For mobile marketers, the AI revolution is more than just a convenience; it's a massive shift for the way we plan, organize, and execute our engagement strategies. What was once a manual, time-consuming process (like crafting a conversion-friendly push campaign or optimizing a cross-channel Journey) is now being automated with AI-powered tools.

But how should marketers approach AI? And how can we integrate it into our workflows for maximum impact? Below, we’ve broken down:

  • How to think about AI in your mobile marketing workflow
  • The key mobile engagement use cases for AI
  • The best AI models for different tasks
  • Actionable tips to help supercharge your engagement strategy
Learn the 10 best practices for writing effective ChatGPT queries to get the most out of AI for mobile marketing.

Why AI for Mobile Messaging?

The rise of AI in mobile engagement is driven by three major factors:

  1. The Data Explosion → Users generate vast amounts of behavioral data through app interactions, but manually sifting through it is extremely labor intensive. AI can process and interpret this data at scale.
  2. Higher User Expectations → Consumers expect instant, personalized communication. AI makes this level of engagement feasible.
  3. Advancements in AI Models → Modern AI, powered by natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), can now handle complex marketing tasks that were previously difficult to automate.

Marketers who embrace AI sooner rather than later will have a competitive edge. It’s no longer just about automating simple tasks, it’s about using AI to create a hyper-personalized, data-driven engagement strategy that feels human.

Want to stay ahead in mobile engagement trends? Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter for the latest AI-powered marketing insights!

How to Think About AI in Your Mobile Marketing Workflow

If you’re new to AI, integrating it into your workflow may seem overwhelming. Here’s a simple way to approach it:

🙋 AI is an Assistant, Not a Replacement: Think of AI as an intelligent sidekick that enhances your decision-making, not a tool that fully replaces human creativity.

🌱 Focus on Augmentation, Not Automation: Instead of automating everything, start by using AI to augment your existing processes with things like analyzing user behavior or A/B testing content.

🔬 Experiment and Optimize: AI is not one-size-fits-all. Run small experiments to see what works best for your audience before scaling AI-driven campaigns.

Best AI Use Cases for Mobile Messaging

Whether you're looking to increase conversion rates, boost retention, or refine your messaging strategy, getting creative with AI can help by analyzing vast amounts of user data and making intelligent, automated decisions.

1. Personalized Content & Product Recommendations

Delivering the right message at the right time is no longer enough. AI allows marketers to deliver the right content, product, or feature at the right moment, in the right format. By analyzing in-app behaviors, purchase history, and engagement trends, AI-driven recommendation engines can dynamically adjust messaging to fit individual user preferences, boosting conversion rates and lifetime value (LTV).

Examples:

  • A media streaming app suggests curated playlists based on a user’s listening history and time of day.
  • An e-commerce app promotes products frequently viewed but not yet purchased, using urgency-driven messaging.
  • A travel app personalizes hotel and flight recommendations based on past searches and seasonal trends.
  • A fitness app sends workout recommendations that align with the user’s recent activity and progress.

📌 Key AI Models:

  • Google Recommendations AI – Enterprise-grade recommendation system used in Google Shopping, ideal for personalized product recommendations.
  • Amazon Personalize – AI-driven recommendation engine that uses real-time user behavior to suggest relevant content and products.
  • Meta AI (formerly Facebook AI) – Used for dynamic ad targeting and personalized content delivery across social and mobile platforms.
  • Claude (Anthropic AI) – NLP-powered personalization that can generate user-specific content suggestions within messaging workflows.

Maximize Your Impact

Combine AI-driven recommendations with behavioral triggers. For example, if a user abandons a cart, AI can wait for an optimal engagement window (e.g., a time when the user typically browses) before nudging them with a personalized discount.

2. AI-Powered Chat & Voice Assistance

Users expect instant, always-on support. AI-powered chatbots and voice assistants ensure they get it without overwhelming customer service teams. By integrating AI-driven conversational interfaces, mobile apps can handle routine queries, provide personalized answers, and escalate complex issues to human agents when needed. This significantly reduces friction in the user journey, improves retention rates, and increases in-app engagement.

Examples:

  • A banking app uses a chatbot to assist with account balance inquiries, fund transfers, and fraud alerts.
  • A telecom provider offers an AI-powered assistant to troubleshoot connectivity issues in real time.
  • A retail app integrates a voice assistant to enable hands-free shopping and order tracking.
  • A healthcare app deploys an AI chatbot to provide symptom checks and appointment scheduling.

📌 Key AI Models:

  • ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-4 Turbo) – Can power intelligent chatbots with human-like conversational abilities.
  • Google Gemini (formerly Bard) – Advanced multimodal AI capable of integrating with voice search and mobile chatbot solutions.
  • Amazon Lex – AI service for building conversational interfaces in applications using voice and text.
  • Microsoft Azure Bot Service – Enterprise-grade AI for chatbot development, integrated with various Microsoft and third-party applications.

