Best Practices

List of best Practices to follow while designing your notification system

Integrating SuprSend in backend code

  • Securely store your API Keys: Store your API keys, workspace key, and secret as environment variables rather than in source code to prevent unauthorized access. Refer best practices of API key management here.

  • Use Idempotency Key to avoid duplicate requests: Always include an idempotency key in your requests so that request retries doesn't result in duplicate trigger or duplicate notification being sent to users.

  • Use bulk API triggers wherever applicable to improve performance and reduce request processing time.

  • Implement Proper Error Handling
    • Design robust error handling to manage API responses, including timeouts, server errors, and invalid responses.
    • Log errors using webhook and monitor them to quickly identify and resolve issues.

  • Keep Dependencies Updated: Regularly update your SDK or API libraries to take advantage of new features and security patches. Monitor for updates in the API or SDK and adapt your implementation as needed.

Setting up notifications on SuprSend dashboard

  • Keep development and production workspaces separate: Avoid making direct changes in production workspace to safeguard from accidentally sending a test notification to your production users. Test all changes in staging before deploying them to production to ensure reliability.

  • Design one workflow per event or trigger: Configure entire notification journey corresponding to an event or trigger in a single workflow. It simplifies notification management and helps you to edit and track notifications in a single glance.

  • Be cautious of the number of alerts you send per user.
    • Add throttle in your workflows to limit the number of alerts you send per user.
    • Consider batching notifications to summarize frequent alerts to reduce the volume of notifications sent and prevent notification fatigue.

  • Smartly route notifications across multiple channels to avoid bombarding: Avoid sending notifications across multiple channels simultaneously. While multi-channel targeting can boost engagement, excessive notifications on all channels may lead to user unsubscriptions over time. Use smart channel routing to send notifications sequentially if users do not engage, and consider integrating non-intrusive channels like Inbox as a secondary channel for not so critical updates.

  • Provide granular opt-out option to users to reduce channel unsubscription: It is recommended to give users option to opt-out when sending promotional notifications. Most countries have data privacy and regulation acts, like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in Europe and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) in USA, which mandates taking user’s consent to send them notifications. While users can opt out of channels, offering more granular control to set notification preferences at category level can significantly reduce channel-level unsubscriptions, potentially decreasing them by around 50%.

  • Implement Secure Authentication of SuprSend account: Use secure authentication methods such as SSO and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for SuprSend account login. Assign appropriate roles to your team members to prevent data leakage or unintended changes in production notification.