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Marketing | Software
Push notifications can either build user loyalty or destroy it,...
By Vanshaj Sharma
Feb 18, 2026 | 5 Minutes | 
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Push notifications can be one of the most powerful tools in a marketer or product manager toolkit. They can also be one of the most annoying things a user encounters on their phone. The difference between those two outcomes almost entirely comes down to how well a team thinks through their approach before hitting send.
Most brands treat push notifications like a megaphone. They blast their entire user base with the same message, at whatever time feels convenient and then scratch their heads when opt out rates climb. The reality is that users have very little patience for irrelevant interruptions. One bad push can undo weeks of good experience.
Getting it right takes some discipline. But the payoff is genuinely worth it.
There is a persistent belief that a great message will perform well no matter when it lands. That is not really true. A push notification sent at 2 AM local time, no matter how well written, is going to hurt more than help.
The sweet spots tend to cluster around late morning (10 AM to 12 PM) and early evening (6 PM to 8 PM), though this shifts depending on the audience and the product. An e commerce app targeting working adults will perform very differently from a fitness app targeting early risers. The only way to know for certain is to test.
What matters most is understanding when your specific users are actually using the app. Most analytics tools will show you session peaks. Push notifications sent during or just before those windows consistently outperform the same messages sent at off peak hours. This sounds obvious, but most teams do not actually look at this data before scheduling their campaigns.
Generic push notifications feel like junk mail. Users have trained themselves to dismiss them without reading. If a notification does not feel relevant to the individual receiving it, it might as well not exist.
Basic personalization, like including a first name, is a starting point but it is not enough. The best performing push notifications reference actual user behavior. What did they browse last? What did they leave in their cart? What feature have they not tried yet? When a notification speaks to something real, it gets opened.
Segmenting audiences before sending is a foundational push notification best practice that a surprising number of teams skip. Even simple segmentation, such as separating new users from active users from lapsed users, can dramatically improve relevance and reduce unsubscribes.
Ask any user why they turned off push notifications for an app and nine times out of ten the answer is "too many." Frequency is the most common mistake teams make.
There is no universal right answer for how often to send. It depends on the product, the relationship with the user, the nature of the content. A breaking news app might send multiple pushes a day without friction. A recipe app sending three notifications in one afternoon is going to lose subscribers fast.
A reasonable starting framework is to think in terms of value per notification. Every push should offer something worth the interruption. If a team finds themselves struggling to justify why a message needs to go out today versus tomorrow, that is usually a sign to hold it.
Setting up preference centers, where users can choose their own notification frequency, is one of the most underused tools available. It shifts control to the user, which almost always reduces opt outs.
Push notification copy lives and dies on the first few words. On most devices, users see roughly 40 to 50 characters before the message gets cut off. That is not much space.
The best approach is to put the most compelling or specific information first. Vague openers like "Hey, check this out!" are almost universally ignored. Specific openers like "Your order just shipped" or "Flash sale ends in 2 hours" give the user a reason to act immediately.
A few things that consistently work:
• Urgency tied to something real, not manufactured panic • Numbers and specifics rather than vague claims • A clear action so users know exactly what tapping will do • Conversational tone that matches how the brand normally talks
Capitalization, punctuation choices and emoji use all affect perception. Excessive punctuation reads as spam. Emojis can boost engagement but only when they match the brand voice and add something instead of filling space.
This is one of those push notification best practices that seems minor until you see how much it affects conversion. When a user taps a notification about a specific product and lands on the app homepage instead of that product page, a significant number of them will just close the app.
Every push notification should deep link to a specific, relevant destination inside the app. The notification creates a moment of intent. Deep linking honors that intent. Sending users to a generic landing page wastes the momentum the notification just generated.
Setting up proper deep linking requires some technical investment upfront, but it pays back quickly in engagement metrics.
No team should be sending to their entire user base without testing first. A/B testing push notifications is relatively straightforward in most modern push platforms and the data it generates is invaluable.
Testing variables one at a time gives clean results. Message copy, send time, personalization depth, emoji use and notification type are all worth isolating and measuring. What works for one audience segment often surprises teams who assumed they already knew the answer.
Looking at open rates is useful but incomplete. The metrics that actually matter are downstream: did the user complete the desired action after opening? Did they convert? Did they stay in the app for more than a few seconds? Those numbers tell the real story.
Push notifications are permission based by design. Users chose to allow them. That choice should be treated with some care.
The moment users feel that push notifications are being used against their interests rather than for them, they opt out. And once they opt out, re engagement is very difficult. The best push notification strategies think about this relationship over months and years, not just the next campaign.
Sunset policies, which automatically stop sending to users who have not engaged with pushes after a certain period, keep lists healthy and protect sender reputation. Re permission campaigns for long lapsed users can also recover some of that audience without annoying the active base.
The brands that get the most out of push notifications are the ones that genuinely ask themselves whether each message is something users would want to receive. That question, asked consistently before every send, is probably the most important push notification best practice of all.