For things like this, I have libnotify installed, and just call notify-send on these events. I also call notify-send on DHCP leases, power management events, etc.
Another solution, because libnotify has pretty heavy dependencies, is to call dwm thus: [ -p .dwm-status ] || mkfifo $HOME/.dwm-status dwm <> $HOME/.dwm-status & while true do /home/kurt/.scripts/all.sh > ~/.dwm-status sleep 5 done my all.sh outputs this: [net kfx-77%] [cpu 0.8GHz @ 39°C] [pwr 100%] 11:32:36 AM so every five seconds, the status bar updates. However, in the meantime, I can echo other messages to $HOME/.dwm-status, and they'll stay for five seconds, and then the message will return to "normal." Another solution is to bind a key to toggle between the fifo and a regular text file, so you can briefly "check your message count" and then switch back to the standard display.
