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Notifications Landscape

Courier

Thomas Schiavone

### **Why Messaging Compliance Starts with Data Residency**

If your product sends notifications—email, SMS, push, or in-app—those messages likely include personal or sensitive information. And that means they’re subject to data protection laws.

What many teams overlook is that compliance isn’t just about how messages are sent—it’s about where the data resides before, during, and after delivery. Countries and regions like the EU, Germany, Australia, and Japan have introduced strict regulations requiring customer data to be stored and processed within local or regional borders. This makes data residency a core requirement for any compliant messaging infrastructure.

If your notification infrastructure doesn’t support regional data controls, you’re not just risking fines—you’re exposing yourself to latency issues, deliverability failures, and trust erosion with users and enterprise buyers.

Courier has you covered. We help product and platform teams solve this from the start. Our infrastructure is designed to keep notification data fully homed within the regions you serve—starting with the US and EU, and expanding into Australia, and beyond. And if you’re operating in multiple markets, Courier supports fully isolated environments across regions—so your teams can stay compliant everywhere without sharing infrastructure.

---

### **What Happens If Your Messaging Platform Ignores Data Residency**

Most teams don’t realize they have a data residency problem until it blocks a deal, triggers a legal review, or worse—causes a regulatory violation.

#### **📉 Regulatory Risk**

Laws like GDPR, HIPAA, Japan’s APPI, and Australia’s Privacy Act impose strict rules around where user data can be stored and processed. If your platform moves or stores message data outside the user’s region—without proper safeguards—you could face investigations, fines, or forced feature rollbacks.

#### **👱️ Poor Performance and Latency**

If your servers are thousands of miles away from your users, your notifications will be slower—sometimes noticeably so. That hurts user experience, especially for time-sensitive messages like password resets, OTPs, or critical system alerts.

#### **❌ Deliverability and Filtering Issues**

Some regions penalize international traffic more heavily. Using out-of-region IPs or SMS routes can hurt your sender reputation, trigger spam filters, or lead to blocked or delayed messages—especially for high-volume or transactional communications.

#### **🤝 Lost Trust and Blocked Deals**

Enterprise buyers (especially in healthcare, finance, and government) often require vendors to keep data within specific jurisdictions. If you can’t meet that requirement, your platform may get disqualified before a proof-of-concept even starts.

---

### **Common Messaging Compliance Challenges for Product Teams**

The path to notification compliance across regions is filled with obstacles. Here are the most common ones:

#### **Routing and Partitioning Data by Region**

Storing and processing notification data in the right region sounds simple—until you have users in 20+ countries. You’ll need to route messages to the correct infrastructure, isolate user records by region, and ensure no cross-region leakage in logs, metadata, or error handling.

#### **Maintaining Performance While Staying Compliant**

Even when infrastructure is isolated, latency becomes a factor. Routing messages through distant regions or providers can slow down time-sensitive notifications (like OTPs or critical alerts).

#### **Lack of Vendor Flexibility**

Many notification providers only operate from a single region (often the US). If they don’t support data residency controls, your options are either to risk non-compliance or build and host your own regional stack.

#### **Enterprise Security and Legal Reviews**

If you're selling to enterprise or regulated sectors (finance, health, government), expect rigorous security, privacy, and compliance reviews. Data residency is a common blocker.

---

### **How Courier Solves Notification Compliance at Scale**

Courier provides the foundation for compliant notification infrastructure.

#### **Regionally Isolated Infrastructure (US, EU, AU)**

Courier operates fully isolated environments in the US and EU today, with expansion into Australia underway. Each environment ensures that all customer data—user profiles, message content, delivery logs—stays entirely within the selected region.

#### **Built on AWS for Global Flexibility**

We leverage AWS’s global footprint to provision new regions quickly and reliably. That means as regulatory requirements evolve—or as our customers expand—we can stand up new, compliant regions fast, without re-architecting the product.

#### **Simple Region Selection, No DevOps Required**

Developers can assign users to a specific region with simple configuration—no need to manage infrastructure, set up routing logic, or build data silos manually.

#### **Designed for Compliance Teams and Developers Alike**

We provide full transparency into how and where your data is handled, making it easier to pass legal and security reviews.

---

### **Operating Across Multiple Regions with Courier**

Courier doesn’t just support a single region—it empowers global scale.

For global businesses, data residency isn’t just about selecting one region—it’s about operating across several while maintaining strict boundaries. Courier supports multi-region architectures by allowing teams to deploy separate, fully isolated instances in each required geography.

This means your team can:

* Serve customers in the EU and US from distinct environments with no cross-region data flow  
* Log into region-specific Courier workspaces, each compliant with local data regulations  
* Maintain independent access controls, logs, and integrations per geography

By spinning up dedicated instances where needed, you can expand into regulated markets like Australia or Japan without legal friction or shared infrastructure risk. Courier gives you the operational flexibility to scale globally while keeping every region’s data compliant and self-contained.

---

### **The Business Value of Regional Notification Infrastructure**

Here’s what regional compliance unlocks for your team and business:

#### **Accelerate Enterprise Sales Cycles**

If you can’t confidently answer “Where is this data stored?”—you may not even make it to the pilot phase. Courier helps customers pass security reviews and meet buyer expectations without delays.

#### **Lower Legal and Engineering Overhead**

Without built-in data residency, every new customer region becomes a legal and technical project. With Courier, you configure the region—Courier handles the rest.

#### **Improve Message Delivery and UX**

Regional infrastructure reduces latency and improves deliverability, particularly for time-sensitive messages like account verification, fraud alerts, or transaction confirmations.

#### **Demonstrate Respect for User Privacy**

Keeping data in-region builds trust and helps customers meet their own compliance obligations. Courier helps you operationalize that trust with infrastructure that matches your audience.

---

### **Global Notification Compliance Requirements You Need to Know**

Understanding regional laws is essential to compliance. Here’s a breakdown of the key frameworks:

#### **🇪🇺 GDPR (European Union)**

Under GDPR, any personal data—names, email addresses, IPs, behavioral triggers—must be protected under strict legal conditions. Notifications often involve these data points, and GDPR explicitly regulates both the content and the location of that data.

