The 2024 Customer Engagement Award winners have been announced, and now they’re back to share some secrets to their success with all of you.

These are words of wisdom from marketing trailblazers and industry veterans alike – take notes!

MLB (Best Use of Live Activities)

MLB uses Apple Live Activities to keep fans in the know with real-time, play-by-play updates.

MLB's Winning advice

“Live Activities is an opportunity to be present in a customer’s sacred space: their lock screen. We wanted to build something that was valuable to them, but also respected how much data/content they would want to see in a glance. Giving an easy tap-through to our app meant they could engage more deeply whenever they wanted. This balance gave fans what they wanted and a great engagement boost to the app.”

NFL (Best Activation Campaign)

The NFL scored double-digit CTRs with in-app messages and multi-step Journeys to help manage a critical app migration without losing customers.

NFL's Winning advice:

“Adoption and engagement are closely tied to a deep understanding of the audience, close monitoring of their behavior, and building customer journeys that enhance the user/fan experience at each touchpoint. The goal should be a highly contextualized and personalized messaging strategy based on previous consumption engagement and habits.”

Zenni (Most Impactful Campaign – NAMER)

Zenni’s commitment to campaign testing ensures they’re taking full advantage of how their user data informs their messaging. The result? Knowing precisely what works best for each individual channel.

Zenni's Winning advice

“Be in tune with your data and your users! Constantly check your data – look at trends YoY, QoQ, MoM, WoW, and the last six months across every aspect of your program. Read user reviews and feedback to understand what they want from you. And have FUN! Marketing should be fun.”

Vitality Health and Life Insurance (Best Customer Journeys – EMEA)

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.

Vitality's Winning advice

“Let customers guide your journey. We have a wealth of consumer data showing us how our members are engaging with us and from this, we are able to make more behaviorally-informed CX decisions. What this means is we can see where a customer needs more information, or more encouragement, to take the next step in their Vitality journey, and through targeted (simple!) messaging, we are more likely to drive that desired behavior.”

Bitcoin.com (Best Data Utilization)

Bitcoin.com’s key to success lies in trial and error. Through rigorous A/B testing and constant monitoring, they deliver content that resonates with their user base.

Bitcoin.com's Winning advice

“Your utilization of data can only ever be as good as the infrastructure that you have in place. You could be the best marketer, but if you don't have the technology that enables relevant targeting and precise measurement of results, your efforts will fall short.”

Cashea (Best Customer Journeys – LATAM)

Cashea uses push notifications, to both notify users when their purchase line is approved and also create a sense of FOMO to lift open rates.

Cashea's Winning advice

“Customize and be present at the precise moment when the user is interacting with our app. Knowing the behavior of our users when they find in Cashea an opportunity to get what they need allows us to identify the most important key points to reinforce that we are the bridge to improve their quality of life and get the products they always wanted.”

Action Network (Strongest Debut – EMEA)

Action Network’s push notifications leverage OneSignal data tags to target subscriber interests and behavior, ensuring that users receive the messages they are most interested in.

Action Network's Winning advice

“This might seem basic, but build a good base of contact data to segment your campaigns to show people the content they want to see! If users are interested in the pushes they're receiving, they'll not only engage with them more but will also be less likely to turn off notifications from your app.”

Dabdoob (Most Impactful Campaign – EMEA)

Dabdoob’s mobile messaging embodies their brand voice by fostering a playful and friendly experience that avoids feeling pushy.

Dabdoob's Winning advice

“Always have your purpose in mind and let data guide your actions. Purpose drives your efforts on how to best approach and tackle any engagement opportunity while data guarantees the quality and efficacy of said approach. Having both makes your methodology above reproach and the results speak for themselves.”

Paidy (Most Impactful Campaign – APAC)

Paidy created highly personalized in-app messaging campaigns that resulted in a CTR that surpassed 15% compared to standard notifications.

Paidy's Winning advice

“Data is key to success, The winning advice is to consistently leverage detailed consumer insights to create highly relevant/personalized campaigns and opt for the right channel to engage with your target audience. This approach not only boosts engagement but also sets a new standard in effective consumer interaction. Always stay innovative and adaptive to new ideas to maintain a competitive edge in your campaigns.”

Fan Controlled Sports (Strongest Debut – NAMER)

Fan Controlled Sports harnesses a unified messaging strategy, as they migrated their full lifecycle marketing (push, email, and SMS) in just one week, ahead of their first fan-controlled race.

Fan Controlled Sports' Winning advice

“For us, it helped to have a hard deadline, which made us laser-focused on what we needed to get live and the associated timelines. We were very diligent about making sure we hit those dates and the timing worked out great for engaging our audience around the live race.”

Gran Cursos (Most Impactful Use of In-App Messaging)

Gran Cursos uses in-app messages to target their student base with individual courses, leading them to unlock additional value with an unlimited or lifetime subscription.

Gran Cursos' Winning advice

“Passion for our student's success and understanding our audience is the golden key! Also, keep simple, direct, and short!”

TapTap Send (Best Omnichannel Engagement)

TapTap Send’s success lies in a deep understanding of their audience and leveraging each channel's strengths. They use automated journeys to ensure consistency and relevance across touchpoints and sustain engagement.

TapTap Send's Winning advice

“Keep your messages relevant, timely, and consistent across all channels. Engagement follows naturally when your communications are useful to your customers.”

Honeyland Commerce LLC (Strongest Debut – APAC)

Honeyland leveraged robust data tags and user segmentation throughout the customer journey which keeps the player experience relevant and helpful.

Honeyland's Winning advice

“Personalized messages are very important to maintain and keep our players engaged, especially in a Web3 game. To maintain a vibrant player base, we need to constantly communicate new features to the community and targeting the right player group, with the right message significantly helps us succeed.”

Is a Customer Engagement Award in Your Future?

We are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways that mobile-focused businesses engage their customers. As we continue to refine our drag-and-drop Journeys builder, we have witnessed some truly creative, and often surprisingly effective ways mobile brands automate their messaging campaigns.

For a quick peek into the different types of sequences Journeys is capable of, check out our Mobile Engagement Playbook.

An example from one of the 15+ Journeys sequences highlighted in the Mobile Engagement Playbook.

If you’d like a more hands-on approach, create a free OneSignal account and get started yourself!

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