4 Proven Strategies to Boost Customer Engagement on Mobile

By 2027, mobile eCommerce sales are expected to reach $3.4 trillion, a staggering $1.2 trillion rise from only two years ago. As mobile continues to be a go-to channel for digital experiences, customers expect more than just convenience—they want timely, relevant interactions that feel personal. Whether it’s an SMS, a well-timed push notification, or dynamic in-app content, mobile engagement plays a critical role in meeting customer expectations and building brand loyalty.

But scaling mobile engagement doesn’t need to be complicated. This four-step approach will help you connect with customers quickly and meaningfully—no matter where they are on their mobile journey.

Start Strong and Gain Attention Quickly

Driving mobile engagement doesn’t need to involve long, months-to-market campaign plans. Even with minimal data on hand, marketers can make a big impact using contextual data—like local weather, date, or time.

• Weather-targeting takes a campaign from generic to personalized with little effort. Simply adapt your copy and assets to customers’ local weather—like highlighting warm getaways for those in colder climates or promoting refreshing drinks on hot days.
• Time-targeting is the perfect choice for promotions and limited-time offers. All it takes is an urgency-driving countdown clock to motivate customers to act quickly.

‍Rothy’s took this quick but effective approach to drum up excitement for their latest sale. They paired their SMS with a real-time countdown timer to create a feeling of FOMO, encouraging customers to shop via their mobile device immediately.

Turn Customer Insights Into Personalized Experiences

Once you’ve caught customers’ attention with that first touch, it’s time to strengthen the connection with personalization. Customer data—such as name, birth date, and loyalty status—unlock highly tailored campaigns. Customers’ earliest interactions with brands often reveal this type of information, and it only takes a few data points to power hyper-personalized campaigns. 

• Live maps are perfect for hybrid shoppers that like to research online and purchase in person. By displaying the customer’s nearest brick-and-mortar location, you create a quick and easy experience that can’t be beat. 
• Data visualization transforms dry information into a visual experience. Whether it’s turning loyalty progress into a fun graph, creating an onboarding checklist for new customers, or finishing off the month with a member summary, this tactic is a tried-and-true favorite. 

Marley Spoon expertly used customer data to power an in-app data visualization message that resulted in a 136% lift in conversions. The message displayed the number of recipes the customer had ordered, their progress toward the next tier, and the available prizes they were eligible to win. Additionally, every message was localized to show each customer’s preferred language.

Trigger Loyalty With Behavioral Intelligence

Regularly interacting within the mobile channel is one thing, but true brand loyalty? That’s a different level of commitment. To guide customers to that next step in their journey, behavioral data—customers’ actions on your site or app, such as recent browsing, searching, or purchase history—will be your best bet. A reliable way to incorporate this data is through personalized triggers.

• Re-engagement reminders are the perfect way to keep customers interacting on mobile. By showing an unfinished action, whether it be finishing an episode of their favorite show or completing a purchase, customers are drawn back to your app. And the more they interact, the more their loyalty grows.‍
• Abandon cart web crops are a go-to omni-channel strategy for marketers. If a customer has shown interest in certain products on your site, drive traffic to your app by displaying that item within a rich push notification that shows what they’re missing.

With their abandon cart push notification, DSW saw an impressive 17% lift in revenue and an 11% increase in opens. The secret to their success was displaying the product image in the notification. It was a simple, automated add-in that went a long way in driving loyalty.

Activate a Seamless Cross-Channel Experience

Whether your customer prefers email, SMS, push, or in-app, deploying your messaging across channels extends your reach. Just take a look at how these leading brands did it:

‍Global Radio created a clever time-targeted campaign to drive engagement throughout the 12 days leading up to Christmas. Each day, customers would see a newly available prize in their digital advent calendar, while the previous day’s prize would update to “expired.” To stay ahead of each new prize, customers could also add these events to their personal calendar. This campaign deployed on email and in-app, reaching customers wherever they preferred to listen to Global Radio.

Asda chose to combine their cross-channel approach with data visualization. To follow up on their Milestone Missions loyalty email, their marketing team created a rich push notification with a bar graph that displayed the customer’s current rewards status and the amount of time they had left to complete the mission. This resulted in an 18.2% lift in CTR, a major win for the grocery brand.

By combining contextual, personalized, and behavioral strategies across mobile channels, marketers can turn one-time interactions into lasting relationships. These methods don't just increase traffic—they build loyalty, boost revenue, and deliver a seamless mobile experience that keeps customers coming back.

Want to take your mobile strategy to the next level? Let’s talk.