Push notifications: Re-engage and retain users effectively

Dear Apptics community,

Have you ever wished to proactively engage and communicate with users even when they are not actively using your app? Apptics already empowers you with features for app health, performance, usage, engagement, and growth.

We are excited to add Push notifications that will help you take user engagement to the next level and facilitate re-engagement with users!

Introduction to push notifications

Push notifications allow you to trigger notifications to your app users about important updates, events, offers, posts, etc. As the name suggests, these push notifications are app-related messages shown to your users as pop-up messages on their devices. These notifications are sent to users who have already installed your app and have enabled push notifications on their device settings.

Push notifications complement traditional methods like email, SMS, and phone calls. They serve as a highly effective channel to communicate with users, keep them informed of any updates instantly, and encourage active engagement. You can send these notifications even when your users are not actively using the app. This way, you can open new opportunities for re-engagement and boost user retention for your app.

Sending push notifications using Apptics

To start sending push notifications in Apptics, you must first complete the push notification setup. This involves authenticating the appropriate push notification service provider certificates with your app and later adding their details in the Apptics console. You need to upload the Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) credentials for Android apps and Apple Push Notification service (APNs) certificates for iOS apps. Once the necessary certificate details are provided for the package name/bundle ID, you can proceed to create and send push notifications to users. You can refer to our push notifications guide for detailed guidance.

A push notification contains many elements including text, media, action buttons, and much more. Usually, you would have to trigger them natively by sending the notification payload in your app code or using third-party tools. In Apptics, we have simplified and streamlined the process of creating a push notification in five simple steps.

1) Schedule

You start by providing a name to the push notification you are drafting for your reference. Then, you set the timing of the push notification. For the first phase of push notifications, you can either trigger the push notification immediately after publishing it or schedule the notification for a later date and time.

2) Audience

Define the target audience for the push notification by using filters and criteria.

• Filters - Select at least one application ID to target your push notification. You can refine your audience further by filtering based on device type, model, app version, OS version, country, and user group. To measure the effectiveness of your notification, you can track the conversion rate by specifying a desired action you want users to take within the app after interacting with the notification.
  
• Criteria - Set the criteria based on which you want your selected audience to receive push notifications. You can set the criteria pattern based on previous user activity (the events triggered or screens visited by your users) within a selected date range.

Note: The number of devices targeted for the notification based on the filters and criteria you apply in the Audience tab will be shown as the target device count.

Apart from selecting the audience for the notification, you can also analyze how effective it was amongst your users. You have an option as Conversion. It allows you to choose an event (that is already being tracked in Apptics for your app) and measure how many users have taken the desired action within your app after interacting with your notification.

Example: Say you send a notification for a webinar happening tomorrow. The desired action here would be for your users to register for the webinar after interacting with the notification. If the action of registering for an event from the app is tracked as an event in Apptics, you can select the same event to know how many users registered for the webinar after interacting with the push notification.

3) Content

After scheduling the notification and targeting your app users, you must provide the notification content. The content mainly includes the title, message, and image. If you have a desired action you want your users to take after interacting with the notification (of course!), you can provide the URL of the page/screen and redirect them.

4) Additional elements

Now that you have provided what needs to go in the notification, you can provide additional details to customize how the notification should appear and behave on the user's device. They include:

• Sound to play while the notification is delivered
  
• Notification payload
  
• Increment app badge icon to notify unread notifications

You can also add some Android-specific elements like the notification channel, app icon, and app icon color that you can add to customize the notification appearance and sound.

5) Action buttons

The final step is to add interactive elements in the notification to encourage active user engagement. You can add a maximum of three action buttons and provide the associated details, such as:

• Category name - It decides the notification type and action buttons that will appear. This applies only to iOS apps.
  
• Action ID - A unique action ID to track user interaction associated with each action button.
  
• Button label - The text is displayed on the action button.
  
