Every company with an app learns the same lesson eventually: notifications cut both ways. The right one arrives at the right moment and opens the app. The wrong one makes the user switch off all notifications, or delete the app entirely.
You are sending three different things, and they should not be treated the same way:
The usual mistake is mixing all of them in one stream, so a login code arrives between ten promotional pushes and the user turns the whole channel off, losing the useful messages too.
The working week runs Sunday to Thursday, roughly 8am to 5pm, with Friday and Saturday as the weekend. A promotional push at 11pm does not get read; if it does, it gets read with irritation.
Set explicit quiet hours, for example 9pm to 8am, plus Friday morning. A genuinely urgent transactional message can pass through, but marketing should respect the clock.
There is no magic number, but there is a working rule: send less than you think you need. One or two marketing notifications a week is enough for most companies, and anything beyond that becomes noise that drives opt-outs.
Cap frequency per user, not per campaign. A new install should not receive the same volume as someone who has used the app for two years.
Do not request notification permission the moment the app opens. The user has seen no value yet, and a refusal at that point is usually permanent. Ask after the first real moment of usefulness — after a completed order, after they save something that matters — and say exactly what they will receive and why.
Then respect a no. In-app messages are still available to you; the system-level push is not, unless they agreed.
Open rate alone is a misleading number. A campaign with a 20% open rate that lifts uninstalls by 5% is a loss, not a win. Track three things together: opens, the number of users who disable notifications, and uninstalls that follow a push within a short window.
If a particular notification type keeps showing up before uninstalls, stop sending it. This does not need sophisticated analytics, it needs each message tied to what happened after it.
Content matters as much as timing. "We have something new" gives nobody a reason to tap. One line stating what the user gains does more than three lines of campaign language, and a notification that is accurate about its content builds the habit of opening the next one.
Q8DM has worked in programming, design and training in Kuwait since 1998, and treats notifications as part of the whole app experience, not a button you press whenever you feel like it.
Want a review of your app's notification plan, or a cleaner experience for your users? Start at q8dm.com.