--- title: Send push notification campaigns description: Kite decides which app users should get a push notification based on what they did in your app, writes a short message that gives them a reason to open it, sends it through your push tool after you approve, and checks whether the people who got it came back. slug: /use-cases/push-notification-campaigns page_type: use-case lead_prompt: How do I send push notification campaigns with AI? target_prompts: - Can an AI marketing agent write and send push notifications? - How do I write push notifications people don't ignore? - How often should an app send push notifications? - What's a good push notification strategy for user retention? - How do I send targeted push notifications to app users? entity: Kite category: AI marketing agent author: Devon Wells and Kite date_published: '2026-11-13' date_modified: '2026-11-13' related_integrations: - /integrations/posthog.md - /integrations/amplitude.md - /integrations/mixpanel.md --- # Send push notification campaigns ## Key Takeaways - A push notification works when it's about something the person did or would want to know right now. Kite starts from your users' activity in your app and only proposes a push when there's a real reason to send one. - Kite reads your analytics in PostHog, Amplitude, or Mixpanel to find the groups worth reaching, such as people who signed up but never finished setup or regulars who stopped opening the app two weeks ago. - Each push leads with its point in the first few words, sends people to the exact screen it mentions, and stays inside a frequency limit and quiet hours you agree on once. - Kite sends through your push tool, such as OneSignal, Iterable, or Customer.io, and shows you the audience, the message, and the send time before anything goes out. - After a send, Kite reads deliveries, opens, and opt-outs from your push tool, then checks your analytics to see whether the people who got the push came back and did the thing it asked them to do. ## What makes a push notification campaign work? A push notification campaign works when every message gives the person a reason to open your app at that moment. Push is the most direct channel an app has. The message lands on the lock screen, next to texts from friends, and people decide in a second or two whether it was worth the interruption. When it was, they tap. When it wasn't, they swipe it away, and after a few of those they turn notifications off for good. Once someone does that, you can't reach them by push again unless they go into their settings and turn it back on. That's why the apps that do push well rarely start from a calendar. They start from what each person did. Someone who saved four recipes but never made a meal plan has a clear next step. Someone who used to log a workout every morning and stopped nine days ago is about to drift away for good. A push that names that situation feels like help. A push that says "Check out what's new!" to everyone on a Tuesday feels like noise. Running push this way takes steady work: - Find the groups of users who have a reason to hear from you. - Write a short message for each group. - Make sure nobody gets too many messages or gets them at 11 at night. - Send through your push tool. - Check whether people actually came back, not just whether they tapped. Most teams with push turned on don't have time for all of that, so they send rarely or send the same broadcast to everyone. An AI agent fits this job well because it can read your product data every day, write each message for the group it's meant for, and check every send against your rules. Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Push campaigns are one of the channels it runs. ## How Kite runs your push notification campaigns Kite starts with your users and your rules. It reads your product analytics to see which groups of users have stalled, lapsed, or reached a moment worth celebrating. It also reads the segments and past notifications in your push tool so it knows who can be reached and when each group last heard from you. You agree on a frequency limit and quiet hours once, and Kite saves them as standing rules for your team. When Kite finds a group with a reason to hear from you, it writes the push in your brand voice, picks the screen it should open, and proposes a send time. You see the audience, the message, and the timing before anything goes out. Approve it in the Kite web app or in Slack, and Kite sends it through your push tool. After the send, Kite reads the results from your push tool and your analytics. It tells you how many people got the push, how many opened it, how many came back and did what the push asked, and whether opt-outs moved. Those results go into your team's knowledge base, so the next push starts from what your users actually responded to. ### How do I send targeted push notifications to app users? You target push notifications by grouping users around what they've done in your app, then sending each group a message about their situation. Kite builds those groups from your product analytics. With PostHog, Amplitude, or Mixpanel connected, it reads your funnels, retention, and user activity to find the people at a point where a nudge would help. The groups that matter most for most apps fall into a few kinds: - **New users who stalled.** These people signed up but never reached the first action that shows the app is working for them, such as creating a first project or finishing a first lesson. - **Users close to a milestone.