**Key considerations:**

* You must have a lawful basis (like consent or contractual necessity) to send a notification.  
* If notification data leaves the EU, you need legal safeguards (like Standard Contractual Clauses).  
* Many EU customers now expect data to stay within the EU—residency builds trust and avoids risk.

#### **🇬🇧 UK GDPR (United Kingdom)**

After Brexit, the UK adopted its own version of GDPR. It mirrors the EU framework but is managed by a separate authority (ICO) and may diverge over time.

**Key considerations:**

* You must comply with UK-specific requirements for consent, data transfers, and user rights.  
* Cross-border data transfers from the UK to non-adequate countries require legal safeguards.  
* UK-based enterprises increasingly request local hosting to simplify procurement and risk reviews.

#### **🇺🇸 HIPAA (United States \- Healthcare)**

If your notifications include protected health information (PHI)—like appointment reminders or test results—HIPAA applies. It sets strict rules for how that data is stored, accessed, and transmitted.

**Key considerations:**

* All systems involved in handling PHI must meet HIPAA technical safeguards: encryption, audit logging, access controls, etc.  
* Data must be stored within the United States unless explicitly authorized.  
* Covered entities often require vendors to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and verify infrastructure compliance.

#### **🇦🇺 Australia’s Privacy Act**

Australia’s Privacy Act holds businesses accountable for overseas data transfers. While not a strict localization law, it places the burden of proof on organizations to ensure data is protected abroad. In practice, many industries—especially healthcare, government, and financial services—require local hosting as part of their vendor review process.

**Key considerations:**

* You must ensure “comparable protection” if data is sent overseas.  
* Local hosting is often expected to meet public-sector, healthcare, and enterprise procurement standards.

#### **🇯🇵 Japan’s APPI**

Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) regulates how personal data is collected and shared. It places particular emphasis on consent and transparency for cross-border transfers.

**Key considerations:**

* You must obtain prior, explicit consent to store or process data outside Japan.  
* Local hosting is often required by enterprise buyers to avoid legal friction.  
* Residency simplifies compliance and signals trustworthiness to Japanese users.

#### **🇨🇦 Canada’s PIPEDA**

Canada’s PIPEDA allows cross-border transfers but requires companies to ensure equivalent protection and inform users.

**Key considerations:**

* Transparency is mandatory when storing or processing data outside Canada.  
* Some provinces (e.g., British Columbia, Nova Scotia) enforce data residency for public-sector and healthcare data.  
* Hosting notifications in-country reduces legal review cycles and procurement friction.

#### **🇸🇬 Singapore’s PDPA**

Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act permits data transfers abroad, provided the receiving country offers comparable protection.

**Key considerations:**

* You must assess and document the adequacy of data protection in the destination country.  
* Local hosting is preferred by many financial institutions and regulators.

#### **🇧🇷 Brazil’s LGPD**

Brazil’s LGPD applies to any business collecting or processing Brazilian user data. While not a strict localization law, it has GDPR-style transparency, consent, and transfer requirements.

**Key considerations:**

* Transfers outside Brazil require safeguards like standard clauses or adequacy decisions.  
* Customers increasingly expect infrastructure that supports local data handling.  
* Regional data hosting signals compliance and builds trust with Brazilian users.

---

### **Summary**

Data residency is no longer a "nice-to-have"—it's a regulatory, operational, and commercial necessity. With strict compliance frameworks like GDPR, HIPAA, and APPI in place globally, companies must ensure their notification infrastructure respects regional data laws. Failing to do so risks legal penalties, performance issues, and lost customer trust. Courier solves this by offering fully isolated regional infrastructure, giving you compliance without sacrificing speed or developer velocity. From the US and EU to Australia and beyond, Courier helps you deliver notifications where your users are—and where their data is legally required to stay.

---

### **Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)**

#### **What is data residency in the context of notifications?**

Data residency refers to storing and processing user data—including notification content and logs—within a specific geographic region, often due to legal or regulatory requirements.

#### **Why does data residency matter for email, SMS, or push notifications?**

These messages often include personal information and fall under data protection laws. Storing or routing them outside the user's region can violate laws like GDPR or HIPAA.

#### **Which laws require data residency?**

Key frameworks include:

* GDPR (EU)  
* UK GDPR  
* HIPAA (US Healthcare)  
* Australia Privacy Act  
* Japan APPI  
* Canada PIPEDA (in some provinces)  
* Singapore PDPA  
* Brazil LGPD

#### **Does Courier support data residency?**

Yes. Courier offers fully isolated infrastructure in the US and EU today, with Australia launching soon. Customer data can be fully homed in-region.

#### **Can I control where my data is stored with Courier?**

Yes. You can assign users and notifications to a specific region during configuration—Courier ensures that data remains fully isolated within that environment.

#### **How does data residency impact notification performance?**

Regional infrastructure reduces latency, improves deliverability, and provides better user experiences—especially for time-sensitive messages like OTPs or system alerts.

#### **Is data residency required by law?**

Not always, but it's increasingly expected—especially in enterprise deals and regulated industries. It also simplifies legal review, procurement, and compliance documentation.


Why Data Residency is Crucial for Customer Notifications - Header

Data residency is critical for messaging compliance. Learn how Courier helps you meet regional laws like GDPR, HIPAA, and APPI with isolated infrastructure.

Why Data Residency Matters for Notifications – And How Courier Solves It

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Why Data Residency is Crucial for Customer Notifications

Building a great SaaS product isn’t just about features—it’s about keeping users engaged. You might spend months developing an amazing tool, but if users sign up, explore a few features, and then disappear, all that effort is wasted. Often, it’s not that they dislike your product; they simply forget about it or never realize its full value.

That’s where multichannel notifications come in. Well-timed, personalized messages—delivered via email,  in-app, push, SMS or even Slack—can remind users to complete onboarding, re-engage dormant accounts, and highlight key features.

