And the 2024 Customer Engagement Awards Go To…

Time flies when you’re driving engagement. Last year, the 2023 Customer Engagement Awards highlighted some truly groundbreaking campaigns. This year, we’re raising the bar. As mobile marketing continues to evolve, so does the potential for even more powerful connections and smarter strategies.

The 2024 Customer Engagement Awards are about shining a light on the next wave of trailblazers — some familiar names and some who’ve reimagined new standards for success.

To all of you in the OneSignal community, thank you for your passion, creativity, and unyielding drive to push boundaries, not just notifications! It’s your ingenuity that keeps us moving forward together.

And now, here are the winners for the 2024 Ennies…

Most Impactful Campaign

For campaigns that showcased high performance and stellar success.

EMEA: Dabdoob - Omar Tantawy

The Dabdoob app provides the Gulf region with an expansive selection of children’s toys, books, costumes, and games. When it comes to their messaging, Dabdoob fosters a welcoming and playful experience that mirrors their product, resulting in an extremely personable campaign that avoids feeling pushy. Sometimes, minimal guidance is the path of least resistance to quality engagement.

APAC: Paidy - Ajit Kumar

Paidy is a Japanese buy now, pay later (BNPL) service that provides customers with a reliable deferred payment service for various online shops.

The key to Paidy’s success lies in their innovative use of consumer data to help create highly personalized campaigns combined with deep A/B testing to achieve cost savings for their operations along with some outstanding growth:

• An in-app messaging CTR that surpassed 15% compared to standard notifications
• A 2% increase in push notification CTR
• Optimized delivery rates and deeper segmentation

NAMER: Zenni - Auri Pope

Zenni Optical is the largest online retailer of prescription and non-prescription eyewear. They focus on addressing the accessibility gap for affordable eyewear and have sold over 50 million pairs of glasses worldwide.

Data and great timing were the two primary ingredients of success for this campaign.

CRM Manager, Auri Pope puts it best:

“We are constantly testing and learning what engages and activates our customers most – we found that our users really engage when we speak to holidays and life events in a fun and quirky way.”

Zenni’s tests combined data from different sources — copy testing with AIML, design testing, and offer/incentive testing. This allowed them to leverage what worked best for each individual channel.

Best Customer Journeys

For campaigns that show thoughtful consideration of the customer or user journey.

LATAM: Cashea - Nico Curat

Venezuela’s first buy now, pay later (BNPL) service, Cashea, provides an affordable shopping alternative and proactive reminders so users never miss a payment.

Cashea leverages push notifications, which notify users when their purchase line is approved after verifying their identity. This notification not only creates FOMO for new app users but also scored Cashea’s highest open rate yet!

EMEA: Vitality  - Christine Brophy, Zain Ahmed, Bianca Cantamessa

Vitality is a leading health and wellbeing company offering smart InsurTech with the goal to build a healthier world. Through partnerships with forward-thinking insurers and employers, Vitality unlocks shared-value insurance – impacting 40+ million people across 40+ markets.

The Vitality team has taken special care to design their app with their members front-of-mind, continually studying what they want and need at each point in their app journey.

From Vitality:

“Behavioral science and personalization are central to our program, validated by recent stats showing over 70% of customers expect it. With this in mind, we consistently incorporate behavioral science insights into our choice architecture and weave personalization throughout our app journeys.

Our overall goal is to make the customer experience seamless, lovable, and valuable for members, and we’re delighted that it resonates so well with our clients and partners.”

By tapping into real-time engagement data and analytics, Vitality is able to pinpoint and remove user friction points. Through substantial testing, they discovered what works best for their members, allowing them to evolve and improve their experience continuously.

Strongest Debut

For new OneSignal customers who hit the ground running to nurture customer engagement using innovative strategies.

EMEA: Action Network - Megan McFeron

The Action Network is a sports media company specializing in news and analysis centered around sports betting in the United States.

