Mobile messaging trends for 2025 

Marketing evolves rapidly, with today's best practices reimagined tomorrow—making it a dynamic and exciting field. Examining year-over-year trends, we uncover how innovation fuels disruption, action, and strategic transformation.

Among these shifts, mobile messaging stands out as a driving force, continually shaping the future of marketing. As we move into 2025, this channel is set to make a significant impact, redefining how brands connect with their audiences.

To help you stay ahead, we've identified six mobile messaging trends that shaped 2024 and will continue to influence the years ahead. By drawing on internal platform data and insights from brands across industries, these trends highlight the power of mobile messaging to transform customer engagement and drive results.

Unlike the crowded inbox, in-app messaging capitalizes on a customer's engagement within your tool. Brands can leverage in-app messaging's high engagement rates to deliver personalized, timely messages.

Where we stand today: Within Customer.io, the number of accounts sending in-app messages grew 74% from 2023 to 2024, with 5.4 times more in-app messages sent year-over-year.

And customers responded enthusiastically: in-app messages achieved a 22% average click-through rate, 11.8 times higher than email. That's a gigantic leap and a testament to the effectiveness of in-app messaging!

The takeaway? In-app is gaining momentum as a mobile messaging channel, and the opportunities to maximize its potential in 2025 are vast. Hint: personalization will be key (and we'll cover why below).

The most powerful campaigns in 2024 were driven by customer data, with brands leveraging more segmentation and data-triggered campaigns to amplify engagement. With 78% of brands citing first-party data as critical for optimizing marketing automation, the implication is clear: data is the driving force behind successful messaging strategies.

Where we stand today: Brands sent more behavior-triggered messages across every channel in 2024, with 64% using segmentation to enhance their messaging campaigns. Almost half of brands integrate a data warehouse or database with their customer engagement platform to power data-driven campaigns. Their biggest concerns are data quality and data silos: just over a third of brands identify each of those issues as challenges to overcome in 2025.

The takeaway? To fully activate customer data and address challenges like quality issues and data silos, brands need holistic data solutions. Only 35% of brands use a customer data platform (CDP) in their messaging tech stack to help them achieve their engagement goals, and we expect that number to rise in the coming year.

Omnichannel marketing has been a buzzword in the industry for some time now. Brands predicted that in 2024, they would focus more on creating seamless customer experiences across all channels. Mobile messaging is a critical component of that strategy.

Where we stand today: 76% of brands say multi-channel campaigns are essential for long-term growth.

A combination of channels proved fruitful—campaigns that combined at least two channels performed 60% better than those that used just one. Push notifications and SMS proved to be the top-converting pair, with a 15% average conversion rate—further cementing the importance of mobile messaging.

Yet email was still a key player in the multi-channel landscape: the second and third best performing combos relied on this channel:

• A four-channel combo (email, in-app, push, and SMS) performed 3.7 times better than any single-channel campaign
• A three-channel combo (email, push, and SMS) converted three times better than any single-channel campaign

The takeaway? Omnichannel marketing isn't just a buzzword—it's an essential strategy for businesses looking to deliver personalized, unified customer experiences.

Brands are increasingly reaching customers where they are. Mobile channels saw more action in 2024, with total send volume up by 194% across in-app, push, and SMS.

The growth of multi-channel messaging may be part of what's driving increased usage of mobile channels, alongside brands' recognition that their customers ingest more and more of their content on phones and tablets.

As 2025 unfolds, the rise in mobile messaging points to an underutilized strategy: optimizing email for mobile. 68% of people use mobile devices for either work or personal emails, but mobile optimization hasn't been high on brands' radars in the past year.

In 2025, we expect forward-thinking brands to recognize that email is increasingly a mobile experience—and to adopt responsive and mobile-first email design. Why wouldn't they? It's the perfect opportunity to gain an advantage over the competition.

Our data reveals that 90% of brands acknowledge the importance of personalization in creating more meaningful relationships. And 42% said they plan to increase their personalization efforts in 2025.

As customers continue to demand personalized experiences, brands are getting more sophisticated with their personalization strategies. 31% of brands report the highest ROI from data-driven behavioral triggers that react to customer actions in real time. That clear business value, along with better data activation enabled by CDPs, highlights a future where behavioral data acts as the cornerstone of personalization strategies.

Notably, brands aren't just using customer data for personalization. Those using custom objects to leverage business data for contextual messaging achieve better performance. Campaigns using custom objects saw a 35% year-over-year increase in conversions in 2024. Savvy brands will take note by leaning more on custom objects in the coming year.

As we look ahead to 2025, it’s clear that brands are committed to staying ahead of the curve. With 40% planning to increase their marketing budgets and 58% benefiting from strong executive support for customer engagement initiatives, the stage is set for even more innovative approaches to mobile messaging.

These shifts are just the beginning. For a deeper dive into the trends shaping the mobile messaging landscape, explore The 2024 State of Messaging Report. Packed with insights, predictions, and actionable strategies, it’s your guide to turning vision into results for your 2025 campaigns—and beyond. Happy sending!