Users Actually Want More Notifications (When You Do Them Right)
If a client is looking for a quick win to create more life and engagement in their app with a single feature, the first thing we’re going to look at is notifications. Many clients in highly regulated industries such as insurance and finance have avoided or minimized use of notifications due to concerns about privacy and compliance. That’s an understandable fear—there are legitimate privacy considerations associated with notifications. But the benefit (a much more engaged experience for users) is worth working to overcome those issues.
This week we’re covering:
Push notifications
Email notifications
SMS (text) notifications
Live Activities (iOS only)
In-app notifications
The first four listed above are considered external notifications: they occur outside the app, and the goal is to get the person to open the app. The last one, in-app notifications, happens within the app and has a different purpose: to help the user find the most relevant and timely content.
Both of these matter immensely if you’re trying to build a highly sticky experience.
Break through the noise
Let’s take the issue of getting people to open your app. If you are operating under the fantasy that your app will be so compelling that people will open it spontaneously, without any nudging, think again. Let’s assume you have the most interesting app in the world. That’s a high bar, but it’s our hypothetical situation so we can do what we want. In order to get someone to open your app after the initial download, you have to get that person to spontaneously think of your app without a single outside trigger. Sound easy? Now factor in the widely accepted statistic that the average adult sees between 4,000 and 10,000 brand messages per day (including traditional ads, email, and push notifications), but is only consciously aware of around 100. That means of the messages they’re seeing, they automatically filter out somewhere between 97.5 and 99%. So, in order for your hypothetical app to break through, the user has to have their own unique thought, un-prompted by any messaging, and that has to bubble up to the forefront of their mind despite thousands of similar thoughts prompted by messaging being filtered out.
Next, that user would have to find that one thought they had on their own, absent any messaging from you, so enticing that it motivates them to action, despite around 100 targeted messages from other brands competing for their attention.
Reading statistics like that, it’s easy to see why Buildfire’s 2025 findings show around 25% of apps are downloaded once and never opened again. This figure has remained remarkably stable over the last 10 years. Even more distressing, UXCam’s 2025 benchmarks still show that only 29% of users are retained at the 90-day mark.
What’s going wrong? Poor use of notifications.
Notifications are an afterthought in many apps. After all, It feels borderline unfair that you have to invest in the features AND then invest in a mechanism to get people to use it repeatedly. I’ve even witnessed leaders think they can try out a feature and then add the notifications later “if it takes off.”
I can promise you, it won’t. Not without a nudge strategy that almost certainly involves some form of notifications. Virtually every highly sticky app you can think of has employed a notification strategy to train users to check the app frequently. They do that because it works. But how? We all know that an app that abuses notifications quickly becomes a nuisance.
Consider the best method(s) for external notification
There are several methods of notifications that can be used to drive users to an app, with pros and cons to each.
Push notifications have experienced multiple ebbs and flows in popularity and are strong for mobile-first users. SMS notifications have a 98% open rate, but consumers are understandably reluctant to give brands carte blanche to text them. Email notifications are popular for B2B tools, but less so for consumer tools. Live Activities, an iOS-only feature that allows continuous status updates for events lasting 8 hours or less, are gaining popularity.
So which to choose? To create the best experience, it’s not going to be the same answer across the entire app. Think about the urgency level of the notification. For example, users are generally open to SMS notifications for high-urgency events such as appointment reminders, fraud alerts or order tracking but don’t want more routine notifications clogging their text inbox.
For multi-platform products (for example, a web app and mobile app), you also want to consider what the user is doing after they receive the notification: is the flow that follows that notification best performed on a mobile device or a computer? Many users access email from their mobile devices, but very few access SMS from their computer. If the flow is best performed on a computer (for example, it has to do with downloading files, or manual entry of a credit card number), email may be a more likely candidate.
User preference, however, is the most important factor. Give users a choice in how they’d like to receive notifications: email, push notifications, or both. SMS should be reserved for high-urgency, transactional messages unless the user has indicated a specific preference to receive engagement nudges that way.
Live Activities are a special iOS-only feature that allows an app developer to post continuous updates that remain on the lock screen or in the status bar. This is a perfect tool for the right situation: think, a sports game score or monitoring the progress of your Uber Eats order. However, because this is limited to an activity lasting 8 hours or less, it’s not appropriate for many standard business use cases such as claim processing. You also want to consider how avidly the user is waiting for an update. Do they need to know every time they glance at their phone? Or is it more of a “set it and forget it” activity?