## Why Notifications Matter for SaaS Retention

Imagine a developer spends months building a powerful SaaS product. Users sign up, and initial metrics look great, but over time, engagement drops. Silent churn begins—not through cancellations, but through inactivity.

Retention determines long-term success. No matter how effective your marketing and onboarding efforts are, if users aren’t consistently reminded of your product’s value, they’ll eventually move on.

## How to Prevent Churn with the Right Notifications

People get busy. Inboxes overflow, apps compete for attention, and important updates get lost.

A well-timed reminder—such as a nudge about an abandoned setup or a heads-up about new features—can pull users back in.

For example, **Workleap**, a workplace solutions platform, keeps employees engaged with timely notifications for performance reviews, feedback cycles, and collaboration updates. These nudges prevent disengagement by keeping users actively involved in their workflows.

But poorly executed notifications can be just as harmful as none at all. Too many generic alerts overwhelm users, while irrelevant messages get ignored. The key is precision—delivering the right message, through the right channel, at the right time.

> “Notifications that strike a balance between user benefit, timing, and relevancy are the most effective in SaaS products. One program I worked with saw increased engagement just by reminding users of the benefits they were receiving through weekly recaps of goals accomplished.” — Alex Ginovski, Head of Product & Engineering, Enhancv

Behavior-driven notifications—highlighting completed tasks, progress milestones, or underutilized features—remind users why they signed up in the first place.

## Why Reminders and Nudges Work

At the core of effective notifications is a simple psychological principle: **FOMO (fear of missing out).** A well-timed nudge reminds users of the value they signed up for.

Take a SaaS analytics tool. If a user hasn’t checked their dashboard in a while, a message like, *“Your traffic spiked 20% this week\! See what’s driving it”* doesn’t just inform—it piques curiosity and motivates action.

For developers, building cross-channel notifications (email, SMS, in-app, push) can be challenging. But done right, these messages drive retention and keep users engaged.

## Why a Single Notification Channel Isn’t Enough

Imagine a SaaS company launches a new feature and sends an email announcement. Days pass, but engagement barely moves—because many users never saw the email.

User churn is often due to disengagement, not dissatisfaction. Inbox overload means critical messages go unnoticed. The challenge isn’t just sending a notification—it’s reaching users where they are most likely to respond.

Look at **Twilio**—they power communications across voice, SMS, and messaging apps, ensuring critical updates aren’t missed. Managing multiple channels can get messy, which is why tools like **Courier’s Unified API** streamline the process, allowing businesses to send messages across email, push, SMS, Slack, and more—all from a single platform.

> “The best SaaS notifications aren’t simply reminders; they are nudges that actually matter. When you blast users with generic messages, you train them to ignore you. The real winners are behavior-based notifications—reminders sparked by what users actually do (or don’t do).” — Garin Hobbs, Martech Expert, InboxArmy

This is where multichannel strategies shine. A Slack alert might be perfect for a work-related reminder, while an in-app notification reinforces an action when a user logs in. The key is not just sending notifications but making them meaningful—aligned with user behavior rather than disruptive.

## Multichannel Notifications: Meeting Users Where They Are

A single channel isn’t enough. Users engage with SaaS products in different ways—some check email religiously, others prefer instant messages, and many ignore notifications unless they’re in the right context. Using multiple channels increases the chances of reaching users when they’re most receptive.

### Different Channels for Different Purposes:

- **Email:** Great for detailed updates, onboarding sequences, and re-engagement. But inboxes are crowded, and open rates can be unpredictable.  
- **SMS:** Perfect for urgent alerts like security warnings or payment failures, but overuse can feel intrusive.  
- **Push \+ In-App Notifications:** Ideal for mobile-first engagement. Push grabs attention immediately, while in-app keeps messages accessible.  
- **Slack & Teams:** Essential for work-related SaaS. A Slack notification about a pending approval or project update is often more effective than an email.

Managing push \+ in-app notifications can be complex. Solutions like **Courier Inbox** simplify this by providing a ready-to-use notification center for web and mobile apps.

## The Risk of Relying on a Single Channel

Imagine relying only on email to notify users of an expiring subscription. If the email lands in spam or is overlooked, that’s lost revenue. But if the user also receives an SMS and an in-app alert, renewal chances increase dramatically.

Similarly, relying only on push notifications can backfire—once dismissed, they vanish. A push \+ in-app strategy ensures users can always catch up on important updates.

## How Top SaaS Companies Use Multichannel Notifications to Boost Retention

SaaS companies thrive when users keep coming back. The best don’t leave engagement to chance—they use smart, multichannel notifications to guide users and reinforce habits.

### How Intercom Boosted Retention:

- **Behavioral Email Campaigns:** Step-by-step guides for users who hadn’t set up chatbots.  
- **Mobile Push for Urgency:** Support agents received push notifications when customers replied to their messages.  
- **In-App Tooltips:** Contextual prompts encouraged users to explore overlooked features.

Using the right channel for the right message helped Intercom boost retention by **15%** without overwhelming users.

### Other SaaS Companies Driving Retention:

- **Figma:** In-app tutorials guide users through complex workflows.  
- **Asana:** Milestone emails reinforce engagement.  
- **Salesforce:** Einstein Analytics sends proactive insights to re-engage users.  
- **GitHub:** Slack notifications keep developers in the workflow.  
- **Vendr:** Multi-channel renewal reminders prevent contract lapses.

## Best Practices for Smart Notifications

1. **Map User Journeys:** Identify key moments and deliver tailored messages.  
2. **Let Users Control Preferences:** Trello lets users mute specific notifications to prevent overload.  
3. **A/B Test Everything:** Grammarly refines subject lines through rigorous A/B testing.  
4. **Segment by Behavior:** Power users get advanced tips; dormant users receive re-engagement offers.

## Building a Notification Strategy That Drives Retention

Multichannel notifications aren’t just a nice-to-have—they’re a strategic necessity. By leveraging personalized onboarding, behavioral triggers, and a multi-channel approach, SaaS companies can keep users engaged and reduce churn.

**Courier** simplifies the process—offering multi-channel routing, dynamic preference management, and precise delivery windows—helping businesses transform notifications into a powerful tool for retention and growth.  


