• Part 2: Decoupling Notification Templates From Code
• Part 3: User Preferences Management
• Part 4: Omni-Channel Analytics
• Part 5: Optimized Automation Logic

A great notification experience is no longer optional—it’s essential to how users perceive your product. Every notification you send, whether it's a mobile push, email, Slack message, or in-app alert, shapes user trust, engagement, and retention.

At Courier, we hear the same question from product managers every day: what actually makes a great notification experience in a mobile or web app?

In this guide, we’ll break down:

• The different types of notifications (transactional vs. lifecycle)
• How to choose the right notification channel for every message
• Best practices for timing, customization, and user preferences
• How bad notification experiences hurt retention—and how good ones drive growth

You’ll leave with a clear framework for designing notification systems that feel personal, timely, and unobtrusive—giving your users the feedback they need, when and where they need it.

What Is a Notification Experience?

A notification experience includes everything a user sees, hears, and interacts with when receiving updates from your product—across mobile, email, chat, and in-app channels.

Image: Email, push, and Slack notifications in an HR application.

At its core, a great notification experience connects the right message to the right user, through the right channel, at the right time. Common notification channels include:

• Mobile push notifications (banners, badges, alerts)
• Email
• Chat platforms (Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp)
• SMS text messaging
• Phone calls
• In-app notifications (banners, modals, inboxes)

But a notification experience isn’t just about picking a channel. Behind the scenes, smart notification logic determines:

• Which channel to prioritize based on urgency and user behavior
• When to send (or delay) messages to avoid disruption
• How to personalize content based on user preferences and profiles

When notification systems get this balance right, they quietly reinforce user trust. When they miss, they risk frustrating users—or losing them entirely.

How Different Notification Types Shape the Overall Experience

Not all notifications serve the same purpose—and understanding the difference is critical to building a thoughtful notification system.

There are two primary categories of notifications used by modern applications:

Transactional notifications are directly tied to a specific action a user takes, such as placing an order, requesting a password reset, or receiving a new message. These notifications are expected, timely, and critical for maintaining trust and usability.
Examples:

• An order confirmation from a delivery app
• A notification that a product listing received a new inquiry

Lifecycle (or marketing) notifications are designed to re-engage users, encourage retention, and promote deeper product usage over time.
Examples:

• A reminder email to a user who hasn’t logged in for several weeks
• A weekly digest summarizing recent activity or stats

While the boundary between transactional and lifecycle notifications can sometimes blur, the distinction matters—especially for compliance with regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act, which draws legal lines between purely transactional messages and those with marketing intent.

A transactional push notification and a marketing push notification. Same format, different purpose.

Both types of notifications can technically use the same channels—email, push, SMS, chat—but each channel has strengths and weaknesses depending on the message type. In the next section, we’ll break down how to match the right channel to the right notification.

There is no single channel that is perfect for all uses. A good notification experience should take advantage of each channel's strengths.

How a Bad Notification Experience Can Drive Users Away

From conversations with Courier customers and product teams, one thing is clear: most product managers know that notifications matter—but many underestimate just how much they impact user trust and retention.

When the notification experience goes wrong, the consequences can be serious:

• Lost users due to channel misuse: Sending marketing notifications over channels like mobile push—normally reserved for time-sensitive, transactional alerts—can make your app feel spammy and unprofessional, eroding user trust.
• Users blocking notifications entirely: Overwhelming users with too many messages, or sending alerts at inappropriate times (like late at night), often leads them to silence your notifications completely. Even critical updates will be missed once you've lost access.
• Negative brand perception: Poorly timed, irrelevant, or disruptive notifications don’t just frustrate users—they can permanently damage your app’s reputation.

A careless notification strategy can turn a minor annoyance into a major churn risk. In today’s competitive landscape, it’s not enough to send notifications—you have to get them right.

What a Great Notification Experience Looks Like

If a bad notification strategy risks losing users, a great one builds trust, increases engagement, and strengthens your product’s reputation. Based on what we see at Courier, here are the key ingredients of a great notification experience:

1. Choosing the Right Channels

Each notification should match the urgency and importance of the message to the right channel.
For example:

• A banking app might use mobile push for real-time transaction alerts.
• A suspicious activity notification might escalate to SMS or even a phone call to guarantee delivery.
• Non-urgent updates, like monthly statements, are better suited to email.

Choosing channels thoughtfully lays the foundation for a notification system that’s easier to scale and optimize over time.

2. Timing Messages Thoughtfully

Even the right message can frustrate users if it’s delivered at the wrong time.
Best practices include:

• Avoiding intrusive channels like mobile push during nighttime hours, unless absolutely necessary.
• Using less disruptive formats, such as a morning summary email, for non-critical updates.
• Prioritizing immediacy (e.g., push or SMS) for time-sensitive events like security alerts.

