Unifying Notifications & Messaging for a Global Freelance Marketplace
One of the world’s largest freelance marketplaces (name withheld under NDA) connects millions of buyers and sellers across 160+ countries. As the platform scaled, its communication channels failed to keep pace. Transactional emails arrived late or not at all, real‑time notifications were inconsistent, and users received few reminders or promotional messages. Without timely updates, freelancers and clients missed deadlines, lost trust and started moving to competitors. To restore engagement and protect revenue, the client partnered with Advantrix Labs to build a modern notifications and messaging platform.
Project Snapshot
Client profile
Our NDA client is a top-tier freelance marketplace facilitating millions of transactions per year. Its massive infrastructure spans web and mobile apps, payment gateways, seller analytics, and support tooling. Timely communication, from order confirmations and message alerts to delivery reminders and promotional campaigns, is essential for user retention and revenue.
Project goal
Design and implement a unified notifications platform that delivers the following.
- Delivers real‑time, cross‑channel alerts (in‑app, web push and email) to buyers and sellers: Push notifications achieve 7× higher click‑through rates than email and 73 % of companies implementing them see a significant uptick in user engagement
- Automates transactional and promotional emails: Transactional and promotional emails with scheduling, segmentation, and personalization. Email marketing consistently delivers strong ROI
- Event-driven scale: Handle millions of events per day with fault-tolerant messaging
- Integrates with existing services: Let users control notification types, timing, and frequency within product infrastructure
Business challenge
As the marketplace grew, its ad-hoc communication systems created major pain points. Messaging was fragmented across teams and channels, making it difficult to provide timely, consistent updates to users.
- Missed and delayed updates: Orders completed or messages sent were not immediately communicated to buyers and sellers. Without notifications, users missed deadlines and grew frustrated. Poor communication is a leading cause of churn in marketplaces, and increasing customer retention by just 5 % can boost profits by up to 95 %
- Lack of promotional and re‑engagement campaigns: he platform did not send reminders, milestone celebrations or promotional offers. Shoppers are likely to spend more when they receive email marketing campaigns
- Low engagement on campaigns: Limited segmentation and personalization reduced click-through rates
- Reliability at scale: Existing pipelines struggled with spikes, retries, and deliverability
- No unified audit trail: Teams lacked a single view of what was sent, when, and to whom
- Customers switching to competitors: Without timely reminders or personalized messages, users were tempted by alternative platforms. The platform lacked mechanisms to notify users of new opportunities, deadlines or relevant promotions
- Manual, fragile systems: Notification triggers were hard‑coded in various services, making them difficult to modify and scale. Different teams used separate email templates and scheduling scripts, leading to inconsistent messaging
Solution
Advantrix Labs built a unified notifications and messaging platform designed and delivered event-driven orchestration and microservices. The solution centralizes channel delivery, improves reliability, and gives product and marketing teams control over messaging without engineering bottlenecks.
- Event ingestion and routing: All domain events (e.g., order placed, offer accepted, message sent) are published to queue service topics. Downstream services subscribe to relevant topics to trigger emails, push notifications or in‑app messages
- Notification orchestrator: New API service coordinates notifications across channels. It uses web sockets protocol for real‑time in‑app notifications, AWS services for mobile and browser alerts and transactional and marketing emails. Schedulers batch and send messages at optimal times
- Template and campaign manager: Reusable templates, segmentation, and scheduling for transactional and promo emails
- Email scheduler & templating: An email service stores templates and schedules campaigns. It supports transactional emails (order confirmations, delivery updates), promotional campaigns, abandoned‑cart reminders and milestone rewards. Automated flows are A/B tested to optimize open and click rates
- User preferences & segmentation: Users can opt in or out of specific channels and categories. A segmentation engine groups users based on behavior and preferences, enabling personalized campaigns
- Monitoring and analytics: Real‑time dashboards track delivery rates, opens and clicks across all channels. Alerts notify operators of failures or bottlenecks
- Resilience by system design: Idempotent sends, rate limiting, and fallback queues for peak traffic
Business outcomes
By rethinking communication as a first‑class capability, Advantrix Labs helped a global marketplace transform its user experience, protect revenue and build a foundation for future growth. The unified notifications platform not only keeps users informed and engaged but also enables data‑driven marketing strategies that deliver measurable business results.
- Improved engagement and retention: Real‑time and scheduled notifications keep users informed of orders, messages and promotions. Push notifications deliver click‑through rates 7× higher than email and 73 % of companies report an uptick in engagement, leading to greater platform stickiness and trust
- Revenue uplift: Automated promotional campaigns drive purchases: email marketing returns an average of $36 for every $1 spent, and automated emails generate 320% more revenue than manual blasts. The platform saw higher customer lifetime value and reduced churn—retention gains of 5% can boost profits up to 95%
- Reduced migration to competitors: With timely updates and personalized offers, users stayed engaged on the platform rather than switching to competitors. The system’s reliability and transparency improved user trust and satisfaction
- Operational efficiency and scalability: An event‑driven architecture and centralized templates allow teams to launch new campaigns rapidly without touching core services. The platform now handles millions of notifications per day with consistent delivery performance