Less is more - daily push capping in publishing strategies

Capping the daily dosage of push notifications may help you avoid tiring out your subscriber base. It’s especially crucial for online publishers who send out high numbers of mass campaigns every day.

Push campaigns by publishers

According to PushPushGo data, publishers predominantly employ mass push campaigns. It’s About 92% of push campaigns sent by publishers working with PushPushGo tools. There’s a good reason for that:

• Mass push campaigns are easy to prepare and send
• Rocket Push extension allows users to send mass campaigns without entering the app
• Push messages can be connected with an RSS feed to send notifications automatically 

With all that power comes responsibility. Sometimes, it’s good to take a step back and analyze user behavior to ensure subscribers aren’t exhausted by the sheer amount of information.  

Subscriber behavior changes

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, information fatigue means “the stress induced by the attempt to assimilate excessive amounts of information from the media, the internet, or at work”. Being terminally online can have a degenerative effect on our psyche. It’s no surprise that more and more people opt out of news sources (especially when grim subjects like wars or climate catastrophes are discussed). 

Publishers should consider this trend when planning their communication strategy on every channel. There are some clues signifying that sometimes less is more. Recently, The New Yorker switched their newsletter strategy - according to their data, sending fewer emails resulted in higher overall open rates and page visits. 

How can you employ the quality-over-quantity approach in push notifications, given the amount of content added every day? 

Daily push capping

Other than revising all your publishing strategy, it’s best to employ some sort of safeguard ensuring that the number of push notifications your subscriber receives doesn’t exceed a desired number. 

This is where capping comes into play. With daily push capping, you set up a total number of push notifications a single subscriber can receive during the day. The limit to sent and delivered campaigns can be set up in project settings. 

Furthermore, you can use the Omit capping option when preparing a new mass campaign. It does exactly what’s in the name - this particular campaign will reach all subscribers, even when their daily quota is exceeded. It means that the really breaking news will not go unnoticed. 

Daily capping is not a panacea for all publishers’ ailments. As always, we recommend tracking user activity to find the golden proportion of push notifications sent during the day. A bit more boldness in using targeted campaigns and automation scenarios can also go a long way. 

Capping is available for PushPushGo enterprise clients. If you’re interested in this tool, contact our team at hello@pushpushgo.com