What Are Push Notifications? Simple Guide for Jewellers

Draw night is over. The winning slot is on the slip in front of you. A staff member starts calling members one by one, and by the time she reaches the fortieth name, the first member has already heard the result from a neighbour, with a few details wrong.

So what are push notifications, and why do jewellers keep hearing the term? A push notification is a short message that your own shop app shows on a customer's phone screen, even when the app is closed. Your software sends it the moment something happens, such as a draw result, a payment, or a due date. The member taps it and lands inside your app. Nobody in the shop has to type or dial anything.

What is a push notification?

A push notification is a message that appears on a phone's screen from an app that is installed on that phone. It shows the app's name and icon and a line or two of text, on the lock screen and in the phone's notification list. When the person taps it, the app opens. Your bank, your food delivery app and your calendar all use them.

The word "push" means the message is pushed out to the phone by the app's software. The customer does not have to open the app and look.

It differs from the messages you already send. A text message travels through the phone network from a number, and in most countries the shop pays for each one. A WhatsApp message arrives in a chat thread that someone in your shop must watch and answer. A push notification comes from your own app, under your own shop's name, with no thread to answer and no charge per message from a phone company. The trade is that it can only reach a customer who has installed your app.

Two words you will hear

• Permission. The first time your app opens, the phone asks the customer whether the app may send notifications. If they say no, nothing you send will show.
• Inbox. The screen inside the app that keeps old messages, so a member can read last month's receipt after it has gone from the phone's screen.

How does a push notification reach the phone?

A push notification travels in five steps: something happens in your scheme, your software writes a short message, the phone maker's service carries it to that one phone, the phone shows it on the screen, and one tap opens your app at the right place. The whole journey usually takes seconds, and no person in the shop touches it.

The figure below shows the path of one message.

Step three is the part most owners have never seen. Your app does not talk to the phone directly. It hands the message to a delivery service run by the phone maker, Apple for iPhones and Google for Android phones, and that service finds the right phone wherever it is. This is why the app needs to be installed and allowed.

Three things must be true for the message to arrive. The member has your app on the phone. The member said yes when the phone asked for permission. And the phone is switched on and connected at some point after the message was sent. If any of the three is missing, your software should have another way to reach that member.

Why does this matter for a jewellery shop?

It matters because a scheme is a monthly relationship, and a push notification is the cheapest way to keep it alive between visits. Every month there is a due date, a payment, a receipt, and in a kitty, a draw. Each is a reason to appear on the member's phone under your own name, without a phone call.

Jewellers who run a scheme by hand cannot do this at all. They chase members by phone and WhatsApp, one by one, and tell the draw result one call at a time. The shop down the road with an app tells every household in the same minute. That gap is one of the reasons behind our guide on why the shop's own app belongs in the customer's hand, and why so many jewellers are moving the kitty to software.

There is a quieter reason too. A notification with your name on it, arriving on the day the member expects it, is a small proof that the scheme is run properly. Our guide on what makes members trust a scheme lists the other small things members read reliability into.

When should you send one, and when should you stay quiet?

Send a push notification when something about the member's own money has changed: a payment was recorded, a due date is a few days away, a draw result is confirmed, a new scheme is open for booking, or maturity is close. Stay quiet at night, on days a staff member has already called, and whenever the message gives the member nothing to do.

The figure below puts the two lists side by side.

Two rules of thumb keep a shop on the right side of this figure.

The counter test. Before a message goes out, ask whether you would say those exact words to that customer at the counter, in front of other customers. "Your instalment is due on the fifth" passes. "Big discount this weekend only" does not. A push notification interrupts the member's day, so it should carry the respect you would show face to face.

One message, one tap. Every notification should lead to one thing the member can do: pay, see the receipt, see the result, book a slot. If there is nothing to tap, there is nothing to send. This rule alone removes most of the messages that make people switch a shop off.

What types of notification does a scheme need?

A gold saving scheme needs seven kinds of push notification: the payment reminder, the receipt, the overdue notice, the draw result, the new scheme opening, the maturity notice, and an occasional festival greeting. Each has a fixed moment to go out and should read like a note from your shop, not from a software company.

This table gives each type, when it goes out, and an example message you can adapt. The words in square brackets are placeholders that your software fills in.

The reminder is the one most shops start with, and it works best as part of a calendar around the due date rather than a single message. Our guide on planning payment reminders around one due date shows the days and the wording. The receipt is the one members value most, because it answers "did it go through?" the moment they pay. The guide on sending a receipt to the customer's phone within seconds covers what a good one shows.

The draw result and the maturity notice are the two that turn the scheme into an occasion. If you are new to how a draw or a maturity month fits into the year, the pillar guide on how a gold saving scheme runs from joining to redemption is the place to start.

The festival greeting is the only row with no money in it, and it is there on purpose. One warm line on the day, with no offer attached, is remembered. Offers deserve their own calendar, and that is a separate subject.

A worked example: one member's month

Names, dates and slot numbers here are examples.

Member A holds slot 21 in your scheme. The due date is the 5th, and your written grace period ends on the 15th. She installed your app when she joined, and said yes when the phone asked for permission.

