Loyalty glossary · 10. Marketing and engagement (20)
Push Notification
A push notification is a short message a loyalty programme sends to a member's phone outside the app, usually to trigger a specific action such as a redemption, a tier review, or a limited time earn.
Push is a permission channel, not a broadcast medium. A programme that treats it as free reach burns the one asset it actually has, the member's ongoing consent to be interrupted. The first 10 per month may lift engagement. The next 10 per month usually lower it, and few operators measure the difference.
Run the numbers before defending any push schedule. A programme sends 20 per month and sees a 10 percent open rate, so it gets 2 per month of actual attention. Raise sends to 40 per month and the open rate rarely holds at 10 percent. It drops to 7 percent, which yields 2.8 per month, not 4 per month. The extra 20 per month bought only 0.8 per month more and a faster exit from the permission list.
Accrual gives push its only honest trigger. A member who is 2,000 points short of a reward has a reason to open the message. A member who gets a generic offer does not. The first message strengthens the connection between behaviour and value. The second trains the member to swipe and forget. That is why tying the trigger to accrual or to activity based qualification beats any calendar rule.
Active member rate is the only metric that catches push misuse. Open rate and click rate are vanity numbers because they exclude everyone who opted out or muted the channel. A programme can show rising opens while its active member rate falls 3 points in a year. That fall is the real tax on a bad push strategy.
The working rule is one push per state change, not one push per campaign. If a member has not accrued, not moved a tier, and not asked for a reminder, the programme should not send. Most programmes that follow this rule need far fewer than 20 per month. Many settle at 5 per month for active members and zero for the rest. That is not a failure of nerve. It is the difference between a notification channel and a spam folder.