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Mobile conversion has officially crossed the chasm. With reports showing that mobile purchases drove 37% of sales on Black Friday and 40% of sales on Cyber Monday, mobile is no longer just an engagement channel, but a true revenue channel.

That is, at least, for the retailers who have their messaging strategy on point.

Knowing push notifications would be sent in high volume, top retailers like Target, Walmart, and Tradesy began sending holiday push messages up to three weeks before Black Friday to prime their app-enabled shoppers with promotion previews, countdowns, and more.

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This is just one of many tactics used by mobile marketers. While the largest shopping days of the holiday season are behind us, there is much to learn from Cyber Week that can be applied in the weeks to come — and for holidays and seasonal promotions year round. Here are our top tips.

  • Use updatable push to limit the number of messages you send while keeping your customers up-to-date on time-bound offers, limited stock, and trending products. Try this tactic for counting down the last hours of holiday promotions and the last hours to get shipping in time for holiday delivery to drive urgency.
  • Get noticed with rich content, including gifs and video. These can have upwards of 50% higher tap through rates when compared to standard push.
  • Go beyond “tap here” — use “add to cart” CTAs to promote conversion and “save to list” CTAs to enable retargeting across email, web, social and other channels.
  • Always deep-link. Don’t send a notification about a deal and direct your customers to the home screen of your app or home page of your site! The quicker you can get your users to the items they want, the better as deep linking can help you increase conversion by up to 66%.
  • Segment your audience to throttle app and site traffic. Nobody loves a party crasher, especially when holiday deals are often time sensitive.
  • Personalize. Even basic personalization in push messages can increase app open rates by up to 800%.  Below shows the difference between blast and personalized messages for a person whose profile might indicate they are athletic and looking to purchase new basketball sneakers.

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  • Drive to store. Even with a massive increase in mobile purchase conversion, consumers are still more likely to walk out of a store with a higher average order value and basket size. Use geolocation and beacon technology to message customers close to your retail footprint and retarget foot traffic with post-visit and post-purchase messaging.
  • Begin messaging early! Let your customers know what to look for in the weeks leading up to any holiday so that you’re not fighting for screen space on major sale days.

Whether it’s Cyber Week, Mother’s Day, Back to School, or Singles’ Day, having the right engagement plan in place will ensure you’re taking as much of the mobile revenue pie as possible.