1. The 2nd. A reminder arrives on her phone: her name, the instalment, the due date, and "tap to pay". She is on a bus. She taps, pays with a local payment method inside the app, and puts the phone away.
2. The same minute. The receipt notification arrives, with the receipt number and the slot. Nothing else is sent to her this month about the payment, because the software knows she has paid.
3. The 20th. The draw is confirmed at the shop. Every member's phone shows the result at once, hers included. She opens the app to see the full result.
4. Two months before maturity. A maturity notice arrives, with a tap to see her statement.

Now her brother, Member B, holds slot 22 and does not use apps. He pays cash at the counter on the 4th. The staff member records the cash against slot 22, and because he has no app, the receipt reaches him on WhatsApp instead. He is told the same things his sister is told, through a different door. That is what "mirrored" means, and it is the detail that keeps older members from feeling left out.

A notification is only as good as the record behind it

Here is the counter level truth that generic articles miss. A push notification does not know anything. It repeats what your records say. If a member paid cash yesterday and the cash was never entered, the reminder still goes out, with your name on it, to a customer who has already paid. One such message costs more trust than a month of good ones can buy back.

So before you switch on automatic messages, fix the record. Every payment, in the app, by card, by bank, or in cash at the counter, has to land in one list the same day. Our plain language guide on making the three payment lists agree explains how. The software does not run the scheme. Trust does, and the notification is only the messenger.

This is the reason the notification feature in GoldKitty, our gold scheme software with a member app sits on top of a single reconciled collections list. Cash at the counter, counter payments and in app payments land in the same list, so the reminder list is right before any reminder goes out. Due dates, receipts, draw results and new scheme openings reach members in the app and are mirrored on WhatsApp, all under the shop's own name.

Mistakes jewellers make with push notifications

• Sending under the vendor's name. If the message shows the software company's name instead of yours, the member does not know who is writing. Insist on your own name and logo on the app and every message.
• Switching on reminders before matching payments. Reminders to people who have paid are the fastest way to get switched off.
• Treating notifications as advertising. A member allowed your app to notify them about their savings. Daily offers break that understanding.
• No quiet hours. Software will happily send at midnight if nobody tells it not to.
• Asking for permission at the wrong moment. If the phone asks before the member knows what the app is for, they say no. Ask at enrolment, and say in one sentence what they will receive.
• Sending the overdue notice and making the call on the same day. Pick one. Two contacts in one day feel like pressure. The steps after a missed payment are in our guide on handling overdue members without losing them.
• Forgetting the members without the app. If the important messages are not mirrored to WhatsApp or text, those members hear nothing, and they are often your oldest customers.

The limits of push notifications

They reach only members who installed the app and allowed it. In many shops that is not everyone. Plan for the rest from day one.

They can be switched off at any time, silently, and you will not be told. The only defence is fewer, better messages.

They are not a record. A notification vanishes from the screen; a receipt and a statement do not. Anything that matters must also live on a screen inside the app, and in your own records.

They do not replace a conversation. A member who has gone quiet for two months needs a call from a person they know, not a fifth automatic message.

And phones show them differently. Some group them, some show only the first line. Put the important words at the start.

When push notifications are not worth it

If your shop has no app, there is nothing to decide. Push notifications come from an app, so without one you use WhatsApp, text messages and email, and for a small scheme those work well. Our step by step guide on setting up reminders on WhatsApp covers that path.

If your scheme is small and you see every member at the counter each month, an app may be more than you need. A receipt book, a clean list and a WhatsApp message on the due date will do. Do not buy software to notify twenty people you already talk to.

Push notifications start to earn their place when the scheme is larger than one person can call, when members pay from home rather than at the counter, when you run a draw and want everyone told at once, or when a competitor's app is the reason a customer moved. At that point the question becomes which scheme jobs to hand to software first, the subject of our guide on what to automate first in a gold scheme.

How to set it up in your shop

1. Get an app under your own name. Either scheme software with a white label member app, or an app built for your shop. If you want something wider than a scheme app, see how we build mobile apps for shops.
2. Fix the payment record first. One list, all payment modes, updated the same day.
3. Decide the calendar and the quiet hours. Which of the seven types you will send, on which days, and never between which hours.
4. Ask for permission at enrolment. At the counter, with one sentence about what the member will receive.
5. Mirror the important messages. Receipts, reminders and results should also reach members without the app.
6. Run a mock month before going live. Send every type to a staff phone first, read each one as a member would, and fix the wording before a real member sees it.

Our take

We built GoldKitty hand in hand with a working jewellery store, and the lesson from that counter was that members do not want more messages from their jeweller. They want the right message, at the right minute, from a name they know. A receipt that lands before the phone goes back in the pocket does more for loyalty than any offer.

Treat push notifications as a courtesy your app extends to members, built on records you have already checked. Keep them few, keep them useful, and mirror them for members who prefer WhatsApp or the counter. To see reminders, receipts and a draw result reach a phone from your own scheme's numbers, you can book a private GoldKitty demo. GoldKitty is modular, set up for each client's country and offer, with payments through local payment gateways integrated to that market's banking guidelines.

Frequently asked questions