Push notifications: Re-engage and retain users effectively

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.
Notes
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.
Quote
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



        • Recent Topics

        • Mail Merge - unable to send more than 50 email

          Hi, I've subscribed to the pay email service because of the Mail Merge feature. However, I've found that this feature only allow to send up to 50 emails. I've to attach a screenshot for your reference. This limitation is not mentioned anywhere in service.

        • Zoholics Europe 2025: Your Ultimate Data Analysis (Zoho Analytics) Workshop Experience

          Why should you attend? This year, Zoholics Europe 2025 is putting data analysis centre stage. With a dedicated workshop designed to answer all your data-related questions, you’ll gain practical skills, real-time solutions, and expert insights that you

        • UK payroll entries

          Hey guys, Nett payroll payments are imported direct into the bank, using an external payroll system (will be glad for Zoho to have a UK payroll app) At present I have monthly recurring bills for HMRC which are auto entered & paid when due. This seems

        • Closing Accounting Periods - Invoice/Posting dates

          Hi, I have seen in another thread but I'm unsure on how the 'transaction locking' works with regards to new and old transactions. When producing monthly accounts if I close December 24 accounts on 8th Jan 25 will transaction locking prevent me from posting

        • Invoice status on write-off is "Paid" - how do I change this to "Written off"

          HI guys, I want to write off a couple of outstanding invoices, but when I do this, the status of the invoices shows as "Paid". Clearly this is not the case and I need to be able to see that they are written off in the customer's history. Is there a way

        • Reverse Charge Services (Non-EU) Showing Correctly in 84/85 and 67, But Missing in Box 46 - Germany

          Hi, I'm located in Germany and I’ve set up my expenses for non-EU services (e.g., OpenAI, DeepSeek) under the reverse charge mechanism (§ 13b UStG) in Zoho Books, and I noticed some discrepancies in the VAT Summary Report. What’s Correct: Reverse Charge

        • Zoho Live Chat/Support

          What is going on with Zoho support lately? I've tried to use the live chat feature 4 different times and it refuses to connect to any (despite waiting over 30 minutes one of the tries). I finally gave up and emailed my question nearly a week ago and still

        • Can we have a module to records Certificate No and TDS rates for Lower TDS Certificates by the vendors ?

          Can we have a module to records Certificate No and TDS rates for Lower TDS Certificates by the vendors ?

        • Tip #38- Track Organizational Changes: A Guide to Using Action Log Viewer- 'Insider Insights'

          Hello Zoho Assist Community! Ever needed to trace who did what and when within your remote support operations? Let’s say your support team is growing, and you want to monitor key activities like settings updates, user invites, module changes, or permission

        • Tip of the Week #67– Avoid confusion – Mark duplicate threads.

          When customers send the same message to multiple email addresses, such as support@ and sales@, your team may end up seeing the same message in different inboxes. This creates confusion, risks double replies, and clutters your workspace. Use the Mark as

        • Tax in Quote

          Each row item in a quote has a tax value.  At the total numbers at the bottom, there is also a Tax entry. If you select tax in both of the (line item, and the total), the tax doubles. My assumption is that the Tax total should be totalling the tax from

        • Final Reminder: Discontinuation of Older ASAP Widgets and Mobile SDK Support

          We launched the new ASAP Help Widget last year, introducing a unified and enhanced experience. Since then, older configurations have been placed in read-only mode, with all major updates and improvements built exclusively on the new version. As part of

        • Zoho Subscriptions -- Zoho Commerce integration

          Is there integration between Zoho Subscriptions and Zoho Commerce? I would like to create subscription plans in Zoho Subscritpions and list them for on my Zoho Commerce store.

        • Website show Blank white screen

          Customer called me to tell me my website is currently down upon review it shows a white screen however I can access everything via editor. JITCADCAM.com

        • How manufacturing analytics can transform your enterprise with Zoho Projects Plus

          Did you know that every single car is made up of 30,000 to 40,000 individual parts? All of these are manufactured meticulously in various facilities before being assembled into one. The global manufacturing industry spans a wide range from delivering

        • Projects custom colors replaced by default orange

          Since yesterday, projects uploaded to Zoho, to which I had assigned a custom color, have lost the customization and reverted to the default color (orange). Has anyone else had the same problem? If so, how did you resolve it?