Good timing respects users' lives—and helps notifications feel helpful, not annoying.

3. Empowering Users with Preferences

The best notification experiences give users real control.
Beyond basic on/off toggles, great apps offer granular settings:

• A weather app, for instance, might let users opt-in to rain alerts separately from low-temperature warnings.
• A project management app might allow notifications for assigned tasks but mute general announcements.

Fine-tuning preferences helps users trust that they’re only getting the notifications that matter to them.

4. Following Platform Best Practices

Notifications should feel native to the platform where users receive them.
This means:

• Using Slack blocks for structured, scannable messages rather than cramming everything into plain text
• Taking advantage of rich push notification features on iOS and Android, like images, actions, or Live Activities
• Designing in-app notifications that fit seamlessly into your app’s visual language

A notification that looks and feels right for its platform delivers value without causing friction—or confusion.

When you get channels, timing, preferences, and design right, your notification system becomes an invisible asset: quietly enhancing your user experience without drawing unwanted attention.

Common Objections to Building a Great Notification Experience

Through our conversations with product managers at Courier, we’ve seen a few common concerns that hold teams back from investing in better notification systems. If any of these sound familiar, you’re not alone—and there are practical ways to overcome them.

“I can’t control the notification experience the same way I control the app experience.”

It’s true: notifications on platforms like iOS, Android, Slack, and others must conform to system standards. You can't fully brand a mobile push alert the way you can design an app screen. Fonts, colors, and layouts are often dictated by the platform to preserve consistency and familiarity for users.

But this limitation is also a strength. Users already know how platform-native notifications behave, reducing cognitive load and increasing trust. Instead of trying to force a fully custom look, focus on making notifications feel seamless, timely, and relevant within each platform’s best practices.

Modern notification systems are flexible enough to create a polished experience:

• Slack, for example, offers multiple pre-built message blocks for structured notifications.
• iOS 16 introduced Live Activities, allowing apps to surface real-time updates directly on the lock screen.
• Rich push notifications now support images, actions, and deep linking without heavy customization work.

If companies like Uber, Airbnb, and LinkedIn can create excellent notification experiences within these constraints—you can too.

“I don’t know what a good notification experience looks like.”

Identifying what makes a notification experience great can be challenging—especially without strong analytics to guide your decisions. While measuring user engagement on a website is straightforward with tools like Google Analytics or Matomo, tracking engagement across notification channels can be much harder.

Our recommendation is twofold:

• Start with quantitative data:
  Measure open rates, click-through rates, and delivery rates across every notification channel you use. Email platforms often make this easy; mobile push and in-app analytics require more setup but are still achievable.

• Support data with user research:
  Conduct surveys, interviews, or usability studies to learn directly from your users. Ask which notifications they find valuable, which ones they ignore, and which ones feel disruptive.

Looking for inspiration? Pay attention to the apps you personally love to use. Which ones deliver notifications that feel timely, relevant, and non-intrusive? Often, the best examples are the ones you barely notice—because they fit seamlessly into the flow of the product.

By combining hard data with user feedback, you’ll have a much clearer picture of what a "great" notification experience looks like for your product.

“Designing a good notification experience feels too overwhelming.”

With so many platforms, channels, and user expectations involved, it’s easy for product managers to feel overwhelmed when trying to design a strong notification system.

Our advice: don’t aim for perfection right away. Focus on getting the fundamentals right first.

Start by addressing the basics:

• Set up basic notification analytics to track sends, opens, clicks, and user engagement across channels.
• Ensure reliability by making sure notifications are delivered successfully and never crash the app.
• Give users simple customization options, such as the ability to mute non-critical alerts or set preferred channels.
• Expand channels thoughtfully, using the strengths of each medium to deliver better, more relevant experiences (as outlined in our earlier channel table).

Each of these improvements is small enough to implement without overwhelming your team—and together, they add up to a dramatically better notification experience.

By focusing on manageable, high-impact steps, you can steadily transform notifications from a source of friction into a competitive advantage.

Building a Great Notification Experience: Key Takeaways

Notifications aren’t just support features—they're a core part of your product's user experience. Every notification shapes how users perceive your app’s reliability, responsiveness, and value.

To create a notification system that truly supports your product goals:

• Treat notifications as first-class product features, not afterthoughts.
• Apply user research and design thinking to notification flows, just as you would to core features.
• Test and iterate on notifications, measuring open rates, engagement, and user feedback to refine messaging over time.
• Align notifications with user needs, not just internal triggers—delivering value at the right moment, through the right channel.

Done right, your notifications will feel invisible—but their impact will be anything but. Great notification experiences deepen engagement, reinforce trust, and keep users connected to your product when it matters most.