There are 7 useful metrics you can measure to prove effectiveness of your push
notification campaigns.
Pushwoosh can help you figure out and improve all of these metrics.
Below, we’ll explain which ones are the most illustrative for your business case
and industry. We’ll also give you formulas to calculate the rates.
How to choose the right success metric and KPI to evaluate your push notifications efficiency
Track the most relevant metric for your industry
For example, media typically pay specific attention to CTR.
Higher CTR → more traffic to the platform → more appeal for advertisers.
E-commerce apps normally focus on conversion rates and revenue increase as
their KPIs.
Subscription-based apps prioritize ARPU and retention.
Without any doubt, all types of apps track their opt-outs and uninstalls.
Focus on your campaign objective
What is the ultimate action you’re motivating your audience to take?
If your goal is to simply inform users of something, CTR may be the best
performance metric to look at.
If you aim at motivating users to conduct a specific action in your app, you
should prioritize CR and other KPIs that have a direct impact on your ROI.
Calculate your push notifications CTR
CTR is the first metric to measure when evaluating effectiveness of your push
notifications. The higher your click-through rate is, the more conversions you
can gain further.
Here is how we calculate CTR in Pushwoosh Control Panel:

Other push notification providers may use a different formula for calculating
CTR, so be cautious of this when comparing data from several
communication platforms.
When you’re optimizing your communications, CTR is the first metric you may want
to improve.
🌟Learn the best tips on
how to increase your push notifications CTR
Although important, CTR is only an interim metric. You can easily make it
skyrocket with clickbait headlines, but they won’t bring any profit to your
business.
In most cases, you aim at more valuable metrics, so you want to…
Measure conversion rates
How many users have actually triggered an action you motivated them to perform
with a push notification?
- Read an article
- Watched a video or a live stream
- Tried a new feature
- Added a product to the cart
- Made a purchase
There may be different formulas for calculating conversion rates, but in the
Pushwoosh dashboard, you will get your CR measure this way:

If you use Pushwoosh, you don’t need to keep a CR formula in mind. There is the
Conversion Tracking
feature that measures your push notification CR for you. This is particularly
useful for e-commerce and product apps with multiple subscription models.
Determine revenue
If your goal is:
- monetization,
- gross merchandise volume (GMV),
- or revenue growth,
you must be interested in tracking how much revenue your push campaigns
generate.
In Pushwoosh, revenue is calculated automatically too, using the Conversion
Tracking feature. All you need to do is set up
Purchase Events.
💎Looking
to increase revenue in your app? Learn how automated marketing communications
can help
e-commerce,
gaming,
and
subscription-based apps
Calculate ARPU
The average revenue per user is an important metric to measure when evaluating
the ROI of your
push notification marketing
campaigns.
Low ARPU may indicate a need to stimulate more in-app purchases, subscription
upgrades, or upsells (depending on your revenue model).
Low ARPU may also inspire you to make some tweaks to your business model.
This is how we calculate ARPU in Pushwoosh:

Measure retention
Another important success rate for push notifications is retention. The reality
is that within the first week of install, apps typically lose from 80 to 90% of
users.
But once a new user of your mobile app hits the 7-day mark, their risk of churn
drops considerably. This means it’s worth investing in user retention with push
notifications.
If done right, push notifications may
boost your retention by up to 40%. At least,
these are the average results we get with our clients.
There are a lot of formulas that help you calculate the performance metric. In
Pushwoosh, we use this one:
💗Read
more about the metrics and types of push notifications that can
drive retention in your app
Calculate opt-outs
The two metrics you never want to grow are opt-outs and uninstalls. They show
how many users were dissatisfied with your push notifications and either opted
out from receiving your communications or uninstalled your app completely.
Here is the formula for measuring your opt-out rate we recommend:

If you don’t like the resulting number, consider getting your subscribers back
with
in-app messages.
Estimate the uninstall rate
In 2020, app uninstall rates
increased by 70%
across the industries, and e-commerce apps were the hardest hit, losing up to
$120K monthly.
Luckily, many apps can avoid such enormous losses by launching
re-engagement campaigns.
Do your current communications counteract uninstalls effectively? Find your
answer using the formula:
💗Uncover
how Pushwoosh customer
Beach Bum has reduced their numbers of uninstalls with user retention.
These are the essential performance metrics you should track to measure the
effectiveness of your push notifications. Track the metrics and build a strategy
to grow them with Pushwoosh. Start working on it now for free:
Or talk to our team to discover the most efficient tools for your business case:
Contact Pushwoosh Team