What Are We Going to Do About Push Notifications?

Push Notifications are the New Spam

One of the most frustrating things we had to deal with growing up was the constant barrage of text messages from service providers. I know people who even switched carriers just to escape the flood of unnecessary texts they were receiving daily. We see the same issue with emails. Many of us have inboxes filled with thousands of unread messages from various websites, sometimes burying important ones under all the clutter. To address this, Gmail introduced the prominent "Unsubscribe" button, making it easy to stop receiving unwanted emails—a feature I absolutely love.

Now, we’ve reached a point where push notifications are becoming just as irritating. Every day, we receive countless notifications from different apps, offering deals, sending reminders, and more. Even big players like bKash and Pathao, who otherwise offer great products, bombard us with frequent notifications. Just like Gmail’s "Unsubscribe" button for spam emails, Google now allows us to long-press a notification and turn off alerts from that app entirely, signaling how even push notifications are being treated like spam. Personally, I only keep push notifications on for about 4-5 apps, while I’ve disabled the rest.

What My Small Poll Revealed About Notifications

To see if others felt the same, I conducted a poll on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. The total audience was around 210, with a little over half of the responses coming from Reddit and the rest divided among the other three platforms. While the Reddit audience was global, the audience on my social media accounts was primarily Bangladeshi.

This is what the data looks like:

As the data shows, the majority of users either read only some notifications (with Messenger and WhatsApp specifically mentioned in the question) or simply glance at them and clear them. A decent portion, around 15%, reported clearing all notifications without reading any. Only 7.8% of the audience claimed to read all notifications in detail. Interestingly, this number was 0% among the local audience.

Curious about why some Reddit users reported reading all notifications in detail, I reached out to a few who voted that way. It turns out, they had customized their notification settings to only receive the most important alerts, while turning off the rest. Essentially, they would also fit into the “Read some, ignore the rest” category.

What Can We, Product Managers, do About it?

As Product Managers, we are (usually) responsible for user engagement, so it’s our responsibility to address this issue before users become completely fed up with push notifications. Below are a few thoughts I had on how we can tackle this.

Define Proper SOPs Regarding Push Notifications: We don’t need to send out a push notification every time a user saves 4tk on delivery. However, a notification is definitely warranted if the user’s payment didn’t go through. It’s important to define which incidents and actions truly require a push notification and which don’t.

Say No (but with data): One of the most clichéd things Product Managers are told to do is say no. But that’s not always easy. In my experience, Product Managers often build the features, but once those features are live, operations, marketing, or other departments decide how they’re used. If we ask them to stop bombarding users with their latest revolutionary campaign (the third one this month), they might not listen. To defend our position, we need to present data.

Maybe we can run an A/B test and check if the click-through and conversion rates are higher for users who received 5 push notifications in a week versus those who got 20. If the data supports it, they’ll be more likely to tone down the number of notifications.

Come Up With Innovative Ideas: The easiest advice to give but the hardest to execute! Let’s say they agree to reduce push notifications, but then they’ll ask how they’re supposed to communicate information to users. Social media ads are expensive! This is where we need to be prepared with alternative solutions. While this requires research and data, here are a few possibilities:

• In-App Engagements: The most obvious choice. Inform users when they’re already in your app! Whether through in-app notifications or more creative gamification methods, engage users when they’re mentally prepared to spend time on your product, not when they’re busy with something else.
• Personalized Notifications Only: Send users only the notifications that are truly relevant to them. Notifications should be highly personalized. For example, if a user mainly buys electronics on your e-commerce app, only notify them when there’s a sale in that category—don’t send irrelevant offers. If you’re a Mobile Financial Services app, and a user regularly makes transactions in the first week of the month, send them a reminder at that time with relevant information. Don’t send them notifications at the end of the month when their wallet is empty, and they’re already stressed. Make your notifications user-context aware.
• Keep Push Clean—Use SMS and Email for Less Important Offers: Users are already accustomed to receiving plenty of SMS and email notifications, and their relationship with these methods is often less than ideal. If you absolutely need to communicate less relevant or promotional offers, use these channels instead of cluttering the app experience. This way, you keep the in-app environment clean, focused, and user-friendly, while still reaching out through other, more familiar (though less beloved) methods for promotions.

In the end, it's all about balance. By thoughtfully managing push notifications and prioritizing user-friendly alternatives, we can keep users engaged without overwhelming them.