What is a Push Notification Service?

Here are some of the most common ways that organizations use push notifications.

Marketing campaigns

Push notifications are often used for marketing campaigns. Promotion details, discounts, new product launches, and other important updates are sent directly to your users’ devices.

Push notifications are an effective way to push campaigns and encourage your users to perform actions. For example, you can prompt them to download a new app, sign up for a service, or purchase products they liked.

Successful push notification campaigns also help to bring back past customers.

Transactional notifications

Push notifications can alert your users to transactions like financial activity in their accounts. For example, banks use push notifications to alert customers about deposits, withdrawals, account balance updates, and other changes to their accounts.

Push notifications help customers stay on top of their finances and be aware of any suspicious activity. You can also use push notifications to send customers payment reminders and other alerts about upcoming transactions.

One-time passwords

Push notifications can deliver one-time passwords (OTPs), which let you authenticate user accounts. For example, when a user attempts to log in or make a purchase, you can send an OTP to the user’s mobile device. The user would then enter the OTP to complete the action, so you can verify the user's identity without storing sensitive information. More generally, OTPs are one aspect of multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Read about MFA »

Emergency alerts

Government organizations can use push notifications to deliver emergency alerts to the public. These can be alerts about natural disasters as well as other emergencies, such as Amber Alerts, terrorist threats, and extreme weather warnings.

Medical services

Push notifications can send your users health information like appointment updates, medication reminders, and test results. Additionally, push notifications can remind patients to take their medications or book follow-up appointments. 

Shipping updates

As a retailer or supplier, you can send push notifications to keep your customers updated on the status of their orders. You can notify your customers of any changes in an order’s shipping status, such as when it is shipped, when it is out for delivery, and when it is delivered. Push notifications can also provide tracking numbers and estimated delivery times.

Customer feedback

Push notifications can prompt your customers to provide feedback about a product or service. You can use them to ask customers to rate their experiences or leave comments about products or services. Additionally, you can use push notifications to conduct surveys and gain insights into your customers’ preferences and opinions. 

Social media

If you run a social media application, you can send push notifications to your users about updates such as new posts and comments. When you send users a notification whenever new content is available, they can quickly access and engage with the latest news without manually checking for updates. 

For a push notification to happen, a publisher has to send it, a user has to receive it, and a service has to connect them. The relationship between these three parties is like this:

• A publisher uses an application server to send notifications to its users
• A user agrees to receive notifications by subscribing through their device
• A platform-specific push notification service links a publisher to its users

If you’re developing a mobile app, here are common steps to consider if you want to start sending push notifications.

Register app with push notification service

You should connect with the push notification service of individual platforms that you want to target. For example, you should design your app to connect with Apple Push Notification service (APNs) to target iOS users and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to target Android users. You can register your app with the push notification service to gain access to the service API.

Read about APIs »

Process service tokens

Push notification services maintain a connection with each app and associated mobile device that have registered with their services. When an app and mobile device register, the push notification service returns a device token. As a developer, you can process and use the tokens to send notifications to your users.

Start to send notifications

Your application server sends the content of a notification and device tokens to your push notification service API. Once the server has sent the request to the push notification service, the service sends the notification to your users’ devices.

The notification appears on the devices’ lock screens, notification centers, or app icons, depending on your users’ settings. Your users can then tap the notification to go to your app or website.