Everything in this collection is you starting the conversation rather than answering one. The formats differ, but they're built the same way: pick who it's for, what starts it, and how often it may repeat.
Eleven formats, which fall into three groups by how much they interrupt.
Messages that arrive — email, a chat message in the messenger, a push notification, or a WhatsApp message. These reach people wherever they are, which is their strength and their cost.
Things shown in your product — a banner across the top, a modal in front of everything, a tooltip attached to an element, a product tour, or an onboarding checklist. These only reach people who are already using it.
Asking rather than telling — a survey, and news posts people read when they choose to.
The useful question isn't which format you like — it's how much of someone's attention the message is worth.
A modal stops everything. Reserve it for things a customer must see before continuing.
A banner is present without blocking — right for maintenance windows and time-limited notices.
A tooltip waits at the thing it describes, which makes it the gentlest way to explain a feature.
News is entirely opt-in. Nothing is interrupted, and only interested people read it.
Email and push leave your product altogether, so they're for things that matter when someone isn't using it.
Whichever format you pick, three settings decide who actually sees it: the audience, the trigger, and how often it may repeat for the same person. Those have their own article, and they matter more than the content.
Every outbound message spends a little of your customers' patience. Spent well — a genuinely useful tip at the moment it applies — it earns attention back. Spent on announcements nobody asked for, it teaches people to dismiss things without reading, and then the message that mattered goes unread too.
The test worth applying: would this customer be worse off if they never saw it? If not, it probably belongs in news, where people come looking.
