Intro

Push notifications are one of the most powerful tools in mobile communication. Unlike emails or in-app messages, they reach users directly on their lock screen, in real time—instantly grabbing attention and prompting engagement.

For employee apps, internal communications, or community-driven platforms, push notifications are key to:

• Sharing important updates and breaking news

• Driving traffic back into the app

• Increasing user retention and engagement

• Building a habit of regular usage

In short: If you’re not using push notifications effectively, you’re missing out on one of the biggest advantages mobile apps offer.

In the following sections, we’ll explain how push notifications work in tchop, what options you have, and best practices to make the most of them.

The different types of push notifications in tchop

tchop offers a flexible, multi-layered push system designed to support editorial, social, and real-time communication needs. Each type of push notification serves a different purpose—together, they help keep your users informed, engaged, and connected.

1. Editorial push notifications

You can send curated, content-driven notifications to your audience—manually or scheduled. They can be linked to any content in the app or any other URL that can be opened in the app. Push Notifications are perfect for:

• Highlighting important updates

• Promoting new articles, threads, or user-generated content

• Linking directly to any content inside the app

With editorial pushes, you can control the message, the link, and the timing, giving you a powerful tool to drive traffic and attention.

2. Personalized push notifications (> social feedback)

tchop automatically sends push notifications when users receive social feedback of any kind—like:

• Someone likes their post or comment

• Someone replies to their post or comment

• Someone mentions someone in a post or comment

These personalized and contextual notifications increase user activity and strengthen community dynamics by fostering real-time interaction and recognition. They get sent automatically and are a key driver of user retention, engagement and loyalty.

In fact they are the secret sauce of almost all social platforms. tchop lets you benefit from the same patterns.

3. Chat notifications

Messages from private or group chats trigger instant push notifications—just like you’d expect from any modern messaging app.

Chat push notifications are crucial for:

• Quick, real-time conversations

• Keeping distributed teams or community groups connected

• Ensuring time-sensitive messages aren’t missed

Each of these notification types is tailored for a specific communication layer within the app—editorial, social, or direct messaging—making sure the right message always reaches the right user, at the right time.

4. Retention Pushes

We also provide so-called “Retention Pushes”, automated push routines that help to keep users engaged. The goal is to reach out to users that are in danger of becoming inactive and that you might otherwise lose. The secret sauce of a growing app audience is to create a habit, which establishes usage ideally every day.

Users that are likely to disengage from your app and that have not opened the app over a certain period, can receive a push notification that is automatically sent by our platform. The only thing that you need to set here is the underlying parameters and the content of the push. You can define headline, text and even provide an image!

If you are interested in this feature, check the dedicated page in our kownledge base about "Retention Pushes".

Fully automated pushes

Push notifications are key, but sometimes teams miss the necessary resources to craft and send them every day. That's why we offer an easy way to automate push notifications for new content.

On the mix level you can define if each new content card creates an automated push notification, using the title and the description text this is especially useful for articles and posts (own or curated). You can also define a prefix that should get added to the field to adjust this.

Of course we recommend clients to use this feature in a sensitive way. Spamming users with too many notifications is not a good idea, so this should only be set up for mixes where you know exactly what type of content gets added and how often.

User’s point of view

tchop gives users full control over how and when they want to be notified—ensuring push messages feel helpful, not intrusive. Here's what users can customize:

Upon first login, users can choose to opt in to receive push notifications. This can be changed anytime in their device or app settings.

As an app provider there are limited technical ways to influence that. All apps are allowed to ask users one time natively in the app, if they want to enable pushes. But tchop is using a smart way to pre set a custom request, which gives you more options and improves the amount of users that end up using pushes.

Granular Control

It's important to give users full freedom to use push notifications the way they want. Users can fine-tune their preferences:

• Get pushes only from selected channels

• Receive push notifications only from selected chat groups

• Get notified for direct messages (1:1 chats)

• Mute specific channels or conversations if needed

This ensures that only the most relevant messages reach their device in real time.

Customize notification preferences

Depending on the platform and configuration, users can:

• Decide whether they want sound, banners, or silent notifications

• Manage settings for editorial, chat, and social feedback separately

• Temporarily mute notifications during work hours, meetings, or off time

This level of control helps users personalize their experience, while still staying in the loop with what matters most to them.

Summary

Push notifications are a core driver of engagement and communication in any mobile app. With tchop, you can combine editorial updates, social feedback, and real-time chat messages into a powerful, flexible system that keeps users informed and active.

At the same time, users stay in control—able to personalize their notification preferences to match their needs and habits.

Smart notifications = better communication = stronger engagement.

However no one should start without a dedicated push strategy that includes both operational aspects (eg who handles editorial pushes and when), but should of course also be closely linked with the overall content and community strategy.

Need help setting up or optimizing your push strategy? Reach out to us at support@tchop.io—we’re happy to help!