What is a Push Notification?

Push notification, in short and simple terms: it’s a brief, tappable message sent from your app to a user’s device, even when the app is closed, to bring them back to a moment that matters.

Suppose you’re wondering what a push notification is in growth terms. In that case, it’s your quickest lever to spark a return session, complete a task, or nudge a purchase without buying another impression.

Push notifications meaning (in practice)

Under the hood, iOS uses APNs and Android uses FCM to deliver a payload that can include text, emojis, images, and deep links. Targeting is everything: segment by lifecycle (new, activated, at-risk), behavior (abandoned cart, level failed, streak broken), or attributes (locale, device, time zone).

Add frequency caps, quiet hours, and rate limits so relevance stays high and opt-outs stay low. That’s the operational layer behind push notification meaning for growth teams.

How it Works

In a typical push flow, the trigger comes first, either an event or a scheduled moment (think “back in stock” or “trial ends tomorrow”). From there, the payload is assembled with personalized copy, dynamic fields (name, item, plan), and a deep link that lands users on the exact screen.

Delivery is then handled by APNs/FCM, which manage transport while the app receives the payload and routes the tap. Performance is measured across delivery, opens/CTR, and downstream actions like sessions, purchases, or reviews.

Finally, learning happens through control-versus-variant tests, tuning send time, copy, creative, and audience until the campaign reliably moves the needle.

Benchmarks vary by category, but directionally:

Opt-in 40–60% (iOS lower, Android higher):

• Batch’s 2025 benchmark shows ~56% iOS and ~67% Android, overall ~61%, squarely in the 40–60%/low-60s band, with Android still higher post-Android 13.
• Netcore Cloud 2024 Android-13 study reports ~60% Android opt-in (down from 80–90% pre-A13), reinforcing the new-normal range.

Open/CTR: 3–10% typical; 15%+ on highly targeted promos or urgent transactional events:

• CleverTap’s 2025 benchmarks: ~4.6% Android and ~3.4% iOS average CTRs; top performers exceed those with better targeting, i.e., moving into high single digits or more.
• Airship’s 2025 benchmark guide (with a gated report) highlights “direct opens” as a key KPI by percentile, consistent with single-digit averages and higher percentiles for top campaigns.
• (Historical context) Braze has long shown Android>iOS in direct opens, aligning with the low-single-digit to high-single-digit norm, useful as a directional corroboration.

Lift - look for +10–30% session frequency in engaged cohorts when timing and relevance land:

• Braze reports +182% average sessions per user when mobile push is used, a strong upper-bound demonstrating that double-digit session lifts are realistic (your 10–30% claim is conservative vs. this).
• Pugpig’s 2025 report shows publishers seeing up to +60% active users in 3 months after adopting push, again supporting meaningful double-digit engagement lifts.
• Peer-reviewed evidence: receiving a notification increased the probability of opening the app in the next hour by 3.5×— a causal micro-effect that compounds to higher session frequency. (PMC)

Why It Matters

Push is retention fuel. Done right, it increases session frequency, activation, and LTV; done wrong, it creates notification fatigue and negative reviews.

Pair every campaign with a feedback read: are users calling it “spammy,” “too frequent,” or “perfect timing”?

Read how your push notifications work in AppFollow

• Filter reviews that mention “push,” “notifications,” “spam,” or “too many.”
• Use sentiment tags to quantify backlash vs. applause after campaigns.
• Correlate rating shifts with notification changes (cadence, content, audience).
• Benchmark pre/post update using Rating Analysis and export snapshots for the team.

Example

A grocery app sends “Your usuals are on sale” with a cart deep link, 5–7 pm local time, Tue–Thu only. Segment = repeat buyers who haven’t purchased in 7 days.

Result: +22% session lift, +11% AOV, and review sentiment shifts from “too many alerts” to “helpful reminders” after adding quiet hours and weekly caps.