Impactful Mobile Strategies for Holiday Retail Success

By Melissa Tatoris, VP, Retail. Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is expected to make up 44.6% of total online sales in 2024.

Simply optimizing for mobile is no longer enough—retailers need to embrace intelligent and impactful mobile solutions that align with evolving consumer behaviors and expectations. By leveraging these strategies, retailers can offer a personalized, frictionless shopping experience that enhances customer loyalty and drives sales during the holiday rush.

Key strategies for this holiday season include:

• Geo-fencing and hyper-local targeting to deliver real-time, location-based offers that attract nearby customers.
• Dynamic pricing that adjusts in real time to maximize engagement and sales.
• Personalized mobile experiences—powered by AI-driven recommendations—guiding consumers to curated holiday gifts, creating a seamless, tailored shopping journey.

Further enhancing the mobile experience, retailers can use AI-powered virtual gift assistants, and interactive push notifications to provide timely, personalized assistance that drives convenience. Mobile-exclusive promotions such as flash sales—combined with immersive features like augmented reality (AR) try-ons and mobile-driven live shopping events—add excitement and interactivity, making shopping engaging and festive.

The blend of tailored offers, real-time engagement, and mobile-exclusive features will help retailers stand out in an increasingly competitive holiday market. Here’s more on what retailers should pay attention to in the mobile space for the 2024 holiday season.

Personalized Mobile Shopping Experiences

Personalization has become a major expectation for consumers. Leveraging data to tailor the shopping experience on mobile is essential. Retailers should use AI to provide:

• Personalized product recommendations based on browsing and purchasing history. In addition, retailers that really want to double click into hyper-personalization, beacon-based SMS, and push notifications can help drive cross-category shopping and highlight the dark corners in stores that are not widely visited.
• Location-based offers to entice in-store visits for consumers near a physical location.
• Hyper-local offers with geo-fencing to trigger notifications for nearby users/mall lifestyle center visitors with time-sensitive offers, encouraging them to visit the store or take advantage of special discounts. For example, during peak holiday hours, a retailer can offer a “come in now for 15% off” deal as users walk by the store.
• Behavior-based push notifications that issue timely alert users about abandoned carts, restocked items, low inventory, or special holiday discounts.
• Real-time shipping notifications that create excitement for the unboxing experience, telling customers where items are and when they will arrive.
• Competitive conquesting using geo-fencing will help retailers identify not only which customers are shopping at the competition, but also which consumers are visiting those locations that can be ‘stolen’ and acquired as new customers. The big national brands in the ‘burger wars’ successfully conquest each other’s customers on a daily basis.
• Holiday pop-up notifications for seasonal pop-up shops, using geo-fencing to inform nearby mobile users about special events, sales, or product launches in real time.
• Holiday-exclusive tiers offer heightened rewards during the shopping season, accessible only via mobile. This makes the app feel like an exclusive hub for holiday deals and engagement.

Enhanced Mobile Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs can be powerful tools during the holidays, but integrating them into mobile experiences is key.

• Mobile app-based loyalty rewards: Offer app-exclusive rewards, early access to holiday sales, or special promotions to incentivize more downloads and mobile usage.
• Gamified loyalty programs: Reward users with points or discounts for interacting with the app—whether through daily logins, purchases, or sharing on social media—creating a more engaging shopping experience.

Mobile-First User Experience (UX)

Consumers expect seamless navigation, fast load times, and frictionless checkout. A poor mobile experience can lead to high bounce rates, especially during the holidays when consumers are in a rush.

• Optimize for speed: Ensure pages load quickly to avoid losing impatient holiday shoppers.
• One-click checkout: Integrate mobile wallets (like Apple Pay and Google Pay) and payment options like buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) to offer new ways to pay and streamline the purchasing process.
• Mobile-friendly design: Simple, intuitive interfaces that reduce the number of steps from browsing to buying will increase conversions during the busy holiday season.
• Intelligent mobile: On the rise is intelligent mobile, where consumers are fed pop-ups, interstitials, or lightboxes in-app based on their browsing history. This drives additional engagement and product discovery. Amplify that pop-up with third-party data outside of your brand, where your customer was searching on a category you sell but with a competitor brand.
• Connecting behavior experiences: Use SMS inbox to trigger a back-in-stock, new lowered price, low inventory, going fast, hot new item, or any other lifecycle marketing strategy, knowing that SMS has stronger open and engagement rates.