Multichannel Churn Header

Learn how multichannel notifications improve SaaS retention by delivering the right message at the right time via email, SMS, push, Slack, and more.

How Multichannel Notifications Reduce SaaS Churn and Boost Engagement

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Notifications are the lifeblood of modern apps. They re-engage users, keep them informed, and build trust. But most apps rely solely on push notifications—without an in-app inbox, critical updates can easily be lost.

Push notifications grab attention in the moment—perfect for a flight delay, an account alert, or a message from a teammate. But they’re fleeting—once dismissed, they’re gone. If a user is busy or distracted, that information is lost, along with the opportunity to engage them.

An in-app inbox solves this. Unlike push notifications, an inbox provides a persistent record—a place users can revisit to see what they missed. It ensures important updates aren’t lost, helps users prioritize, and creates a seamless notification experience: push drives immediacy, while the inbox provides depth and context.

This is a big reason why we built [Courier Inbox](https://www.courier.com/docs/platform/inbox/intro). Let’s look at a few ways that push notifications and in-app notifications (Courier Inbox) can work together.

## 2\. Push and In-App Done Right: How B2C Sets the Standard for B2B

B2C companies have mastered **push notifications and in-app inboxes** to drive engagement and keep users informed. B2B, on the other hand, often treats notifications as transactional, missing opportunities to create seamless, user-friendly experiences.

**Airbnb and Starbucks** show how to do it right—using push to grab attention and in-app inboxes to provide continuity. Their approach offers a playbook for B2B companies looking to improve communication, ensure critical updates are seen, and build better user experiences. 

Let’s look at three ways we can learn from them

### A) Push for Immediate Action

Push notifications drive urgency and encourage quick responses.

**Examples from B2C Products:**

- **Airbnb**: Sends push notifications to alert users about high-demand properties, upcoming trips, or price drops.  
- **Starbucks**: Notifies users about limited-time promotions, double star days, or when their order is ready for pickup.

**How to Apply It for B2B:**  
Push notifications drive critical actions in business workflows:

* **HR & Workforce Management** *(Workday, BambooHR)* → Notify managers when a time-off request needs approval, or remind employees about an upcoming performance review deadline.  
* **Project Management & Collaboration** *(Asana, Jira, Monday.com)* → Alert team members about task assignments, urgent project updates, or approaching deadlines.  
* **Finance & Accounting** *(QuickBooks, Stripe, Expensify)* → Notify users of high-value transactions, failed payments, or invoice due dates.  
* **Procurement & Inventory Management** *(SAP Ariba, Coupa)* → Send alerts when inventory levels are critically low or when a purchase order requires urgent approval.  
* **Developer API Platforms & DevOps** *(Postman, Datadog, CircleCI)* → Push real-time alerts for API failures, security breaches, or system downtime.  
* **Customer Support & Help Desk** *(Zendesk, Intercom)* → Notify agents about high-priority tickets or customer escalations requiring immediate attention.

### B) Providing Organization and Depth

An in-app inbox stores important updates, providing users with a centralized hub to revisit key information.

**Examples from B2C Products:**

* **Airbnb**: Consolidates booking confirmations, itineraries, and host communications in its inbox, so users can access all trip details easily.  
* **Starbucks**: Tracks rewards progress, stores personalized offers, and organizes order history in the inbox, creating a consistent loyalty experience.

**How to Apply It for B2B:**  
A notification center serves as a persistent feed of important updates:

* **HR & Workforce Management** *(Workday, Rippling)* → Store performance reviews, benefits updates, and compliance announcements for easy access.  
* **Developer API Platforms** *(Postman, Auth0)* → Provide a log of API usage alerts, integration failures, and feature updates so developers can track changes over time.  
* **Procurement & Inventory Management** *(SAP Ariba, Coupa)* → Organize order approvals, supplier updates, and low-stock warnings to streamline purchasing workflows.  
* **Security & Compliance** *(OneTrust, Vanta)* → Maintain policy violation alerts, audit logs, and compliance deadlines in a centralized inbox for security teams.  
* **Project Management & Collaboration** *(Asana, Jira)* → Track task assignments, milestone completions, and team mentions in a dedicated notification center, making updates easy to review.

### C) Personalize Your Notifications

Tailored notifications make users feel valued and ensure messages are relevant.

**Examples from B2C Products:**

* **Airbnb**: Recommends properties based on user preferences and past bookings, creating a personalized search experience.  
* **Starbucks**: Sends offers based on users’ favorite drinks, purchase history, and regional promotions.

**How to Apply It for B2B:**  
Personalization in B2B notifications means delivering role-based updates:

* **HR & Workforce Management** *(BambooHR, Workday)* → Notify managers about pending approvals, team performance summaries, and policy updates, while employees receive benefits enrollment reminders and training deadlines relevant to them.  
* **Developer API Platforms** *(Postman, Auth0)* → Deliver alerts on API key expirations, unusual traffic spikes, and new feature availability specific to a developer’s usage patterns.  
* **Project Management & Collaboration** *(Asana, Jira)* → Surface task assignments, due date reminders, and team updates tailored to each user’s role and involvement.  
* **Finance & Accounting** *(QuickBooks, Stripe)* → Send customized invoice reminders, large transaction alerts, and monthly spend summaries relevant to finance teams.  
* **Risk & Compliance** *(OneTrust, Vanta)* → Notify security teams about compliance gaps, policy violations, and critical risk assessments based on the specific regulatory frameworks they manage.

## 3\. Why Not Build from Scratch?

Building a notification system from scratch is deceptively complex. Many teams start out thinking it’s just about sending messages, but the deeper they go, the more challenges emerge. It’s also not just about building it, once it’s built, you gotta maintain it.

Some of the biggest challenges include:

* **Backend Complexity:** Managing APIs, tokens, message queues, and multi-provider orchestration is a headache  
* **Maintaining Multiple Frontends:** Supporting iOS, Android, and web requires specialized skills and constant updates.  
* **Synchronization Issues:** Ensuring consistency across push, email, and in-app messages is hard  
* **Scaling Challenges:** As notification volume grows, complexity to maintain will increase.

