Service vs Promotional Push

Not all push messages are created equal. It’s important to know the difference so you can send the right type.

There are two main categories of push messages – service and promotional.

Service push messages refer to ones that communicate real time, one-to-one information that is necessary to use your products or services or to notify customers of a change in process status. These could be anything from account balance notifications to package delivery status updates. In many cases, customers can even reply to share or confirm information.

Promotional push messages have a different purpose. They are used to promote your products or services. They include any kind of sales or marketing messages, like discount notifcations, digital coupons or promo codes. These are massively sent.

This distinction is important. Research has shown that your users are far more open to receiving service push messages. After all, one of the main reasons they use your app is to get information quicker or a better service. With service messages you are helping them do so.

On the other hand, your users are more likely to get annoyed by promotional push messages. This is especially true when the messages are unsolicited.
That means if you care about user retention, you want to focus on sending service push messages. You want to provide your users with valuable, timely information. That way you can help your users and build trust in your app, instead of bombarding them with promotions and sales.