Leading Brands Share Customer Retention and Engagement Strategies for 2025

December 05, 2024

Harriet McNaughton EMEA Marketing Manager Airship

Rising customer expectations call for new and innovative strategies in 2025. You’re likely already considering how to implement new mobile-first tactics or iterate existing ones to drive customer retention and deliver the seamless, connected experiences that customers expect. Mobile-first is indeed the right mindset: during the coming year, consumers will continue to spend more time per day on mobile than on any other device.

At our most recent Mobile Leaders Forum in Berlin, leading brands gathered to discuss the challenges, trends and opportunities impacting customer-facing teams today. Our notable lineup of speakers included executives from Zeit Online, OneFootball, REGIOCAST and RetentionCoach. They shared proven strategies you can implement right away and often without developer support.

We’ve outlined several key takeaways from the day’s sessions that you can carry into 2025 to start the year off strong.

Embrace Data, AI and Automation to Unify the Customer Journey

Featuring Zeit Online’s Thomas Strothjohann, OneFootball’s Amanda Allegrini and independent retention coach Tom Burrell, the panel explored how data, AI and automation have changed how brands can create and optimize consistent, cross-channel experiences.

Our experts highlighted the importance of leveraging real-time data to create connected customer journeys with tailored content at every touchpoint. Central to this is unifying data gathered across channels to build more complete customer profiles and deliver deeper, consistent personalization. AI also helps brands bring customer journeys to life faster than ever before, including creating and optimizing rich content for cross-channel messages and no-code app and web experiences.

Applications vary across industries. For example, Zeit Online uses AI to improve content discoverability and summarize content based on specific search queries, while OneFootball uses AI to generate promotional videos and live event highlights.

By bringing greater speed and scalability to content creation and journey orchestration, brands have an opportunity to surge ahead of competitors in 2025 through more tailored customer interactions that grow conversion and customer understanding.

Meet Customers with In-the-Moment Experiences

Consumer preferences and behaviors are evolving at lightning speed, putting increased pressure on brands to test, iterate and refine everything in their approach to provide what customers want. German radio broadcaster REGIOCAST offers a prime example of how even legacy brands can keep pace and exceed mobile-first customer expectations.

With over 24 million contacts daily, the radio giant knew it had to double down on its digital engagement strategy as more listeners tuned into live radio via the internet on mobile devices and smart speakers. They set out to create new listener habits that brought customers back to REGIOCAST’s app time and time again. CRM Director Anne Potten shared how the brand generated millions of additional streaming sessions and audience data through an app-only campaign for Regiocast-owned radio station, Radio BOB!:

1. The App as a Central Platform

Regiocast recognized the importance of its app as an owned destination where they could engage their audience during moments of attention. The brand created an immersive in-app experience with rich, embedded content; and it implemented a push notification strategy to position the app as a hub for its audience’s digital listening habits. Both encouraged customers to keep coming back every day.

2. Strategic Data Collection to Build Customer Profiles

The team developed a competition that was strategically placed behind a login wall, incentivizing customers to create accounts. This allowed Regiocast to collect detailed customer data, demographics and opt-ins, providing insights into audience preferences and behavior and creating new paths for future engagement.

3. The Power of Testing and Tagging

Anne highlighted the importance of thorough testing to fine-tune campaign elements and ensure optimal results. Tags were used effectively to monitor participant actions and measure the long-term impact of the campaign, enabling the team to make data-backed decisions for future campaigns.

4. Diversified Portfolio

With over 50 different streams available, Radio BOB! and other REGIOCAST channels introduced the brand’s audience to a broad range of content, encouraging exploration and increasing overall session counts.

The success of REGIOCAST’s campaign was evident from the impressive participation numbers: over 81,000 competition entries and more than 9,000 unique participants. Even better, the brand continued to see streaming rise after the competition concluded – showcasing the campaign’s impact on building repeat engagement and loyalty.

Learn from the Best of the Best

The winners of the 2024 Altitude Awards offer even more inspiration for your 2025 customer experience strategies! We celebrated Asda, bol, CIMB Singapore, Sally Beauty Holdings and The Vitamin Shoppe for their exceptional mobile-first value creation.

From boosting app engagement and loyalty to delivering seamless omnichannel experiences, these winners showcased the power of customer-centric innovation. You can read more about their strategies here. Spanning industries and continents, their achievements set a new standard in creating value for both businesses and their customers. Congratulations to all!

Ring in the New Year with Mobile-First Strategies

Now more than ever, brands need trusted solutions to deliver unified and personalized experiences across channels. We’re here to help! Reach out today to schedule a free consultation with our Strategic Services Team. Be the first to know when Airship’s Mobile Leaders Forum is coming to a city near you by signing up for Airship’s newsletter, Navigator.