LinkedIn · Metrics · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

Raise Notification Opt In for Message Replies

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform where people build profiles, connect with others, look for jobs, and message each other. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Product sense
Metrics
Experimentation
User empathy
Trade off analysis

The situation

You are a PM on LinkedIn's growth and retention team. The messaging team says timely reply awareness is a major driver of users coming back, but many mobile users do not receive push notifications because they never enabled them or previously turned them off. This matters most after users send an important message and are likely waiting for a response. Today, notification permission requests are mostly generic and shown in broad moments like app open, and the team suspects they feel interruptive and low value. There is also a platform challenge: on iOS, once a user declines the system notification request, you cannot simply ask again with the same system prompt. Leadership wants a plan this quarter to improve opt in to notifications without hurting trust, spam perceptions, or message sending behavior. Assume current generic prompts convert poorly and users are sensitive to anything that feels like attention grabbing. Your job is to recommend how LinkedIn should increase notification opt in for message related use cases, how success should be measured, and how to test it safely.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product memo.

Your answer must

Define the user problem and why it matters for retention, using message reply awareness as the core use case.
Identify the primary metric, 2 to 4 supporting metrics, and at least one guardrail metric.
Propose a product approach for when and how to ask users to enable notifications, with at least two alternatives and the trade offs between them.
Explain how your approach should handle users who have already denied notifications on iOS.
Outline an experiment plan, including target segments, success thresholds, and key risks to monitor.

Constraints

You cannot rely on repeatedly showing the native iOS permission prompt after a user has denied it.
You should not add a broad new notification category or change the core messaging product in a major way.
The solution must preserve user trust and avoid making LinkedIn feel noisy or manipulative.

Format

Use sections with short headers such as problem, goals, approach options, metrics, experiment, and risks.

How LinkedIn actually played it

Describes how LinkedIn reframed its notification permission prompts and reached roughly five times more opt-ins, with the reasoning behind the new wording. Strong example of retention through a small prompt.

Reframe the permission around user benefit
Small copy changes can move a key retention input

Built from How Linkedin Increased Notification Opt-in Rates by 500% by Growth.Design.