17 January 2026
Reading tap-through without chasing vanity opens
Open rates alone rarely explain whether a push notification earned a useful visit. Tap-through and return behaviour tell a clearer story.
An open without a tap can mean curiosity, accidental lock-screen exposure, or a title that overpromised. Treat opens as an attention signal and taps as an intent signal. When both rise after a change, keep the change. When opens rise and taps stall, inspect the first screen after the deep link — not only the notification copy.
For application analytics reviews we ask teams to plot tap-through beside unsubscribe events for the same message family. A campaign that wins taps while accelerating opt-outs is borrowing attention from future weeks. Prefer a smaller send with steadier engagement over a burst that empties the permission pool.