2 December 2025
Reading opt-out spikes after a promotional burst
A sudden rise in permission revokes is not always “bad copy.” Here is how to separate fatigue, frequency, and relevance in your engagement records.
When a festive promotion week ends and opt-outs climb, teams often rewrite every title at once. That reaction can hide the real cause. Engagement tracking should separate three signals: how many messages each user received, how relevant the category was to their past behaviour, and whether the same deep link was repeated across days.
Start with frequency. If the top quartile of recipients received more than one push per day for five consecutive days, opt-outs may be a fatigue response rather than a wording problem. Cap experiments before you rewrite tone.
Next, check category fit. Users who opened order-status messages last month may reject a sudden run of discount blasts. Your engagement export should let you slice by notification category whenever the provider allows it. Without that slice, you will over-correct the wrong campaign type.
Finally, look at timing relative to in-app activity. Revokes that cluster within an hour of a failed checkout or a support chat often reflect frustration with the product moment, not the banner itself. Pair push logs with session events before you change the whole calendar.