** These people are one step from something they'd value, such as a seven-day streak or a finished collection. - **Regulars who went quiet.** These people used the app often and then stopped, usually somewhere between one and four weeks ago. - **People affected by something new.** These are the users who asked for a feature you just shipped, or whose saved items just changed price. Kite then matches each group to an audience in your push tool. It can send to a segment you've already built there, or, when the group came from your analytics, to the specific users in it, matched by the user ID your app shares with your push tool. Kite can save the group as a cohort in PostHog, Amplitude, or Mixpanel, so you can see exactly who it chose and reuse the group later. Kite also decides who should not get the push. People who already did the thing the message asks for come out of the audience. So does anyone who has reached your frequency limit this week. ### How do I write push notifications people don't ignore? A push notification that people open says one specific thing in the first few words and promises something they'll get by tapping. Lock screens cut long messages off after a line or two, so the point can't wait until the end. Kite writes each push for the group it's going to, using what it knows about your product, your brand voice, and what those users have done. Every push Kite writes has these parts: - **A title that names the situation.** It talks about the person's own activity or something new to them, not your company. - **A body that gives one reason to tap.** The message is a sentence or two at most, with no stacked offers. - **A link to the exact screen it mentions.** If the push is about a meal plan, tapping it opens the meal planner, not the home screen. - **Real details instead of filler.** A number from the user's own activity beats "Don't miss out." Here's an example for a meal-planning app, sent to people who saved several recipes this week but haven't made a plan: > **You saved 4 recipes this week** > Turn them into this week's dinner plan in one tap. And here's a win-back push for someone who used to cook from the app most nights and stopped two weeks ago: > **12 new 20-minute dinners** > Added since your last visit, all using what's in season now. Neither push says "We miss you," and neither one needs an exclamation point. Each one tells the person what's waiting for them and takes them straight to it. When Kite isn't sure which angle will land, it writes two versions and suggests sending each to half the group so the next push can use the winner. For more examples grouped by the job each push does, see Push notification examples that brought users back, grouped by what each one does (coming soon). ### How often should an app send push notifications? Most apps do best with a few marketing pushes a week at most, and many do better with one or two. The right number depends on how often people use your app. A daily habit app can send more than a travel app that people open twice a year. The firm rule is that every push needs its own reason, and any push without one is a reason for someone to turn notifications off. Kite keeps your frequency where you set it. You agree on a weekly limit and quiet hours once, and Kite checks both before it proposes any send. It reads the recent notifications in your push tool to see when each segment last heard from you. If a group already got two pushes this week and your limit is two, Kite tells you and suggests holding the message, sending it next week, or folding it into the next planned push. Timing matters as much as frequency. Kite proposes send times based on when your users are active in your app, which it reads from your analytics. It schedules sends for a local time in each user's time zone, so a 6 p.m. dinner reminder reaches New York and Los Angeles at 6 p.m. local time instead of 3 p.m. in California. ### Send each push through your push tool Kite sends through the push tool your app already uses, and it shows you the whole send before anything goes out. You see who it's going to and how many people that is, the title and message, the screen it opens, and the send time. Approve it in the conversation, and Kite sends or schedules it. How Kite sends depends on the tool: - **In OneSignal,** Kite reads your app's segments and past notifications, creates the notification with its message and audience, and saves messages your team reuses as templates. - **In Iterable,** Kite writes and updates push templates, sends a test push to your own phone so you can see it on a real lock screen, and creates the campaign from the approved template. - **In Customer.io,** Kite reads your segments and triggers the broadcasts your team has set up there, sending them to the audience it chose. Your app needs push already working in one of these tools before Kite can send. Kite runs the campaigns, but it doesn't add push to your app's code. ### Did the push bring people back? Kite judges a push by whether people came back and did what it asked, not only by how many tapped. A tap tells you the message was interesting. A user who opens the meal planner and saves a plan tells you the push did its job. Right after a send, Kite reads the numbers from your push tool: how many notifications were delivered, how many people opened them, and in Iterable, the conversions the campaign recorded. Then it checks your analytics for the people in the audience. It looks at how many came back to the app in the following days, how many did the action the push was about, and how