Once again, the entire app does not need to use the same notification mechanism. Tailor the mechanism to the nature of the event for best results.
Choose frequency of external notifications wisely
The most common notifications are sent as they happen. This makes sense in many cases; it ensures that the user is receiving the most up-to-date information. But what happens when this results in a high volume of notifications? For example, many users would be overwhelmed by an external notification every time there’s a transaction on their bank account. Choosing this frequency could lead to users disabling notifications altogether.
For apps that may incur a high volume of non-urgent notifications, summary or digest notifications may be the answer to optimize stickiness. Summary notifications are when a set of related events are condensed into one notification. For example, “Your recent post has 25 likes and 3 comments.” Digest notifications are a special kind of summary that is normally set out at a predetermined time interval and may include several kinds of information. For example, a daily or weekly summary would be considered a digest notification.
Many successful apps employ both kinds: instant notifications for important events, and digest notifications to help the user spot trends or consider opportunities. Digest notifications also have the important advantage that they allow for some value-added communications: highlighting recent blog posts or offers, for example. This works best when it’s personalized to the user.
An especially sticky form of digest emails involves some sort of benchmarking. Humans are naturally curious about how they measure up to others, so including this sort of information positions your organization as the expert, and also provides useful social nudges.
Ideally, you want to provide choice to the user. Do they want to receive a notification for every transaction processed, or a daily or weekly summary? Do they want to receive it via email? How about push notifications? Giving the user choice helps eliminate many pitfalls of notifications since preferences vary widely.
Provide enough detail to be useful, without violating HIPAA in insurance, healthcare and other HRIs
Especially for users who prefer more granular notifications every time something happens, detail is what makes it useful. “Your transaction for Gap, Inc. was processed successfully” is more useful than “Something happened with a transaction. Check the app.” Repeated transactions that provide little information are likely to be tuned out by the user over time.
The challenge is that the detail that makes the notification relevant can also cause a compliance problem for HIPAA and other privacy regulations. While the user might prefer to know that “John’s claim for Dr. Jones on 9/1/2025 was approved,” that’s revealing PHI. How are innovative organizations to balance what the user wants with staying in compliance?
Give the user clear choices. We recommend creating a mini-flow that guides the user through making decisions about their notifications, helping them understand the privacy implications and choosing what’s right for them. For example, you could default to a “High-privacy” style of notification that just tells them something has happened and to check the app, but allow them to opt into “Detailed notifications including patient and provider names”. Being specific about what information you’ll share, and showing examples, helps the user understand the choice they are making.
In-app notifications complete the experience
We’ve discussed several methods of using external notifications to encourage users to open the app. But what happens when they do that? How do we direct them to the most relevant information?
There are a few patterns successful apps use for this. While each could warrant its own separate article, we’ll cover some basics of each.
The home screen: The main screen users see when they first log into the app should contain the most timely, relevant information. In some cases, that’s a feed of recent activity. Maybe it’s a dashboard with charts and graphs. Maybe it’s content-based, serving up relevant articles and videos. The details will vary based on the app, but the need for a punchy, relevant dashboard is universal.
Banner alerts: For particularly urgent items, a banner alert is a compliment to an SMS or other high-urgency external notification. This is normally used for high disruption events: a billing failure, planned maintenance, actions required on the part of the user.
Notification list: Many apps employ a notification list. Why is this important in addition to the external notification? Because people don’t thoroughly read external notifications—it gets their attention, they open the app, and expect to be able to find what they are looking for. People also may not necessarily complete the action directly from a notification, so even if, for example, the notification contains a link directly to the relevant screen, they may also expect to be able to find that themselves without going back to the notification.
Security and deep links
Deep links have to be handled carefully, especially in highly secure environments. It’s important that they don’t expose any sensitive information and cannot be used to circumvent normal security measures. For example, a deep link should not bypass login mechanisms. This creates a security risk for the application.
Use notifications intentionally to create more engaged apps in insurance, healthcare, and finance
Don’t neglect notifications. They’re the key to creating a more connected experience in insurance, healthcare, finance and other highly regulated industries.