## 4\. Building Developer First

At Courier, we set out to build an in-app notification platform that makes adding real-time notifications easy and fully customizable, ensuring they feel native to your app. Basically, what would we as developers expect. Here’s what we thought about when building Courier Inbox:

* **Cross-Platform SDKs:** Native support for iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter along with Javascript for web.  
* **Real-Time Updates:** Push notifications and inbox sync instantly using websockets.  
* **Multi-channel Support:** Ability to send messages across multiple channels like email, Slack, and SMS along with push and in-app  
* **Offline Support:** Messages remain accessible without connectivity, syncing seamlessly when users reconnect.  
* **Customizable Design:** Easily tailor the inbox UI to your app’s branding and look native to the platform (eg iOS looks like iOS) 

## 5\. A Smarter Way to Build Notifications

That’s why we built [Courier Inbox](https://www.courier.com/docs/platform/inbox/intro): to take the complexity out of notifications. Real-time updates, cross-platform SDKs, and full customization—without the overhead. Give users the notifications they need, when they need them. No missed messages, no unnecessary complexity. Just a seamless experience across every platform.

If you’re ready to build notifications that users love, Courier makes it easy.  


Push and In-app - Header

B2C apps like Airbnb use push + in-app to keep users engaged. B2B can learn from them to build notifications that drive action and improve user experience.

Push + In-App: The Notification Strategy B2B Needs to Steal from B2C

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Rethinking Push and In-App Notifications: What B2B Can Learn from B2C

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The Courier Team

Twilio powers communication for over 10 million developers and 300,000 businesses worldwide. As a leader in customer engagement, they’ve set the standard for seamless, scalable developer tools. But as their business grew, managing notifications became a challenge. Fragmented tools and workflows created inconsistencies and inefficiencies across teams. To solve this, Twilio turned to Courier—a platform designed to unify notifications and improve the developer experience at scale.

---

## Twilio’s Challenge: Scaling In-Console Messaging

Twilio’s in-console notifications are critical for keeping developers informed. Whether it’s product updates, feature launches, or system alerts, notifications help developers stay engaged and take action. But as Twilio scaled, teams started relying on different tools to manage notifications. The result? Fragmented user experiences, messaging inconsistencies, and time lost managing workflows.

For a platform of Twilio’s scale, these challenges added friction to what should have been a seamless experience. They needed a unified solution to deliver consistent, real-time updates while simplifying workflows for their teams.

---

## Why Twilio Chose Courier For Notifications

Twilio needed a notification platform that could scale with them and adapt to their complex workflows. Courier stood out for its ability to centralize notifications and streamline delivery across channels. Key factors in their decision included:

- **Web Inbox**: Delivered targeted, real-time notifications directly within Twilio’s console.  
- **Seamless Integration**: Worked effortlessly with existing tools like Segment and SendGrid.  
- **Customization**: Easy to customize so that you can create consistent, branded notifications across all channels.  
- **Efficiency**: Reduced engineering effort with straightforward implementation and centralized workflows.  
- **Security**: Included enterprise-grade security and role-based access controls to protect sensitive data.

With Courier, Twilio could unify their notifications while enhancing the experience for developers.

---

## How Courier Solved Real-Time Notifications for Twilio

Integrating Courier gave Twilio the tools to fix fragmented workflows and deliver better notifications across their ecosystem. With Courier’s **web inbox**, Twilio created a central hub for real-time, in-console updates that developers could rely on. Notifications were now consistent, actionable, and delivered exactly when needed.

Courier’s notification center also allowed Twilio to give developers control over their preferences, including digest schedules and message frequency. Customizable templates ensured that every notification matched Twilio’s branding, while real-time delivery powered by webhooks and WebSockets kept developers in sync.

By streamlining their workflows and centralizing notifications, Twilio saved engineering time and created a better experience for their developer community.

---

## The Benefits of Courier’s Unified Notification Platform

The integration with Courier brought immediate and measurable improvements:

- **Centralized Notifications**: A single, unified inbox for all notifications reduced friction and confusion.  
- **Enhanced Experience**: Real-time, actionable updates kept developers engaged and informed.  
- **Scalability**: Built to handle Twilio’s growing ecosystem of developers and customers.  
- **Time Savings**: Simplified workflows allowed engineering teams to focus on building core features.  
- **Personalization**: Developers could tailor their notification experience to match their needs.

These changes didn’t just address the challenges Twilio was facing—they elevated the experience for developers and reinforced Twilio’s reputation for delivering world-class tools.

---

## Outcome: Twilio’s Improved Developer Experience with Courier

The partnership with Courier helped Twilio transform how they manage notifications. Developers now have a consistent and intuitive in-console experience, making it easier to stay informed and take action. By centralizing notifications and improving real-time delivery, Twilio increased engagement and reduced friction for its users.

Internally, the benefits were equally clear. Engineering teams saved time by eliminating fragmented workflows, while Courier’s customizable templates ensured consistent branding without additional effort.

Twilio’s Product Lead, Kandyce Knight, summed it up: *“We at Twilio know how important it is to meet your customers at their preferred channels. Courier gives us the power to fully personalize our customer touchpoints in one easy-to-use, centralized tool.”*

For Twilio, the integration wasn’t just a solution—it was a shift that enabled them to scale their platform while staying true to their developer-first ethos.

---

## Conclusion

Twilio’s success with Courier highlights the importance of a unified notification platform. By solving fragmented workflows and delivering real-time, personalized updates, they improved engagement for millions of developers while saving valuable engineering time.

For organizations managing complex notification systems, Courier offers a proven way to simplify workflows, deliver better user experiences, and scale seamlessly.

Explore how Courier Web and Mobile Inbox can help you better engage your customers. [Learn more here.](https://www.courier.com/platform/inbox)  


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Discover how Twilio unified notifications for 10 million developers with Courier, improving real-time updates, engagement, and workflow efficiency

How Twilio Used Courier to Unify Notifications for 10 Million Developers

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📣 How Twilio Used Courier to Unify Notifications for 10 Million Developers

Anwesa Chatterjee

- [Part 1: Product Notification Experience](https://www.courier.com/blog/pm-product-notification-experience/)
- [Part 3: User Preferences Management](https://www.courier.com/blog/pm-guide-to-preference-management/)
- [Part 4: Omni-Channel Analytics](https://www.courier.com/blog/pm-guide-omnichannel-analytics/)
- [Part 5: Optimized Automation Logic](https://www.courier.com/docs/tutorials/how-to-automate-message-sequences)

As a product manager, have you ever had to say no to improving your app’s notifications because of how complex the project seemed?

If yes, you’re not alone. At Courier, we frequently see product teams deciding not to work on notifications. And PMs aren’t making that decision because a good notification experience is not important for their SaaS product or service — quite the opposite.

The reason is that changing notifications, in their experience, requires a lot of work between engineering and product due to how closely the notifications are tied to the rest of the application. If PMs are tasked with adding a new email campaign that all new users of the app will receive, that can usually be done outside of the core app. But sending more unique notifications, like alerting a Slack channel when someone @-mentions their colleague in a shared file, can be complex and require significant engineering work. And still more work is needed when the text or the design of such a notification needs to be updated.

We believe that changing notifications doesn’t have to be so difficult. In this article, we explain how decoupling notifications from your application’s codebase can help make notification projects less complex and less risky for product teams.

## Why PMs believe notification projects are hard

![image1](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/6kGqayxYctQyy0qkn5MolS/74f523a316788e845e22186ca06c979e/image1.png)

Usually, the task of improving an app’s notification experience — like adding or changing notifications, or connecting additional notification channels — falls to the engineering team that’s responsible for the main product. Such teams have lots on their plate, which makes it necessary to prioritize some tasks over others.

Notification projects tend to be high-value for product managers, as a bad notification experience can have a negative impact on a SaaS app’s customer base, while, conversely, a [good notification experience](https://www.courier.com/blog/pm-product-notification-experience/) can drive growth metrics and delight customers.

However, notification projects also score high on complexity and risk at most companies. That’s because different notification channels, which are quite different by nature (think email versus mobile push), require a lot of individual engineering.

With so much complexity involved, product managers have to make a tough call: is it really worth taking on notification work when there are easier projects to work on with more tangible benefits? Because task backlogs frequently have other items in them that don’t carry as much complexity or risk, it’s logical for product managers to postpone rather complex notification projects. And so notification projects get moved down the priority list, again and again.

## The limits of common engineering solutions to notification problems
To try and make notification changes less difficult to implement, engineering teams use open-source tools that are well supported within their framework or programming language of choice. For example, those working with Ruby on Rails applications often use Rails’ built-in email sending module, [Action Mailer](https://guides.rubyonrails.org/action_mailer_basics.html), which includes functionality for sending plain-text and HTML emails.

While tools like Action Mailer are convenient to use and well-maintained, they can’t handle more complex tasks like expanding beyond the standard notification channels. If you want to add Slack or SMS notifications, for example, choices like Action Mailer can become a limiting factor, rather than an enabler of new product functionality.

The next logical option for a software team running into tooling limitations is to go with a fully customized notification system — but such a system brings its own challenges.

## Even a custom notification system is a bottleneck for notification improvements
It may seem that the solution to the limitations of open-source tools is to simply build your own custom notification system. But a custom notification system is still code that implements notification logic, supported channels, and templates for specific notifications, and this code lives inside the application codebase in a version control system like Git. Any changes to this part of the codebase have to follow the steps of the software development process, which becomes cumbersome when making many small changes, as is the case with notifications. (Not to mention that engineering time needs to be allocated to the maintenance of such systems in the long run.)

For example, if the task is to update the wording or the design of a notification across all channels, the engineering team tasked with the work might have to:

* Change the HTML email template.
* Change the Slack notification template.
* Change the Microsoft Teams notification template.
* Test all three changes.
* Wait for code review on the changes.
* Once the code is reviewed, deploy all three changes to production.
* Hand off to the PM for a final confirmation.

And every time a PM wants more changes implemented for notifications, the process has to start over again, even for trivial content changes. The standard development process, which is totally reasonable for code changes, is too much overhead when working on notifications, and the additional overhead takes the engineers’ time away from working on more valuable things.

## The result: notifications rarely get updated
Because of the additional delays introduced by the development process, the friction for implementing notification changes ends up being so high that PMs often choose to not implement notification changes at all. 

Instead of focusing on building the best possible notification experience, they settle for the default notifications that are built into their application already, because anything else becomes too difficult to do. They might think “If it took two weeks to change the simple design on my notifications, we're just not going to change things anymore.” And so notification experiences stall out indefinitely.

## There is a better way: enable PMs to work with notifications without involving the engineering team
Courier’s point of view is that the way notifications are handled in most SaaS apps today — templates stored in code, notification functionality changes requiring code deployments, etc. — is outdated and, as we have seen in the examples above, ineffective.

Instead of having to go through the development process for each notification change, we need to give PMs and other non-technical stakeholders the right tools to work with notifications directly. Here are the core practices that act as enablers for non-technical audiences.

**Making templates accessible to non-engineers.** Notification templates in the form of text, HTML, or programming-language-specific template files need to be located outside of the application code, and PMs as well as other non-technical teams need to have access and be able to make changes.

**Making notification logic configurable without needing to re-deploy the app.** The logic involved in deciding which notifications to send when should not be located in the application code, but rather sit next to it and be configurable without needing to deploy the application. The configuration can live in a text file, a web interface, or another config format. PMs should ideally be able to change the configuration themselves.

**Enabling self-serve analytics.** Besides notification functionality, PMs need to be able to track how their changes are doing — and be able to follow the statistics without the need to ask engineering or data teams for the numbers. Analytics can be presented as a custom dashboard, but can also be an export of a business intelligence report, or even a dump of application logs that show which messages were sent, depending on which option is easier.

## What are the results of PM enablement?
To show that PM enablement works as a way to make notification projects easier, we want to share two examples from Courier customers that have experienced this change.

Bluecrew, a marketplace for hourly jobs, [has seen its business grow](https://www.courier.com/blog/courier-bluecrew-multi-channel-notifications/) after decoupling notifications from application code. The company was able to improve the onboarding experience for new users in part by taking advantage of notification templates and making them accessible to non-technical stakeholders.

Within Bluecrew’s notification system, “anyone can add a content block and insert a custom attribute like ‘shift start time’ or ‘cancelation reason.’ We also have the flexibility to add custom code anywhere in the notification,” says Cooper Newby, the Chief Product Officer at Bluecrew. 

Another company that’s been taking advantage of the enablement approach is [Expel](https://expel.com), a provider of security services. The Expel team has enabled its UX designers to use the template designer UI directly and make changes to the product in real time.

“We can get our UX designers working directly on the templates and we can make updates and have them live in seconds,” says Yousuf Ashparie, Principal Software Engineer at Expel.

Does enabling PMs to make notification changes sound appealing at this point? We hope it does — as we believe it’s a significant improvement over the current practices at most companies. Let’s look at how you can enable PMs to work with notifications in your own team.

## So, how can you enable PMs to work with notifications?
Looking to enable PMs to do more notification work, but not sure where to start? Here are our top recommendations for companies looking to get started on the PM enablement journey.

**1. Get analytics in place.** Having analytics for notifications is a key tool for PMs to measure any notification changes. While metrics can be difficult to come by for some notification channels, it is usually possible to have at least some numbers in place. Once the PMs get the data, they can use it to avoid accidentally making the notification experience worse, and to make sure the rest of the organization can see the benefits for larger changes to notifications.

**2. Make it easier to change notification templates.** While it’s ideal to make all notification channels and notification types configurable by PMs, it’s not always realistic. Instead, at least make it so that PMs can change existing notifications without much involvement from the engineering team. Even if that’s all you allow, you will still need to add functionality to adjust notification designs to fit the updated content, and likely implement internationalization and translation workflows if you’re interested in supporting multiple languages.

**3. Build guardrails to prevent notification issues from escaping to production.** Ideally, all notification functionality should be covered with automated and, possibly, manual tests so that the organization can be confident in the product’s notification experience at all times. The areas to check include: notification text fitting within the display area; possible internationalization glitches; technical issues like app crashes resulting from changes in notification text size; handling of unexpected characters if notifications include user input.

## Courier can help
Instead of building everything yourself, use Courier — and get our recommended steps 1–3 done almost instantly after some brief initial implementation work.

Using Courier frees up your team to focus on other valuable things in their backlog. For PMs, UX designers, and other non-technical stakeholders, Courier helps by:

* providing a drag and drop designer, including a staging environment, with the ability to make changes live without deploying the app
* offering a UI that allows users to add new notification channels without needing to update code
* including an Automation UI that allows users to build out notification workflows visually (no application code)
* Implementing the guardrails in point 3 above, so that you can reduce the effort involved in changing notifications without increasing the risk.


Courier is a notification service that centralizes all of your templates and messaging channels in one place which increases visibility and reduces engineering time. 

Start Routing Notifications Today!

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In this article, we explain how decoupling notifications from your application’s codebase can help make notification projects less complex for product teams.

Why PMs Avoid Notification Projects — And How to Fix It

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The Product Manager's Guide To Building Notification Systems: Decoupling Templates From Code

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Nočnica Mellifera

Or, how we’re destroying users’ trust, and how to get it back. Check out the first post in this series as well: *[Building a Great UX Outside of Your App](https://www.courier.com/blog/building-ux-outside-of-app/)*.

There is a direct connection between all the unnecessary notifications you get on your phone and the sub-prime financial crisis of 2008. The connection is human behavior in a large and anonymous marketplace where bad behavior is rarely punished.

In a recent [Hackernews post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32692884), I posited the same connection: that apps that send notifications are facing a systemic collapse where users will be so overwhelmed with mass notifications that most of them will opt out entirely. One user responded with a great synopsis of the problem:

> Unfortunately if it drives engagement of 2 people at the expense of becoming annoying to one person the app developers will keep over-using notifications.

I’d add one further sad corollary to this observation: as long as other app developers are over-using notifications, it’s irrational for you the app developer not to. As you compete for attention on users’ devices, you will fall behind your competitors if you don’t emit a few notifications a day. So even though your individual action hurts the user experience overall, it can be irrational for you to avoid doing so.

As any fan of financial crises can tell you, the subprime bubble, where lenders created AAA-rated securities out of extremely shaky mortgage lending, was not an evil scheme dreamed up by nihilists. Rather, it was the act of rational people acting in their own best interests. As long as other banks were selling junk securities at high markups, it wasn’t rational for one bank to stop, even when they knew the system couldn’t go on forever. As former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince infamously said, “as long as the music is playing, you have to keep dancing.”

## What the crash would look like
Any time I start a discussion on Reddit or Hackernews about what users want in notifications, most commenters say that they want out of notifications entirely. It was only three years ago that most users got ‘do not disturb’ mode on their phones, and more and more users are deciding to stay in Do Not Disturb *forever*.

Can notifications ‘crash’ the same way that the mortgage market did? Absolutely. The sequence looks like this:

* Increased awareness of unnecessary notifications
* Government regulators request that OS producers limit unnecessary notifications
* All notifications become tightly restricted
* Contacting users via push notifications becomes unreliable 
* Application developers no longer invest the time in timely notifications
* With users no longer expecting notifications, developers are forced to go back to email and SMS to contact users at all

## The Prisoner’s Dilemma
John Cassidy in his illuminating book *[How Markets Fail](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429990691/howmarketsfail)* explains that this pattern is in fact a version of the prisoner’s dilemma. The multiple actors in the market aren’t able to coordinate and they end up choosing options that are individually beneficial, but collectively negative.

The sub-prime crisis nearly crashed the global economy and we still live in its shadow. In the world of notifications: every OS release on our phones further limits how apps can notify us, is a similar crisis coming in the market for user attention?

## How we break free
A dire situation, surely, but we can do something about it: collaboration. The prisoner’s dilemma doesn’t work nearly as well if the prisoners can communicate and see each other’s choices. In the case of notifications, all that’s required is that we the creators of applications agree to some simple principles for trustworthy notifications.

This move is not without precedent. Multiple industries decided on voluntary pledges of quality and trustworthiness rather than deal with public ire, choosing self-regulation over government regulation. Perhaps you remember this seal from the childhood newsstand:

![crisis-1](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/2nsPqQwBpHIueEHCVrtoQl/82d7f10962cbd1731f1ee55036cc23e0/crisis-1.png)

Next to Captain America’s adventures and even Grant Morrison’s Swamp Thing, the Comics Code Authority seal was stamped on the cover of comic books for over 40 years. And perhaps you saw another sign of voluntary self-regulation in an air-conditioned theater this weekend:

![crisis-2](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/1W7YN13dcLNuTHnGnir9Vv/433631f477614ba9671a680587009def/crisis-2.png)

Neither of these ratings and advisory boards are without their detractors, and as Comic book fans aged and concerns about violent comics diminished, the comics code has disappeared. However, these do show that a lack of public trust can be addressed by an industry-wide standard.

## A pledge for better notifications
Folks, I don’t want to be corny, but I do want us to get better. Here we get to the crux: I want us to agree to do better. Here are the principles that can guide better notifications.

*One caveat here: this pledge is not about dark patterns or dishonesty. Tricking the user into spending money unintentionally should be covered by generalized ethics, this is about good design principles for developers who want to build trustworthy tools.*

### 1. Be timely
We often feel bombarded with notifications, so a requirement that they come faster can seem counter-intuitive. But it’s critical that you identify when and with what precision your users expect to be informed. A notification that your web service is down needs to come sooner than the first angry call from a user. And a notification about breaking news needs to come before you say something mean about Queen Elizabeth on Slack. 

![crisis-3](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/CskUDdiZMdgRl1RvZpzhi/3bf58dc29d3f3195aebd59a53df193d6/crisis-3.png)
*When the Steam Deck inspired a purchasing frenzy, many users complained they got inaccurate notifications, like this classic epoch failure for a user in the UK*

Timeliness also means not notifying too quickly. Notifications about how many people liked a cat picture don’t need to arrive at 2:00 AM, they can wait til morning. 

The required accuracy of notifications will vary a lot depending on your use case. A scheduling tool like Calendly will need its notifications to arrive on the exact minute we need them to arrive at a meeting on time. A more fun social app probably only needs to send notifications accurately within 30 minutes.

![crisis-4](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/3jiPBK4MyEafiuSly0RPta/7f567998e084a0a5966b1e8036873f0b/crisis-4.png)
*This failure by YouTube may reflect a shift in usage patterns: where previously new and interesting videos didn’t need up-to-the-minute notifications, now users get breaking news and important premieres on YouTube.*

### 2. Be targeted
We may not want our applications to know everything about us, but targeting is a critical part of good notifications. If I ordered Pizza Hut for lunch, I don’t want them notifying me of dinner specials. Look at this not-ideal experience for a user of Accuweather that warned him of thunderstorms…3,000 miles from his current location:

![crisis-5](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/3EZ0BStlnMusDD464RsorU/43052cf882848ee5430b53cc13944d12/crisis-5.png)
*The cut-off text makes the situation worse: it’s easy to assume this is happening in your town!*

Some things we’d ideally target in our notifications:
* Geography
* Time Zone
* User’s access level within our service
* Where they are in the user journey

### 3. Be brief
In the example above from accuweather.com, a slightly wordy notification meant the user didn’t see the area affected by the alert. This is one example of a larger problem: a failure to be brief and to-the-point with notification messages.

Since notifications are often shortened when viewed on different devices, be sure to put the most important information first. Journalists would call this the ‘inverted pyramid’ but I prefer to think of it as a special case of little-endian transmission: the least important information should come last.

A special case of the requirement to be brief is digests: ask yourself if your notifications are more meaningful in a group or one-at-a-time. Notifications of individual ‘likes’ on a post is a great candidate for a digest, as is a long conversation thread.

Ideally since you’re following rule 2 and therefore know the user’s timezone, you can dynamically generate digests when notifications would be sent in the middle of the night for the user.

### 4. Offer (the right amount of) control
Finally there’s control. If I posted every bad example of user preferences for notifications this article would resemble 2000’s Flickr. But:

![crisis-6](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/7k9Yb2Js0xw1tAAvczkx9T/c71c080f37ae7249d22ff251d830428e/crisis-6.jpg)
*A classic example is Starbucks’ which, for a time, would only tell you order status if you also accepted spam*

So we want to offer users real fine-grained controls. But it is possible to get too fine-grained

![crisis-7](//images.ctfassets.net/z7iqk1q8njt4/AtDdpPBn2oT7fJTbbZEZI/fe645350138a19d7e5f892d3dc098c07/crisis-7.png)
*If you zoom in, this is every notification setting for Google Maps*

The solution when you have too many settings is to offer some grouping, so that users can turn off whole categories.
What unifies these needs?
The common thread between all of these requirements is that they all require technical lift. Timeliness, targeting, brevity (with digests), and user preferences all require that we go above and beyond with our notifications service. A simple bulk send email kicked off by a cron job can’t deliver these features without some very sophisticated and un-maintainable regex. The solution then is to have a notifications service that can offer these features in a lightweight experience for our product team.

In the last article of this series, we’ll cover how you can build a great notification experience *without* using Courier.


woman on red backdrop screaming in annoyance as she is inundated with too many notifications

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There is a direct connection between all the unnecessary mobile notifications you get and the financial crisis of 2008: lack of accountability for bad behavior.

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The Sub-prime Crisis of Notifications

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Shreya Gupta

A swan pulls a ready-made nest out of a Courier box while a duck has to build one from scratch across the pond.

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This post gets into the “7 C’s” that should be considered when deciding to build vs buy. Learn about how Apartment List implemented this process.

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