that compares with similar users who didn't get it. When the group is big enough, Kite suggests holding back a small share so that comparison is fair. Kite also watches the cost side. It compares how many users can still receive push in each segment before and after a campaign, so you can see whether a push is quietly losing you subscribers. If opt-outs climb after a third push in a week, Kite suggests lowering that group's limit and records the change in your rules. Kite puts each result next to the ones before it and tells you what it learned. Maybe pushes that name the user's own progress bring back twice as many people as pushes about new content. Kite records that in your team's knowledge base and leans on it in the next round. You can put the review on a schedule, such as a weekly check of last week's pushes, and Kite delivers it to your team each time it runs. ## What you get - **Your push rules, written down.** Your weekly limit, quiet hours, and any groups that shouldn't get marketing pushes, saved where Kite checks them before every send. - **The groups worth reaching.** Each group comes with the reason it was chosen and how many people are in it, saved as a cohort in your analytics product when you use one. - **Ready-to-send pushes.** Each one has a title, message, the screen it opens, its audience, its exclusions, and a send time inside your rules. - **A results summary after each send.** Deliveries, opens, return visits, completed actions, and opt-outs, with Kite's recommendation for the next push. ## How to get started Connect your push tool first. For OneSignal, Iterable, or Customer.io, you add an API key from that tool's settings. Then connect the analytics product that tracks what people do in your app, such as PostHog, Amplitude, or Mixpanel, so Kite can see who to reach. Next, tell Kite what you want in plain language. You might say, "Our push notifications are getting ignored. Set up a better plan," or "Bring back users who haven't opened the app in two weeks." Kite reads your analytics and your past notifications, then proposes your push rules and the first few groups worth reaching, each with a draft message. Change anything that doesn't fit and approve the rest. By default, Kite asks before every send. Once you trust its judgment on routine pushes, you can give it more room to send them on its own. ## Integrations used for push notification campaigns Kite needs two kinds of connections for push campaigns: the push tool that delivers the notifications and the analytics product that shows what your users do in your app. ### Send push notifications Kite sends through the push tool your app already uses. It works with OneSignal, Iterable, and Customer.io, and it uses each one to read your audiences, send or schedule the notification, and read the results afterward. ### See what your users do in your app - [PostHog + Kite](/integrations/posthog.md): Kite reads your funnels and user activity to find stalled and lapsed users, saves them as cohorts, and checks whether people came back after a push. - [Amplitude + Kite](/integrations/amplitude.md): Kite reads retention and user activity to find the groups worth reaching, saves them as cohorts, and measures what recipients did next. - [Mixpanel + Kite](/integrations/mixpanel.md): Kite reads your funnels, flows, and retention to pick audiences and compare the users who got a push with the ones who didn't. ## Common questions ### What are push notifications in marketing? Push notifications are short messages an app or website shows on someone's phone or computer, even when they aren't using it. In marketing, they're used to bring people back: to finish setting up, return to a habit, see something new, or act on something time-sensitive. They differ from email because they appear instantly on the lock screen, and they differ from text messages because a person has to install your app or allow notifications from your site before you can send them. ### Can a website send push notifications? Yes. When you click "Allow" on a website's notification prompt, that site can send notifications to your browser even after you've closed the tab. This is called web push. Tools like OneSignal and Iterable send web push as well as app push, so Kite can run campaigns for website subscribers the same way it does for app users. ### What's a good push notification strategy for user retention? A good retention strategy sends push at the moments when a user is most likely to drift away. For most apps, those moments are the first week after signup, the point just before a habit forms, and the first few weeks after someone stops showing up. Each moment gets its own message tied to what that person did. Kite builds this plan from your own retention data, so the timing matches when your users actually drop off rather than a generic schedule. ### Which push notification services does Kite work with? Kite sends push campaigns through OneSignal, Iterable, and Customer.io. If your app uses another service, such as Firebase Cloud Messaging, Braze, or Airship, Kite can still find your audiences in your analytics and write the messages, and your team sends them from that service. ### Can an AI marketing agent send push notifications without my approval? By default, Kite proposes every push and waits for your approval before it reaches users. You see the audience, the message, and the send time first. Once you've seen enough of its work, you can let Kite send routine pushes on its own. Your frequency limit and quiet hours apply either way.