When it comes to marketing to their users, Windows 10 developers have a secret weapon.

It’s unobtrusive and respectful. It doesn’t require any coding. Depending on how much Redmond-flavored Kool-Aid you’ve had, you might even say it’s beautiful. And it’s free.

The weapon: push notifications.

Push is different on Windows 10. Microsoft has gone to a lot of trouble to make it easy for you. Once you put their SDK in to your app, you can immediately boost your app’s performance by sending pushes directly from the Dev Center.

They’re the best way to keep your users engaged with your existing apps, and to launch new ones: more effective than email, cheaper than paid ads; instant, timely, easy to use, and measurable.

This guide will take you through the 6 simple steps of defining, designing, and sending your first push campaign. It shows you how top apps use push to drive revenue and re-engagement, all for free.

Understanding how Microsoft thinks about push

The push campaigns shown in this guide will trigger toast notifications on your users’ devices. These toasts look and behave just like the toasts that you can trigger from within your app.

Toasts that your users don’t act upon will stack up in the Action Center. Wherever your users see them, your toasts will be clearly identified as having originated from your app.

Respect this channel. Don’t overuse it, trick your users into clicking, or be obnoxious.

Be careful: as with other platforms, once you put a push notification campaign in flight, you can’t recall it.

A word to Google and Apple apostates

If you’re a developer who’s coming from iOS, macOS, or Android, you’re probably expecting some code snippets below. Spoiler: there aren’t any. No tortured screenshots about setting up keys and certificates, either. Once you take care of the prerequisites below, everything you need to launch an effective push campaign is doable right from the Dev Center.

Maybe even stop reading this article and send it to your marketing team right now because you literally don’t need to be here.

Getting ready

This guide covers push campaign setup and best practices for UWP apps (including Centennial apps) running on Windows 10. If your app isn’t UWP, this guide won’t help you — sorry. (Convert your app to UWP!)

Before you go any further:

Make sure you have the Microsoft Store Services SDK in your app. In addition to enabling push, this SDK gives you access to the Feedback Hub, ad units for Microsoft’s in-house ad network, and a bunch of other cool toys. If you want to run re-engagement push campaigns for your app, your Store app needs to support deep linking. Make sure you’re signed up for the Microsoft Affiliate Program. Download the Notifications Visualizer app from the Microsoft Store.

Step 1: Decide what to push