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The best push notifications are personal, timely, and give players a clear reason to open your game. Below, you'll find 19 ways to sharpen your app’s push notification strategy, with real examples pulled from popular apps and games along the way.
👀 Related reading: Scale your profits: The publisher’s guide to mobile app monetization
Personalization is the go-to practice in all things mobile, and push notifications are no exception. According to a 2024 study by OneSignal, personalized push notifications have a 344% higher engagement rate than non-personalized notifications.
Personalization is based on segmentation, so in order to create tailored push notifications, it’s vital to separate users into different groups by certain criteria. For example, location, gender, and in-app behavior. Of course, if you manage to get even more specific data like names, use it.
Not every message needs to reach every user. Let’s say a sports app sends out a notification about a tennis match to a user who uses it exclusively to stay on top of football scores. That wouldn’t be a relevant message.
To avoid a similar scenario, it’s important to continuously leverage your app analytics to get insights into your users’ behavior and target the right audience.
👀 Related reading: 8 crucial user retention metrics to track for your mobile app
People like to be among the first to find things out. You can take advantage of this behavior by delivering notifications that inform users about app updates or new content.
Let’s take an entertainment app as an example. It can send notifications to users who have previously watched a particular show, informing them that a new episode is now available. Similarly, a music app can notify users about the release of a new album by their favorite artist.
Deep down, we all appreciate receiving some kind of acknowledgment. You can leverage push notifications to create this positive experience for your users.
Brands frequently do this by responding to user actions. For example, a travel app can thank users for leaving a review and let them know how many people have seen it. A sports app, on the other hand, can pat users on the back for their activity and invite them to check out their results.
Want your users to take immediate action? Create a sense of urgency and take advantage of their fear of missing out. But, it’s extremely important not to overuse this strategy.
Don’t spam people’s phones with info that isn’t genuinely time-sensitive – do it only when you have a legitimate reason. For example, shopping apps can use this method to remind users about the final day of a sale.
Offering deals is a tried-and-true strategy for grabbing the users’ attention.
Naturally, this method is most used by e-commerce apps, but it can be applied to different apps that contain IAPs or subscriptions. For example, a mobile game can offer a discount to users who often visit the game’s store but have yet to make a purchase.
To ensure the success of these discount offers, make sure to craft push notifications that effectively highlight the benefits and provide a clear call-to-action (CTA).
Sometimes, users leave apps before finishing the goal action. The best example of this is cart abandonment in e-commerce apps. This can occur because something interrupted them in the process, or they decided to postpone it for later. But in the majority of cases, it happens because the user was feeling indecisive about the purchase.
Whatever the reason might be, these users could use a little push.
Our push notification best practice tip here is to encourage them to finish the action right away. In the text, you can suggest they forgot about it or offer them a little extra something that will make them change their mind. For example, free shipping or a small discount.
Does your app reward users for daily logins? Rewarding users for coming back to the app is a proven retention and engagement method. It is especially effective in mobile games that often give out “daily rewards”.
To increase the chances of users returning to the app and claiming their rewards, you can remind them about it using push notifications.
When users receive push notifications to their phones, they quickly scan the text. If something catches their attention, they will read it through. Push notifications with lengthy, paragraphical texts are instantly off-putting.
The best push notifications are ones that maximize the characters and space available without overwhelming the user. Therefore, it’s generally recommended to keep the text within 40 characters. Therefore, make good use of each word and keep things short and clear.
According to 2018 research by Leanplum, emojis can increase push notification open rates by 254%. Emojis can help you make the notification more noticeable, express emotion, and keep the text short. Here are a couple of best practices for push notifications with emojis:
Next on our list of app push notification best practices is staying on brand. Some brands nurture an official tone of voice, some are slightly more cheerful, while others are known for their edgy humor.
Whatever tone of voice you use on other channels, your push notification strategy should be consistent with it. This allows you to create a recognizable omnichannel experience that extends beyond the app.
The push notification headline is a short line of text that describes the notification’s purpose. It’s not mandatory to use it, but many of the best push notifications do.
To get the most out of your push notification headlines, we advise you to make them strong, simple, and to the point. Additionally, if you want to draw extra attention to them, you can spice them up with emojis, numbers, or symbols.
There are certain words and phrases that make push notifications more attractive. Upon analyzing billions of notification examples, CleverTap compiled an extensive list of power words for push notifications across five app categories that lead to better CTRs. Here are just some of them:
What actions do you want users to take after receiving your push notification?
Use a call to action to tell them exactly what you want them to do.
The type of CTA you’ll use in the push notification depends on the type of app, as well as the rest of the notification text. However, if you’re looking for safe options, you can always rely on these popular choices:
According to Business of Apps, adding a call to action to push notifications can significantly boost CTRs. For example, eCommerce app push notifications that contain a CTA have an average 9.8% CTR, while those without it lag at 5.6%.
There is no talking about best practices for push notifications without talking about measurement. To continuously improve your push notification game, make it a priority to track the following metrics:
👀 Related reading: 6 essential mobile game retention metrics and how to calculate them
Even the best push notification message in the world will get ignored if it arrives at the wrong time. For example, while the user is asleep.
No one wants to hear buzzing in the middle of the night unless it’s something super important. Push notifications should be delivered in the moments the user is most likely to interact with them. To achieve this, it’s mandatory to consider factors like time zones and usage habits.
The highest push notification engagement rates generally occur on Tuesday, followed by Sunday. Additionally, research by Notix found that reaction rates climb through the evening, hitting roughly 7.7%, 8.2%, 9.9%, and 10.4% across the 8-11 PM window.
Until you have enough data to pace notifications based on your users’ habits, you can leverage practices that have been successful for others.
Data suggests that people are more receptive to push notifications at particular times of the day and week. According to Business of Apps, the days with the highest reaction rates are Tuesday (8.4%) and Sunday (8.1%). Additionally, the best time to send push notifications is in the evening between 8 PM and 11 PM (Notix).
What’s even worse than sending push notifications at the wrong time? Sending them all the time! But how much is too much? There is no definite answer to this question because it highly depends on the type of app and its features. While some apps send out 1-2 weekly notifications, others can get away with sending 7-10 of them.
As a starting point, you can base notification frequency based on app usage. For example, if a user opens the app three times a week, send them three notifications per week. As you collect more data over time, you can find the optimal frequency by analyzing your push notification metrics.
👀 If churn is creeping up alongside notification fatigue, our guide on reducing churn and retaining mobile gamers can help you find the balance.
Let’s conclude this list of best practices for push notifications with what we believe is the most important one – A/B testing.
If you only create one variation of a push notification, you’ll never know if it could have performed better. Use A/B tests to compare different versions of push notifications.
Push notification campaigns allow you to A/B test many variables like length, CTAs, emojis, icons, timing, frequency, tone of voice, titles, and more. But remember – the key to effective A/B testing is only changing one variable at a time. This way, you’ll always know exactly what element contributed to better results.
Getting your push notification marketing right comes down to a few fundamentals: personalize what you send, respect your players' time, and give them a genuine reason to come back. Here's a quick recap to keep handy as you put these best practices into action:
None of this works as a one-and-done effort. The publishers who get the most out of push notifications treat them as a living part of their retention strategy, revisited and refined as player behavior shifts.
Ready to turn engagement into retention? Let's talk about how Mistplay can help you build a loyalty loop that keeps players coming back.
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