17 January 2026
Prefer action rate over vanity open rate
Open rate alone flatters noisy banners. Tracking the path from tap to completed in-app action gives a truer picture of push value.
Open rate is easy to celebrate and easy to misread. A short, urgent title can lift opens while sending people into a broken deep link or a generic home screen. For push notification engagement tracking, define an action event that matches the message promise — add to cart, claim a voucher, open a ticket, or resume a lesson.
Measure the ratio of completed actions to delivered messages, then to opens. A healthy programme often shows modest opens with strong post-tap completion. A weak programme shows high opens and empty landings.
When you brief an agency or an internal CRM team, ask for both numbers in the same table. If only open rate is available, request instrumentation before the next major campaign. Without the action layer, engagement reviews stay stuck at the banner level.
Devroutepoint audits treat action rate as a primary signal. We still report opens, because they reveal delivery and attention — but recommendations are ranked by whether users finished the job the notification asked them to do.