Yes, Push Notifications are a viable retention tactic. And app developers have prudently started to take all the right measures to optimize flows to get users to opt in to push notifications. But once that happens, are we as app developers doing right by the user to ensure that we are using this sacred push notification channel optimally? It doesn’t sound like it — in fact, we might be abusing the channel, and not realizing the consequences of the abuse.

I’ve seen this pattern way too often now:

Build Web app Send Emails Build iOS App For every email we send, send a Push Notification

In most cases, this pattern is just unacceptable and it can overwhelm your users to the point of no return.

For example, this is Pinterest’s Push Notification Settings page:

This is Pinterest’s email settings page: