The Best Retention Channel (And LTV Multiplier) in Ecommerce

If you want to win in ecom, high LTV is the business model.

Yet, most brands sleep on one of the most proven ways to increase retention and drive repeat revenue:

Push notifications.

The facts about push:

• Only app users get native push, so your reach will always be smaller.

• But this also means you’re reaching the most engaged customers (read: people most likely to buy again).

• It’s low cost, high impact. No CPMs, no carrier fees. Just direct, owned reach.

• Most brands aren’t sending enough push notifications… because they’re using them the wrong way.

Push notifications drive incremental revenue from your top customer segments (the people most likely to use your mobile app).

You’ll also use push to nudge second orders—the strongest predictor of long-term retention.

Push won’t single-handedly scale your business.

But it’s a low-effort, high-ROI tool that increases repeat purchases, retention, and margin… all without additional ad spend.

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The economics of push notifications

Push notifications win on pure efficiency.

The economics of push are unbeatable.

• Low cost (basically free to send)

• No design overhead

• Minimal copy (often just 10-15 words)

• Easy to automate

It’s low lift, and basically all upside. Incremental revenue without incremental effort.

Most push campaigns aren’t even manual. They’re automated sequences firing off at the right moment.

Abandoned cart nudges, shipping updates, welcome flows – all work in the background to drive retention and LTV while you focus elsewhere.

Push alone won’t run your retention strategy

Too many brands treat push, email, and SMS like they’re competing for attention when they should be working together.

It’s not “this or that”. It’s about stacking them strategically to maximize impact.

Each channel fills in the gaps others leave to maximize the return from your audience, and plays a distinct role in your marketing stack.

Email and SMS reach broadly, covering both new and existing customers.

But push goes deep. It targets your most engaged buyers, the ones who’ve already taken the step to download your app.

That’s a different level of intent. Push notifications keep your brand top of mind, literally sitting in their pocket, ready to drive action.

Yes, push has a smaller audience than email or SMS, but nothing beats it for direct, reliable, and cost-free engagement.

How to do push right

The biggest sin for brands with mobile apps is not using push notifications at all.

Others are guilty of using push the wrong way.

Here’s how to do it the right way.

Understanding your goals

The part most brands get wrong is thinking that the goal of every push notification is to drive a sale.

That’s the wrong mindset.

Push works because it’s low-cost, low-effort, and highly visible—which means it can (and should) be used for more than just promotions.

Some of the best apps I see send a lot of push notifications that don’t even mention a product. No CTA, no hard sell.

Just small, on-brand, motivational messages or check-ins that aren’t demanding a reaction.

Others use push like a subtle display ad—just a gentle nudge to keep the brand top of mind.

One of my favorite push strategies is for new product drops – a well-timed push gives customers a reason to open the app without shoving a discount or urgency play in their face.

And while you will use push for sales-driven messages, they should be the exception, not the rule.

^ this is a great use of the direct, timely nature of push notifications.

But if every push notification is just another “buy now” prompt, you’ll burn out your audience fast.

The 5-figure push notification (that works on autopilot)

One time you should shift push from awareness to urgency is for abandoned cart notifications.

Push is hands-down the most effective channel for cart recovery – high visibility, instant delivery, no friction.

That’s why brands consistently see some of their best conversion rates from abandoned cart pushes.

One brand we worked with pulls in 22% conversion rates, adding over $10K per month just from this play.

And that’s not an outlier. This works across the board.

This is where you turn up the urgency. Time it right and this push is often the difference between a lost sale and a recovered one.

But the brands that win with push know when to sell and when to play the long game, building awareness, mindshare, and engagement so that when the time is right to buy, the customer is already locked in.

The ideal push notification frequency

A lot of brands struggle with knowing how many push notifications to send.

You’re looking for the “Goldilocks zone”. Just right.

There are risks in missing this zone either too high or too low.

• If you send too many, the customer gets annoyed and uninstalls or opts out

• If you send too few, your users will forget they downloaded your app, and when it does come time to message them, your pushes are met with confusion (and uninstalls)

The sweet spot (to start with), is 1-2 notifications per week.

But the best brands push that much higher (even daily) without driving opt-outs or annoying their customers.

The key to success; personalization, relevance, and the right mix of intent

Sending too many push notifications is not the problem—it’s sending irrelevant notifications.

Customers won’t mind frequent messages if they’re valuable, engaging, and feel like they were meant for them.

What actually drives unsubscribes isn’t “I’m getting too many notifications”, it’s “Why are they sending me this?”

The winning formula:

• Personalization & relevance – The message should feel specific to the user.

• Balanced content – If you’re only sending promos, cap it at 1-2 per week. Any more than that, and they should be light-touch brand awareness plays.

• Optimize for sustained mindshare – Even if most notifications get swiped away, they’re still doing the job of keeping your brand top of mind.

Think of it this way: If you send 6 push notifications per week and just 1 in 12 leads to an app session, that’s still one extra engagement every two weeks per customer.

That kind of regularity compounds. Just a small segment of highly engaged users can drive serious LTV, and the cost? Basically zero.

Next steps

If you’ve got an app but aren’t leveraging push, start small (but, most importantly, start):

• Set up automated flows – abandoned cart reminders, welcome sequences, and re-engagement nudges for inactive users.

• Gradually increase frequency – start with 1-2 notifications per week, keeping in mind that not every message needs to be a sales pitch.

• Track engagement vs push volume – the goal isn’t just immediate conversions; it’s building a usage habit that keeps your brand top of mind.

If you don’t have an app yet, push notifications alone are reason enough to build one, especially with how accessible apps are today for ecommerce brands.

If you’re in a category with high repeat purchase potential, an app isn’t just nice to have. It’s an LTV machine.

And push notifications are a large part of that.

Dive Deeper on our Blog

To read more in-depth breakdowns on push notifications and retention, check out these deep dives on our website:

• What’s a Good Repeat Customer Rate? (2025 Benchmarks)

• What's the Optimal Sending Frequency for Push Notifications?

• The Economics of Push Notifications

• The Three Types of Push Notifications

• How Email, SMS and Push Notifications Work Together to Drive Growth

Quick Hits

What‘s worth your attention from around the ecom & DTC world this week.

The $100M Hat

Simon Beard sold Culture Kings for $600M. They made 9 figures in sales alone with a single hat.

He breaks down the keys to selling so much of one product, and how carefully controlling the customer experience made up-sells a piece of cake.

Read more →

6 Trends Shaping Ecom Digital Marketing in 2025

Ecom moves so fast, if you’re not on top of the latest trends, you’re going to be left in the dust.

Jimmy Kim & Chase Dimond break down the top trends you need to know about this year — from AI (of course) to the new way to do personalization.

Read more →

Large Brands Are Flocking to Shopify

Shopify is steadily taking over ecommerce.

Already the best way for small, independent brands to start out, it’s now taking over the enterprise market as well.

Retail Brew reports that more large brands, such as Reebok and Off-White, are making the move to Shopify.

It’s really becoming harder to make the case for any other ecommerce platform as a competitor to the big green monster.

Read more →

“You Can’t Eat Future Sales”

We love to talk about the importance of LTV, but I think it’s good to look at the other side of the coin too.

Ryan wades into the debate in this post by saying too many brands sell themselves on making up low initial profit with retention revenue, and get themselves in trouble.

Whatever side you’re on—there’s certainly a point to what he’s saying. You don’t want to be waiting years for LTV to make up first-order losses.

The second sale is the key. Make it as soon as possible (under 13 weeks), and make sure this sale gets you into the black.

Read more →

What Your Doing Wrong on Gift With Purchase Offers

Gift With Purchase can be a powerful offer… but you’ve got to do it right.

Connor breaks down the key mistake so many brands make with this type of promotion, which completely kill the entire point of the offer.

Read more →

That’s everything for this week.

Stay tuned at the same time next week for the next edition, where we’ll take another dive into another CX and retention topic that today’s brands need to know about.

Hit reply and share your experience with push notifications (as a marketer or a consumer), what you think the best way to drive higher LTV is, or if there are any topics you’d like to see us deep-dive in a future newsletter.

Until next time!

Pietro and The Retention Edge Team