AI-Driven Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Mobile chatbots can provide immediate, personalized assistance to customers, helping them navigate deals, find products, and address concerns in real time.

• AI-driven customer service bots can handle frequently asked questions, process returns, and track orders, freeing up human staff for more complex inquiries.
• Virtual shopping assistants can guide users through gift recommendations based on preferences or help them find complementary products.

Social Commerce Integration

Social media and mobile commerce are increasingly intertwined. Retailers should capitalize on this by:

• Integrating “shoppable” posts on Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, allowing customers to purchase directly from social platforms.
• Tying influencer marketing to mobile commerce, where influencers can link directly to product pages within their social content, enabling impulse buys.
• Livestreaming shopping events where customers can interact with hosts and make purchases directly within the mobile app.
• Leveraging Connected TV as one of the fastest channels to expand revenue using QR codes and targeted microsites. This is an easy testing strategy to target individual households with product specific content they’re watching at home. We know 94% of people watch TV with their mobile phone in-hand.

Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Try-Ons and Live Shopping

AR has become a powerful tool for mobile commerce, especially during the holiday season when consumers are looking for more engaging and immersive experiences.

• Virtual try-ons for fashion and beauty: Enable customers to use their phone’s camera to virtually “try on” clothes, accessories, or makeup, making the decision-making process easier.
• AR for product previews: For home goods or furniture, AR allows users to visualize how items would look in their homes, helping to reduce returns and build confidence in their purchases.
• Mobile-driven live shopping events: While livestream shopping is gaining popularity, integrating these events directly into the mobile app can create a more immersive experience.
• Real-time engagement: Host live shopping events within your mobile app where users can see products in action, ask questions, and purchase directly from the live stream. You can create holiday-themed events with exclusive product drops or limited-time offers.
• App-only deals during streams: Offer special deals during these live events, accessible only to viewers on the mobile app. This generates excitement and rewards users for engaging in real time.

Mobile-Exclusive Promotions and Gamification

Holiday shoppers are looking for deals, and offering mobile-exclusive promotions can help drive traffic and sales through your app or mobile site.

• Mobile-only flash sales: Create a sense of urgency by offering time-limited discounts only available through the mobile app.
• Gamification features: Incorporate holiday-themed games and quizzes that allow users to win discounts or prizes, encouraging engagement and repeat visits to your mobile platform.

Seamless Omnichannel Integration

The mobile shopping experience needs to seamlessly connect with in-store and online efforts. During the holidays, omnichannel integration can be the difference between keeping or losing a sale.

• Buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) or curbside pickup: Make it easy for mobile users to purchase online and pick up in-store with real-time inventory updates.
• In-app store navigation: If customers are in-store, enable them to use the mobile app for directions to specific products, check inventory, or even access personalized promotions while shopping.
• Testimonials create transactions: Retailers that bring forward either social testimonials or product reviews to close the sale will have an easier time converting consumers. Using the meta data from product reviews to help with SEO is a game winning strategy. As marketers we’ve learned that people buy from brands that are authentic and influencers that really like the product.
• In-app wish list collaboration: Enable customers to create collaborative wish lists where they can invite friends or family members to add or comment on items within the mobile app. Amazon was a front leader in being able to share digital wish lists, am simplified the purchase process from these lists.
• Holiday gift coordination: For holiday gift-giving, this feature could allow multiple people to coordinate purchases to avoid duplicates or ensure everyone gets what they want. It could also be used to share gift ideas with loved ones directly within the app.
• Real-time notifications: Follow-up the wish list by notifying contributors when items are added or purchased from the list, making the process smoother and more interactive.
• Mobile wallet: Distribute and house offers, coupons, and track loyalty cards in mobile wallets, enabling customers to redeem wherever they may be, in-store, online, or on-the-go.

Mobile Data and Privacy

With personalization and data collection comes the growing concern over privacy. Retailers must ensure they are:

• Transparent with data usage: Clearly explain how customer data is used and offer easy-to-understand privacy settings.
• Compliant with privacy regulations: Ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA to protect consumer data and maintain trust, particularly as mobile commerce continues to expand.

As mobile commerce continues to grow and evolve, it becomes a critical space for retailers to focus on, especially during the high-stakes holiday shopping season. Mobile commerce is no longer just about having an app or mobile-friendly site—it’s about creating intelligent mobile experiences that cater to the changing behaviors and preferences of consumers.

Learn more about Zeta’s mobile capabilities.