Using OneSignal’s data tags gave Action Network the opportunity to rethink their segmentation strategy for push notifications. By utilizing data tags for subscriber interests and behavior, they ensure that the notifications users are receiving are ones they'll be interested in – all culminating in strong push engagement rates.

NAMER: Fan Controlled Sports - Grant Cohen

Fan-controlled sports is a sports and entertainment league in which fans can directly influence gameplay, team decisions, and overall league operations.

As their first fan-controlled race, the NASCAR Xfinity Series Championship approached, Fan Controlled Sports needed to migrate their full lifecycle marketing (push, email, and SMS) in just one week. With the help of the OneSignal team, they were able to pull it all together and drive an amazing level of viewership and engagement before the checkered flag dropped.

APAC: Hexagon Studios Pte Ltd (Honeyland) - Gabriel Tan

Hexagon Studios has created one of the most innovative web3 games with their play and earn mobile game "Honeyland."

Players build swarms of bees to hunt and harvest rewards like in-game items and the $HXD token. The "play and own" feature allows players to own and build value in their characters and then trade, sell, and buy more anytime.

With the help of OneSignal, Honeyland leveraged robust data tags and user segmentation throughout the customer journey which has helped them maintain a high percentage of players in their Web3 game. Active personalized communication was key to keeping their communication relevant and helpful to players.

Best Use of Live Activities

For outstanding implementation of iOS Live Activities to provide real-time updates and enhance user engagement.

NAMER: MLB - Team MLB

When MLB started building a Live Activity for their App, they aimed to create an experience that baseball fans would love. They created an unobtrusive and extremely readable design to keep fans engaged from the lockscreen.

“Getting a quick glance at the game score is so important to our busy fans who want to stay connected. Creating something that was lightweight but usable really delighted our fans.”

Best Activation Campaign

For exceptional creativity and strategic execution in launching activation campaigns.

NAMER: NFL - Daniil Sedunov

The NFL was quick to leverage a data-rich segmentation, in-app messages, and Journeys to manage an important app migration, and a churn mitigation campaign. The efforts led to up to double digit CTRs, and an enhanced app experience and user onboarding to the new app.

Most Impactful Use of In-App Messaging

For demonstrating extraordinary skill and success in utilizing in-app messaging (IAM) to drive business growth.

LATAM: Gran Cursos - Fabiano Donadon Dall'Acqua and Marcos Rocha de Sousa

Gran Cursos is a Brazil-based EdTech and national leader in test prep for public and private sector exams.

They set out to target their student base, with the aim of upselling products.

Gran Cursos’ goal is to introduce subscribers to individual courses for migration to unlimited or lifetime subscriptions. In this case, they found a way to offer the correct product to the base most likely to buy it, at the correct time and on the channel of greatest use—the app!

Best Data Utilization

For exemplary use of data to drive highly targeted and effective customer engagement campaigns.

EMEA: Bitcoin.com - Alun Stern

Bitcoin.com is a bitcoin and cryptocurrency wallet that also delivers news and financial education.

Bitcoin.com’s key to success in data utilization comes from rigorous A/B testing, constant monitoring, and a willingness to engage in trial and error to identify what works best.

Best Omnichannel Engagement

For campaigns that seamlessly integrate multiple channels to deliver an exemplary customer experience across all touchpoints.

EMEA: Taptap Send - Traci Trang

Taptap Send’s success lies in their deep understanding of its audience and its leveraging of each channel's strengths. The team uses automated journeys to ensure consistency and relevance across touchpoints and sustain engagement.

The Right Tools For the Job

One in every five apps chooses OneSignal for mobile messaging that goes beyond simply meeting user expectations. Whether it’s through intricate cross-channel journey sequences or a single, carefully timed cart abandonment recovery notification – we’re constantly developing the tools mobile businesses require for long-term retention. And we’re always on the lookout for the next Ennies winners…

In the meantime, have a look at the platform behind the winning campaigns.