        • Customize your SalesIQ live chat with Custom CSS and blend it with your website design

          Hi everyone. Hope you all are having a great day! SalesIQ offers various inbuilt customization choices for your chat widget and window like changes in colour, theme, font etc. Although these choices are many, sometimes they may not match with the design

        • From Email Address When Replaying to Missed Chats

          One of the most common things we do is follow up on every missed chat.  Missed chats are like money in the bank, people just waiting for your response and to start a relationship with our companies. However, SalesIQ only lets you respond from 1 email address from your entire account?! We have happily paid for 4 subscriptions, but our users cannot reply from their own email address?  How are we supposed to build customer relationships? The fix to this issue is so simple, just load in the logged in

        • how to treat a same person as customer and vendor in zoho

          hi team, in my company, few persons acting as creditors as well as debtors (which means sometimes we pay them... some times we paid by them). in that case i would like to maintain a same ledger for that person.in zoho books it is treating creditor and

        • Narrative 6 - The impact of rebranding

          Behind the scenes of a successful ticketing system - BTS Series Narrative 6 - The impact of rebranding Every organization has invested in branding to set itself apart, and that should be reflected in the help desk. Zoho Desk enables organizations to apply

        • custom color palette for picklist in Sheet

          Migrating over from Google Sheets and missing the ability to customize the individual item colors of my picklist/dropdown menus. Is this something that is possible? A search showed me creating a custom color palette in Analytics is possible but I am not

        • What's New - July 2025 | Zoho Backstage

          Start smart, end strong. From knowing who’s coming to celebrating who showed up, July’s updates help you run events that feel organized from the first invite to the final thank you. Planning an event used to be like writing a choose-your-own-adventure

        • Image Upload Field API get encrypted ID and sequence number

          Hello is there a way to extract the encrypted id and sequence number from image upload fields through the Zoho CRM API? I created a custom script with javascript within Zoho CRM, but I want to extract the encrypted id and sequence number for all my images

        • Attention: Changes to 10DLC TCR pricing and new authentication requirements

          Hi everyone, Starting August 1, 2025, The Campaign Registry (TCR) is introducing new pricing changes and a mandatory brand verification process called Authentication+ 2.0, which will affect how you register and manage your 10DLC messaging services. These

        • Better Time Tracking

          We need better time tracking customization for IT MSPs. We also need reporting that is built in, rather than having to try and fumble with creating custom reports. We also need to be able to mark whether a ticket has been billed or not, I don't think

        • Scheduled Tickets Need Updated

          There is a very clunky manual way to create reoccurring scheduled tickets. This should be created to be easy for the administrator to create. We create several (10 to 12) reoccurring tickets per account for biweekly and monthly auditing purposes.. The

        • Team Feeds Improvements

          Team Feeds needs to show a feed of every action within the department. Currently it seems that the feed will only show a ticket that I've personally commented on or interacted with/followed. A feed should be that, a feed. As a manager I would like to

        • Better Security, Better User Experience | Help Center Update | June'25

          As part of our commitment to enhancing user experience and security, we are happy to announce updates to our authentication mechanism. This update introduces several key enhancements designed to improve the password recovery process and streamline the

        • Upload Logo to Account Page

          It would be nice to set a logo for an Account

        • View Agent Collision on Ticket List Page

          It would be nice from the ticket listing page (views) to see what agents are working on what tickets rather than having to click into each ticket throughout the day to see what agents are working on what tickets. This functionality would also be desired

        • Restrict user from viewing the detail standard view

          Is there any way to restrict a user(it can be user-field-based) from viewing the detail standard view? Basically, I have created a canvas detailed view so that on some conditions I can hide some data from the users but the standard view client script

        • Upload Picture to Contact

          It would be nice to upload a profile picture to a contact.

        • Ticket Status Colors

          Can i change the colors of Ticket Status in the admin panel? Or even change the background of the entire cell of a Critical ticket? This way its easy for my agents to see a urgent ticket when it comes in. Right now everything is black text. Here Right

        • Allowing Pictures for Client Contacts

          Do you have any plans to allow us to add pictures of our client contacts? There is a silhouette of a person there now, but no way that I can see where I can actually add a picture of the individual.

        • Paid Support Plans with Automated Billing

          We (like many others, I'm sure) are designing or have paid support plans. Our design involves a given number of support hours in each plan. Here are my questions: 1) Are there any plans to add time-based plans in the Zoho Desk Support Plans feature? The

        • Agent name Alias

          I am seeing that Full name of my staffs are written on every ticket response which is not good for some reasons. It is possible to user like this: Manny P. (First Name with Last Name's First Letter) or  Manny (First Name) This is want we want to show

        • Unable to add attachments to tickets through Desk API

          I able to use the Desk API to generate tickets. However when I try to use the tickets/{ticketId}/attachments endpoint, I always get an Unauthorized error. My app has Desk.Tickets.ALL included in its scope so this should not be an issue

        • What's wrong with this COQL?

          What's wrong with this COQL? Code returns "invalid operator found". SELECT id, Name, Stage, Account, Created_Time, Tag FROM Production_Orders WHERE (Account = '4356038000072566002' AND Stage NOT LIKE '%customer%') ORDER BY Created_Time DESC LIMIT 200

        • [Feature Request] Add support for internationalized top-level domains mail hosting

          This is an important request to add support for internationalized domains mail hosting to https://www.zoho.com/mail/ In this case, that is only limited to domain name/mail address however currently it's already possible for us send mails etc using below

        • Add Enable/Disable to Field Rules and other Rules

          Hi, Sometimes I have rules setup for fields, and until I want to enable them for use, I can set the fields to Hidden but rules still show them, today you have to delete rules and then recreate them again, would be nice to have a toggle for Enabled/Disabled

        • Next Page