• Icon path - The file path of the image that will be used as the button icon.
  
• Click action - The display name for the button icon.

While you create the notification and provide the necessary details, you can get a preview of the notification based on the entries you have provided so far.

Testing the push notification

In Apptics, you can test the notification once you select the timing, define your target audience, and provide the message for the notification. You can view the option to test the notification starting from the step to add content for your message.

You can test the notification on devices that are registered with APNs/FCM and have debug mode enabled in them. You can select the application ID and provide the device token, which will be available in Xcode/Android Studio for the test device. After testing the notification, what's next? Hitting the publishing button, of course!

Once you finish all the steps with the necessary details, save the notification as a draft for future iterations, test on devices, and finally publish when it is ready!

Monitoring the results

After creating push notifications, it is much more important to know if they have been successfully sent to your users. So once the notifications are triggered, you will be able to view the performance stats for the notification. They include:

• Target count - The number of targeted devices for the notification.
  
• Success count - The number of notifications that were sent successfully from the push notification service provider.
  
• Failure count - The number of notifications that couldn't be delivered due to technical issues.
  
• Received count - The number of notifications delivered to the user's device.
  
• Opened count - The number of notifications that users opened and interacted with.
  
• Conversion count - The number of times users took the desired action after interacting with your notification.

We have rolled out the push notification feature in its BETA phase, and it awaits enhancements in the future. Some of them include recurring notifications, user segments, and automation of push notification workflows. Stay tuned for interesting updates!

Cheers,

Team Apptics

• Topic Participants

• Supraja Gayathri S

  

• Recent Topics

• Systematic SPF alignment issues with Zoho subdomains

  Analysis Period: August 19 - September 1, 2025 PROBLEM SUMMARY Multiple Zoho services are causing systematic SPF authentication failures in DMARC reports from major email providers (Google, Microsoft, Zoho). While emails are successfully delivered due

• Accidentally deleted a meeting recording -- can it be recovered?

  Hi, I accidentally deleted the recording for a meeting I had today. Is there a way I can recover it?

• To Zoho customers and partners: how do you use Linked Workspaces?

  Hello, I'm exploring how we can set up and use Linked Workspaces and would like to hear from customers and partners about your use cases and experience with them. I have a Zoho ticket open, because my workspace creation fails. In the meantime, how is

• How to access email templates using Desk API?

  Trying to send an email to the customer associated to the ticket for an after hours notification and can't find the API endpoint to grab the email template. Found an example stating it should be: "https://desk.zoho.com/api/v1/emailtemplates/" + templateID;

• How to render either thumbnail_url or preview_url or preview_data_url

  I get 401 Unauthorised when using these urls in the <img> tag src attribute. Guide me on how to use them!

• Update Portal User Name using Deluge?

  Hey everyone. I have a basic intake form that gathers some general information. Our team then has a consultation with the person. If the person wants to move forward, the team pushes a CRM button that adds the user to a creator portal. That process is

• Zoho Bookings No Sync with Outlook

  Zoho Bookings appointments are showing on my Outlook Calendar but Outlook events are not showing on Zoho Bookings. How do I fix this?

• Unable to retrieve Contact_Name field contents using Web API in javascript function

  Hello, I've added a field in the Purchase Order form to select and associate a Sales Order (Orden_de_venta, lookup field). I've also created a client script to complete some fields from the Sales Order (and the Quote), when the user specifies the related

• Updating Woocommerce Variation Products Prices Via Zoho CRM

  I can update product prices with this flow: But I can't update variant products. I got a code from Zoho for this, but I couldn't get it to work. It needs to find the product in the CRM from the SKU field and update the variation with the price there.

• Emails Disappearing From Inbox

  I am experiencing the unnerving problem of having some of the messages in my inbox just disappear.  It seems to happen to messages that have been in there for longer than a certain amount of time (not sure how long exactly). They are usually messages that I have flagged and know I need to act on, but have not gotten around to doing so yet.  I leave them in my inbox so I will see them and be reminded that I still need to do something about them, but at least twice now I have opened my inbox and found

• Power of Automation :: Automatic removal of project users once the project status is changed.

