16 times forcing someone to decide to scroll their feed yet again today, until they're as helpless as Pavlov's dog. How is this kind of computer science any more ethical than the chemists who worked to modify tobacco to be more addictive? Apple and Google are complicit in this too. Product addiction drives smartphone addiction, so don't expect them to take any real steps to protect the average person from this sort of psychological abuse by their phones.
- stackskipton 3y agoI'm shocked Apple hasn't tried to fix it and use it as selling point. Smartphone companies don't need to hook the user anymore, almost everyone is high on the smack at this point.
- jerlam 3y agoApple used to not allow ads in push notifications when the iPhone was first released. Sadly, that restriction was removed in 2020: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21165087/ios-apple-push-notification-advertising-marketing-now-allowed-app-store https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/4/21165087/ios-apple-push-no...
- daxelrod 3y agoPart of Apple clearly wants to do that with Focuses giving more control around what notifications people get in which contexts. Unfortunately other parts seem to think the opposite. For example, Apple News by default sends notifications for puff pieces like years-in-review rather than just urgent breaking news.
- cyberninja15 3y ago[flagged]
- grishka 3y ago> Push notifications can be considered a form of recommender system No. Push notifications are notifications. They have to notify you about something that has happened that concerns you, personally. Like if someone sent you a message, or commented on your post, or liked your content. A sale in a store, or an app update being available, or it being a certain time of day, does not, ever, under any circumstances, qualify as a reason to send a push notification. No matter how cringe-cutesy it is and how many emojis it contains. Bulk push notifications in any shape or form Just. Should. Not. Be. A. Thing. Period.
- sensanaty 3y agoIf I was ruler of the world I'd outlaw all Marketers and Advertisers and subject them to a Ludovico Technique type of thing where they have to sit through inane, mind-numbing, mind-killing ads popping up on screens every 3 seconds. Let's see how they like this little world of brain rape they've built for themselves. The only people who put up with these spammy bullshit notifications are people who aren't aware you can disable them in the first place. I wish the app stores would do something about this, like give us a spam report system a la email that lets you mark these parasitic marketers as the spam they are.
- vivzkestrel 3y agodoes this apply to transactional push notifications or only to promotional/recommendation ones?
- rkagerer 3y agoI practice a "1 strike you're out" policy. As soon as I get a single unwanted notification from an app, that's it, I kill all its notifications privileges. Any other annoyances, and the whole app gets uninstalled. My attention and focus are too valuable a resource.