How to write a push notification people actually tap

A push notification is the shortest piece of writing most sites publish, and it gets the least attention. It is often the headline pasted into a field a minute before sending.

That is a waste, because it is also the piece of writing that decides whether someone keeps letting you onto their screen.

What a push notification has to do

It has three jobs, in a very small space.

1. Say what happened or what is ready.
2. Make it clear why this person would care.
3. Give them a reason to tap now instead of later.

Everything else is decoration, and decoration gets cut off.

Length: assume most of it won't be seen

How much text shows depends on the operating system, the browser, the screen and whether the notification is expanded. There is no single limit to write to, and anyone quoting an exact character count for "push notifications" is describing one device.

What holds up in practice:

• Title: short enough to read at a glance. Around 40 characters is a sensible target. Treat anything after that as a bonus.
• Body: one sentence. Around 100 characters, with the important part first.
• Front-load everything. If only the first five words show, they should still make sense.

Then send a test to your own phone and your own desktop before you send it to anyone else. It takes thirty seconds and you will catch most cut-offs.

Write the specific thing first

The most common weak notification is a vague teaser. It feels clever in the composer and reads like spam on a lock screen.

The better versions are less exciting to write and much more useful to read. The reader knows within a second whether this is for them.

Write for one person

A notification lands on one screen, held by one person. "Our readers" and "all our customers" are invisible to them.

Ask what the person who gets this already knows. If they subscribed to match results, they don't need the club name explained. If they followed a topic, start with the news, not with the topic label.

This is also where targeting and copy meet. A notification written for everyone tends to be vague, because it has to work for everyone. When you send to the people a story is actually for, you can write more directly, and it works better.

Mistakes that make people switch off

• Clickbait. It works once. The second time, people remember.
• Fake urgency. "Last chance" on something that isn't the last chance teaches people to ignore you.
• ALL CAPS and stacks of emoji. They look like spam because spam uses them.
• Sending the same story twice under two headlines. It is the most avoidable form of fatigue there is.
• Notifications at night. Unless it is genuinely urgent, wait for the morning. Routine news at 3 a.m. is a quick way to lose permission.
• No clear destination. The tap should land on the exact thing the notification described, not your homepage.

Images and icons

A recognizable icon matters more than a large image. People decide in a glance whether a notification is from someone they trust, and the icon is part of that.

Large images can help for visual content, but they don't show everywhere and they don't replace a clear title. Write the notification so it works with no image at all.

How to know if it worked

Click rate is the obvious number, and it is misleading on its own. A clickbait title can raise clicks and raise unsubscribes in the same send.

Look at three things together for each send:

• Interactions per thousand delivered.
• Unsubscribes and removed endpoints in the 24 hours after.
• Return visits compared with a holdout group that got nothing.

A good notification moves the first and third without moving the second.

How EngageNudge helps

EngageNudge shows who a Nudge will reach before you press send, and who will rest and why. That makes it easier to write for the people who will actually get it.

Every campaign keeps a holdout group, so you can see what a notification changed in return visits, not just in clicks. And per-person caps, quiet hours and topic cooldowns are applied before delivery, so one good headline doesn't turn into the same story reaching someone three times.