  A custom function is a software code that can be used to automate a process and this allows you to automate a notification, call a webhook, or perform logic immediately after a workflow rule is triggered. This feature helps to automate complex tasks and

• Customizing Form Questions per Recipient Group in Zoho Campaigns/Forms

  Hello everyone, I would like to ask if it’s possible in Zoho Campaigns or Zoho Forms to send out a campaign where the form questions can be customized based on the group of recipients. Use case example: I have prepared 20 questionnaire questions. For

• Automatic category assignment

  Hi, I’d like to ask if there is a way to automatically assign an expense category based on the recognized Merchant. What would be the simplest way to set up automatic category assignment? Alternatively, is there an option to first choose the category

• Zoho Books - France

  L’équipe de Zoho France reçoit régulièrement des questions sur la conformité de ses applications de finances (Zoho Books/ Zoho Invoice) pour le marché français. Voici quelques points pour clarifier la question : Zoho Books est un logiciel de comptabilité

• Every time an event is updated, all participants receive an update email. How can I deactivate this?

  Every time an event is updated in Zoho CRM (e.g. change description, link to Lead) every participant of this meeting gets an update email. Another customer noticed this problem years ago in the Japanese community: https://help.zoho.com/portal/ja/community/topic/any-time-an-event-is-updated-on-zohocrm-calendar-it-sends-multiple-invites-to-the-participants-how-do-i-stop-that-from-happening

• Having Trouble Opening The Candidate Portal

  Recently am having trouble opening the Candidate Portal. It keeps loading but cannot display any widgets. Tried Safari, Chrome and Edge. Non of them work. Please solve the problem ASAP.

• Forms - Notification When Response Submitted

  How do I set it up to generate an email notification when a response (class request) is submitted?

• how to use validation rules in subform

  Is it possible to use validation rules for subforms? I tried the following code: entityMap = crmAPIRequest.toMap().get("record"); sum = 0; direct_billing = entityMap.get("direct_billing_details"); response = Map(); for each i in direct_billing { if(i.get("type")

• Notes Issues

  Been having issues with Notes in the CRM. Yesterday it wasn't showing the notes, but it got resolved after a few minutes., Now I have been having a hard time saving notes the whole day. Notes can't be saved by the save button. it's grayed out or not grayed

• How to disable user entry on Answer Bot in Zobot

  Hi, I have an Answer Bot in my Zobot, here is the configuration: I only want the user to choose 1 of the 4 the options I have provided: When no answer found, user chooses 'I'll rephrase the question' or 'Ask a different question When answer is found,

• More admin control over user profiles

  It's important for our company, and I'm sure many others, to keep our users inline with our branding and professional appearance. It would be useful for administrators to have more control over profile aspects such as: Profile image User names Email signatures

• Please Make Zoho CRM Cadences Flexible: Allow Inserting and Reordering Follow-Up Steps

  Sales processes are not static. We test, learn, and adapt as customers respond differently than expected. Right now, Zoho Cadences do not support inserting a new step between existing follow-ups or changing the type of an existing primary step. If I realize

• Changing the Default Search Criteria for Finding Duplicates

  Hey everyone, is it possible to adjust the default search criteria for finding and merging duplicate records? Right now, CRM uses some (in my opinion nonsensical) fields as search criteria for duplicate records which do nothing except dilute the results.

