Why would you want to create a log of old notifications?

Well, there are a few reasons...

Maybe you accidentally swiped a notification away and wanted to see what it said, or maybe, like us, you want to build a competitive library of push notifications an app has sent over time to learn more about them and their messaging strategy.

Either way, there are many notification logger apps on both Google Play and the Apple App Store, but most fall short in one way or another.

One of the biggest issues is that all of these stored notifications can take up quite a bit of room on your phone. The other issue is that you can't save these notifications in an organized way like in a spreadsheet, where you can sort, filter, and analyze them (again, this is key to how we do our marketing research).

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For marketers, storing and tracking notifications can give you valuable insights —

...not just into your own customer experience — but also into how your competitors are managing theirs.

By tracking competitive notifications, you can learn:

• What is their overall messaging strategy?
• What's their messaging cadence? (Frequency and time of send)
• What type of tone/language do they use?
• What triggers are they using?
• Are they using discounts? If so, what level and how frequently?
• Are they sending recommendations? If so, are they truly personalized or are they sending the same ones to everybody?
• What is their level of personalization?
• ...and a ton more!

‍(If you'd like to see our library of almost 30,000 logged push notifications we've recorded for a variety of industries, click here!)

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So, without further ado, here's how you set up your own phone notification log:

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Step 1: Download the IFTTT app

Here are the links for the IFTTT app on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

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Step 2: Connect this applet and your Gmail account

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...and that's literally it!

Now, whenever you receive a new notification on your phone, it will be logged into a spreadsheet in your Google Drive account.

There will be a new folder under your Google Drive called "IFTTT" which will contain a "Notifications" folder. Inside that folder will be a spreadsheet with a log of the notifications you've received. The spreadsheet will look like this:

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Here's a video overview:

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Logging competitive push notifications is a great source of intel into your — and your competitor's — lifecycle strategy

...and since this takes virtually no effort to set up, there's no reason *not* to do it!

If you need any help, please reach out with the button below, and don't forget to get a head start by checking out our library of almost 30,000 saved notifications from a variety of industries!