The 1-3-5 rule that saved my startup from notification hell

Back in 2021 we had this huge problem with our payment notifications. We were flooding users with like 12 different alerts per transaction. Failed payment. Retry in 24 hours. Card expiring. It was a mess. Then one of our Vancouver beta testers said to just pick the one thing that matters most per step of the workflow. So we mapped out exactly 1 urgent alert per payment attempt, 3 secondary reminders, and 5 nice-to-know updates per month. Our complaint rate dropped by 60% in 3 weeks. Has anyone else tried something similar with their notification cadence?

3 comments

3 Comments

lunaf6719d ago

one friend tried that and their users actually started reading the alerts again instead of just swiping them away.

phoenixb3419d ago

lunaf67's friend is onto something real. When I had to deal with my own app's notification spam, I went with a simpler version - just two alerts max per day, one for really important stuff and one catch-all for everything else. It was rough at first because a bunch of users complained they missed things, but after a week the feedback totally flipped. People started saying they actually read the notifications instead of auto-swiping them. The key for me was making sure the "important" alert was something genuinely urgent, not just a marketing push they could wait on.

the_elizabeth20d ago

Oh dang, this is actually genius. I feel like most apps just blast everything at you and hope something sticks. The 1-3-5 rule makes so much sense for cutting through the noise without totally ghosting your users. Bet your retention went up too since people weren't rage-deleting the app every time a payment failed. Honestly wish more companies would do this instead of that panic-mode notification spam.