Hi Creators, this week I’d love to get your feedback on our push notifications strategy. We know many of you use the Patreon mobile app (on Android and iOS), and that you often miss important activity (like new messages). We’re working hard to clean up our push notifications (sent via our mobile app) so that you get notified of the highest priority things.
Since no one wants more notifications spam, I’d like to get your thoughts on whether these are the right kinds of things you’d like to hear about from Patreon.
Thanks for addressing this issue! I’m hoping that you’re also planning to work on the email notifications that we get, as some of these notifications would be a lot more helpful to us as emails. Right now, the list of notifications that you suggest is a little long for my taste. That would be just too many push notifications to be useful for me (as I’d be tempted to turn them off or start ignoring them). As I said, some of them would be much more helpful as emails. So, notifications I wouldn’t want (as notifications):
Anniversaries
Pledge changes
Pledge deletions
Monthly charge confirmation
New Lens clips
Likes from patrons
Reminders to optimize your tiers
Tips to improve your membership
We have quite a number of patrons and so getting, for example, notifications of anniversaries or likes would be a lot of notifications for us. I really want just notifications of the most important things that I might need to respond to in a timely way (such as comments from patrons) and not chance losing the most important things in a barrage of notifications. Thanks for asking!
The notifications seem fine as they are split up, assuming we can toggle those categories individually. I would not want to receive all of those at the same time though.
I wouldn’t want notifications about: tips, reminders to optimize tiers, new posts from creators, lens clips, likes, monthly charge confirmations, and anniversaries. It’s possible I wouldn’t really want to see new pledges or changes/deletions of pledges either, I’m not sure. I’m a split website/phone user so I access both and I just prefer most of my notifications to sit in my inbox until I’m ready to tackle them. Having notices on my phone feels more urgent, like I have to get to them asap.
The only things I can think of that I’d like to be notified about that aren’t listed are Patreon site/feature updates and private messages Not sure why there isn’t a listed notification DM’s, that seems really important, and should be separate from general comments.
To proactively bring something up here, I think a lot of these things would be great in the activity feed on your website. I’m often confused why the websites notification system is setup the way it is.
I realize it’s a bit of tangent only slightly related to the app stuff here, but I really wish the notification system on the site has two categories of notifications: notices I have seen/notices I have not seen. Often when I go to the notices screen I cannot be sure day to day where the new stuff starts and the old stuff ends, and on top of that they are also grouped into different categories that are structured by both day, whether or not I pledge to them, and type of notification. It would be nice to just dismiss certain types of notices (likes) and combine others (all comments for instance). The clutter just makes thing a bit more confusing.
The creator notification feed and the patron notification feed are both mixed together here when it comes to comments and it can make for a really confusing experience when trying to parse what happens on a day to day basis.
I wish the notifications page on Patreon told me “what has happened since I last checked” without a lot of the excess that it throws at you. From a utility standpoint it’s not very good at making my job easier. If you’d like mock-ups or a more detailed explanation of what I mean, I’d be happy to provide it - I’ll stop derailing the conversation though.
Thanks for this! Yes, we are also looking at email notifications. Your list of lower priority notifications (that could be delivered through emails) is super helpful.
For the most part, I’d be happy receiving all of those.
However, for things like pledge deletion of be just as happy just to be able to easily see that in the app (still buggy on my end, though new pledges show fine) or getting an email about it, but not a push notification as it can be a bit of downer, especially if I’m already having a rough day AND at the end of the month/beginning of the next because it’s going to happen a lot. The option to just disable it would work too.
The only other one I’d personally turn off would be likes on posts since I can’t really respond to those.
I LOVE the idea of anniversaries and I haven’t seen this at all before.
What do you think of the above notifications? Are these the right mix for you?
I really like these. If i had the choice there would be a few that i personally would turn off just because some of it might get a bit spammy on my phone (my poor battery) but if i didn’t have a choice, all of these (and including PM’s) are great!
Are there notifications you wouldn’t want to receive? Are there notifications that wish you could receive?
I would probably turn off likes as that not an actionable thing, just nice to know. Easily viewed in the app notifications list or in browser. I would maaaaaybe turn off lense as i rarely look at them since most of the artists i watch don’t use them, though a few do, so it would depend. I would also turn off the patreon tips. I’ve been on here long enough and i continue to watch the patreon crowdcast videos. I don’t need reminders to do special offers or tips, especially when some of that isn’t even really do-able from the app anyways, so that’s moot.
I do however prioritize pledge activity (of any kind), anniversaries (YES!!!), new posts, and comments the most.
The rest i’m luke warm on just because i don’t particularily need them for my own workflow (either because i look at them in browser or it’s just not a big deal to me) but i still think all are great either way! My way isn’t the only way and the options are great.
Are there other things you wish Patreon would tell you about proactively? Feel free to dream!
Product updates (like the new bottom left corner tab you have on the browser version), when one of my creators goes live on the app (I’ve stopped getting these though i’m not sure if people are really doing it anymore??) and PM’s/DM’s for sure. OH, and when new crowdcast courses are edded for the coming months!