• Clear Tag & Linking Between Quotes and Sales Orders

  Hi Zoho Team, In Zoho Books, when a quote is converted into a sales order, it would be extremely useful to have: A clear tag/indicator on the quote showing that it has been converted into a sales order. A direct link in the sales order back to the originating

• Zoho Books Sandbox environment

  Hello. Is there a free sandbox environment for the developers using Zoho Books API? I am working on the Zoho Books add-on and currently not ready to buy a premium service - maybe later when my add-on will start to bring money. Right now I just need a

• Add Direct Ticket Link to Zoho Help Center Portal in Email Replies

  Hi Zoho Support Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to request a small but valuable improvement to enhance the usability of the Zoho Help Center portal (https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/myarea). Currently, when someone from Zoho replies to a support

• [Webinar] Deluge Learning Series - AI-Powered Automation using Zoho Deluge and Gemini

  We’re excited to invite you to an exclusive 1-hour webinar where we’ll demonstrate how to bring the power of Google’s Gemini AI into your Zoho ecosystem using Deluge scripting. Whether you're looking to automate data extraction from PDFs or dynamically

• Connecting Zoho Inventory to ShipStation

  we are looking for someone to help connect via API shipStation with Zoho inventory. Any ideas? Thanks. Uri

• Subform edits don't appear in parent record timeline?

  Is it possible to have subform edits (like add row/delete row) appear in the Timeline for parent records? A user can edit a record, only edit the subform, and it doesn't appear in the timeline. Is there a workaround or way that we can show when a user

• New in Cadences: Option to Resume or Restart follow-ups when re-enrolling records into a Cadence, and specify custom un-enrollment criteria

  Managing follow-ups effectively involves understanding the appropriate timing for reaching out, as well as knowing when to take a break and resume later, or deciding if it's necessary to start the follow-up process anew. With two significant enhancements

• Im Stuck in an EDIT ONLY WITH WIZARD issue

  So I found Wizards to be a really helpful tool in minimizing the exposure of redundant, superfluous fields to staff that would never otherwise have to edit those fields. My issue is, that when the record (in this case a lead) is created with a wizard,

• Account upgrade

  Good evening, I upgraded my account and paid for it. From standard to professional. Unfortunately after the paiment my account was not upgraded. Please your advise. Best Regards Erik van Staverden

• How to set ALL default dates of my organization to DD-MM-YYYY format?

  All replies to this question comes from a time where the UI was different. It's extremely frustrating not being able to find how to do this simple setting change. I want everything and everyone in my organizations to have DD-MM-YYYY date format by default.

• How can I sync from Zoho Projects into an existing Zoho Sprints project?

  Hi I have managed to integrate Zoho Projects with Zoho Sprints and I can see that the integration works as a project was created in Zoho Sprints. But, what I would like to do is to sync into an existing Zoho Sprints project. Is there a way to make that

• Can we generate APK and IOS app?

  Dears, I want to know the availability to develop the app on zoho and after that .. generate the APK or IOS app  and after that I added them to play store or IOS store.. Is it possible to do this .. I want not to use zoho app or let my customers use it. thanks 

• Zoho Subform Workflows onAdd of Row

  Suppose I have a form with attached workflows onLoad. If I use the form as a subform, will it inherit the workflows or do I need to create new ones onAdd of row?

• Session Expired

  I constantly get "Session Expired" and need to relogin or close and open the application again. This gets really frustrating during the day. Is this something that can be solved? This really makes me want to leave the app as it is no go to need to reopen

• Super Admin removal

  I brought a sub, and I gave the Super admin rights to a person who is no longer with us, so I need to change, and I need to make myself the Super admin

• Better Notes Commenting

  Hi, I'd like to suggest better collaboration tools for NOTES. The current notes section for Accounts, Contacts and Deals is not ideally suitable for any degree of communication or collaboration. When responding to a note, there is no ability to leave

• Formula field with IF statement based on picklist field and string output to copy/paste in multi-line field via function

  Hello there, I am working on a formula field based on a 3-item picklist field (i.e. *empty value*, 'Progress payment', 'Letter of credit'). Depending on the picked item, the formula field shall give a specific multi-line string (say 'XXX' in case of 'Progress

• Next Page