In today’s app-dominant market, nudging users is crucial to improving retention, increasing revenue, boosting DAUs, and enhancing mobile app engagement. Push notifications are highly effective and reliable, enabling app marketers to achieve great results. However, randomly sending push notifications without a plan may do more harm than good. That’s why it is vital to follow push notification best practices.

With the increasing usage of push notifications, failing to follow a strategic approach can result in users being bombarded with relevant and irrelevant messages on their mobile devices and browsers. Marketers should have a customized strategy tailored to user preferences and business needs.

To help marketers effectively engage their users, here are the best do’s and don’ts for setting up push campaigns in 2025.

Do’s and Don’ts of Push Notifications: The Best Practices

Do’s

1. Effective Segmentation to Deliver More Value

Push notifications should be targeted to specific users as per the different requirements and scenarios. It’s essential to get your user segments right to send the push that will match the users’ needs. This is the one golden rule which can not be ignored, and it helps reduce the push opt-outs to a great extent since users are not bombarded with irrelevant notifications.

Segment your users based on their user behavior in the app/ website interactions, user profiles, and historical data so that you can eventually improve your click rate for your push notifications. Moreover, personalizing push messages always begins with a good segmentation strategy.

2. Personalize Your Message

Personalized push notifications, such as using the user’s first name or recommending products based on past behavior, improve engagement rates. Research shows that personalized push notifications can improve reaction rates by up to 400%. However, ensure compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR.

personalised messages lead to a better user experience

3. Identify the Right Time to Nudge

Send push notifications at optimal times based on user activity and geographical location. Tailoring push notifications can improve reaction rates by 40%. Use A/B testing and historical data to determine the best timing for engagement.

4. Use Rich Media

To grab users' attention, incorporate images, short videos, action buttons, and icons. Rich media notifications have been found to increase engagement and click-through rates by 56%.

5. Come up with Good Content

Keep your message clear, concise, and engaging. Use humor, personalization, and attention-grabbing text like exclusive discounts or limited-time offers. 40% of users interact with the app within an hour of receiving a well-crafted notification.

6. Optimize Frequency Based on User Engagement

Instead of bombarding users with frequent push notifications, analyze their engagement levels and adjust the frequency accordingly. Research indicates that sending one push notification per week can lead to 10% of users disabling notifications and 6% uninstalling the app. Users who interact often may appreciate more notifications, while less active users may prefer fewer messages.

7. A/B Test and Optimize Regularly

Constantly test different variations of your push notifications to identify what works best. Advanced targeting and A/B testing can improve reaction rates by 300%. Monitor open rates, conversions, and user feedback to refine your approach over time.

Don'ts

1. Avoid Sending Generic Content

Mass-sending the same message to all users reduces effectiveness and increases opt-out rates. Generic messages result in significantly lower engagement rates. Constantly tailor content based on user segments.

2. Don’t Send Notifications at Improper Times

Sending notifications at inconvenient times can annoy users and lead to uninstalls. Tuesday sees the highest engagement for push notifications at 8.4%, making it an optimal day for outreach. Use behavioral data to determine the best engagement windows.

3. Don’t Send Too Many Notifications

Excessive notifications can overwhelm users and cause push fatigue. When receiving too many notifications, 10% of users turn off the app, while 6% uninstall it. Focus on quality rather than quantity to maintain engagement without being intrusive.

4. Don’t Forget to Localize Your Message

For global audiences, push notifications should be in users' preferred languages to enhance engagement and conversion rates. 70% of users find push notifications more useful when relevant and localized.

5. Don't Ignore User Preferences

Give users control over the types of notifications they receive. Allow them to opt in or customize their preferences to enhance the user experience and reduce opt-out rates.

6. Don't Overlook Privacy Compliance

Ensure your push notifications comply with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations. Users must have clear consent and control over their data. 96% of retailers struggle with executing effective personalization while maintaining privacy compliance.

7. Don't Ignore Performance Analytics

Failing to analyze push notification performance can lead to missed opportunities for optimization. Regularly monitor open rates, conversions, and user interactions to refine your strategy and improve engagement.

Closing thoughts

Following the above-mentioned best practices will help you create an effective push notifications strategy. One crucial aspect to keep in mind while following these methods is to use the right engagement tool to execute the above vision. It is also important for brands to follow design best practices while creating push notifications.

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to one of the most potent omnichannel engagement and analytics tools called Upshot.ai. This revolutionary customer engagement platform is used by Fortune 1000 companies such as Amway, ITC, CBS, UHG, and Tenet Healthcare to increase user engagement, retention, and monetization dramatically.

Upshot.ai uses advanced analytics and segmentation engines to create tailored target segments. It has various options to customize the push notifications for both mobile and web. Leveraging Upshot.ai, you can create diverse push notifications like images, banners, and other styles while localizing the text for all the languages in a breeze.

Upshot.ai dashboard can tell you the users’ activity levels in an hour/day/week format so that you can identify the right time to nudge the users for different segments. Upshot.ai action reports will give you the push notifications performance results and many more insights for your next campaigns.

About Upshot.ai :

Upshot.ai is an omnichannel, user engagement, and gamification platform that helps digital product owners and marketers improve their product adoption and conversions. Fortune 1000 companies such as GE, UHG, Puma, Sony, ITC, and Tenet Healthcare are using Upshot.ai and observed a massive increase in product adoption and YoY increment in revenues.

Book a demo of the most comprehensive user engagement and gamification platform to achieve your digital product goals. Join our communities for more insights, guides, and best practices that keep you updated with proven strategies and tips to supercharge your campaigns.

Push Notifications Best Practices for 2025: Do’s and Don’ts

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