Maximize Your Impact

Implement a tiered chatbot system. Use AI for common inquiries and escalate complex or high-value conversations (e.g., VIP customer support or billing disputes) to human agents. This ensures cost efficiency while maintaining a high level of service.

3. Optimized Message Timing with Predictive AI

Even an expertly-crafted message can fail if it reaches a user at the wrong time. Predictive AI optimizes message send times by analyzing when each user is most likely to engage, increasing open rates and reducing message fatigue. This is particularly valuable for push notifications, SMS, and in-app messaging strategies, where timing heavily impacts success metrics like click-through rates (CTR) and session duration.

Examples:

  • A gaming app identifies when users typically play and sends notifications for time-limited events accordingly.
  • A food delivery app sends promotions at peak meal-ordering times based on past user behavior.
  • A finance app reminds users to check their spending habits when they typically browse their transaction history.
  • A subscription-based app re-engages dormant users by nudging them when they are most likely to return.

📌 Key AI Models:

  • Google Vertex AI Forecasting – Predicts user behavior patterns to optimize push notification timing.
  • AWS SageMaker Autopilot – Machine learning-based predictive modeling for audience segmentation and engagement timing.
  • H2O.ai AutoML – Open-source AI that automates predictive analytics for marketing workflows.
  • Meta Propensity Models – Used for ad delivery optimization, can also inform engagement timing.

Maximize Your Impact

Implement adaptive messaging. Instead of setting a fixed send time, let AI dynamically adjust delivery based on user patterns. A/B test AI-generated send times against traditional scheduled campaigns to measure impact on engagement rates.

4. AI-Generated Marketing Copy

Writing engaging, high-converting marketing messages can be time-consuming. AI-powered copy generation tools can analyze past campaign performance, understand audience sentiment, and produce compelling content at scale. This is particularly useful for push notifications, email marketing, and SMS campaigns, where brevity and clarity are key.

Examples:

  • A retail app uses AI to generate multiple variations of promotional push notifications and selects the best-performing option.
  • A ride-sharing app crafts AI-generated SMS messages based on user location and ride history to drive engagement.
  • A subscription service personalizes email subject lines and content dynamically to increase click-through rates.
  • A news app uses AI to auto-generate engaging headlines based on trending topics.

📌 Key AI Models:

  • ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-4 Turbo) – Generates engaging and personalized marketing copy for push notifications, SMS, and emails.
  • Claude (Anthropic AI) – Specializes in nuanced, brand-aligned content generation with high contextual awareness.
  • Jasper AI – AI copywriting platform optimized for marketing use cases, including ad and email content.
  • Copy.ai – Designed for automated content creation with templates for push notifications, emails, and social media.

Maximize Your Impact

Train AI copy tools using historical campaign data to improve relevance. Use AI suggestions as a starting point, then refine with human creativity to ensure messaging aligns with your brand voice.

5. AI for Faster Mobile App Development

Marketing teams aren’t the only ones benefiting from AI. Developers can use AI-powered coding assistants to write cleaner, more efficient code, reducing errors and speeding up mobile app iterations. This allows for faster feature deployment, enabling marketing teams to test new AI-driven engagement strategies without long development cycles.

Examples:

  • A shopping app speeds up A/B testing of new checkout flows by using AI-assisted coding tools to implement UI changes quickly.
  • A gaming app detects and fixes performance bottlenecks with AI-powered debugging.
  • A finance app ensures compliance by using AI to scan code for security vulnerabilities before release.
  • A social media app streamlines API integrations using AI-driven auto-completion tools.

📌 Key AI Tools & Models:

  • GitHub Copilot (OpenAI Codex) – AI-powered code completion tool that assists developers in writing and optimizing mobile app code.
  • Google Gemini Code Assist – AI coding assistant integrated into Google’s development ecosystem, including Android Studio.
  • Tabnine – AI-powered coding autocomplete tool tailored for software engineers and mobile developers.
  • DeepCode (Snyk) – AI-driven code review tool that detects vulnerabilities and suggests optimizations for mobile app development.

Maximize Your Impact

Encourage collaboration between marketing and dev teams! Use AI-powered development tools to deploy engagement-related updates faster, such as AI-powered recommendation engines or chatbot integrations.

How to Get Started with AI in Mobile Messaging

AI adoption doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It’s all about starting small and scaling strategically. Whether you’re looking to personalize messaging, optimize engagement timing, or automate customer support, the key is to focus on high-impact areas where AI can drive measurable results. Begin by identifying gaps in your current workflow, experiment with AI-driven solutions, and refine your approach based on data insights.

With the right roadmap, AI can become a powerful tool to enhance efficiency, boost engagement, and future-proof your mobile marketing strategy.

Step Action
1. Identify Pain Points
Determine where AI can provide the most value—content personalization, engagement timing, or chat support.
2. Choose the Right Tools
Explore AI-friendly marketing platforms like OneSignal for engagement automation.
3. Start Small, Then Scale
Run pilot tests before expanding AI-driven engagement strategies across your entire audience.
4. Measure & Optimize
Track engagement, open rates, and conversions to refine AI models and improve messaging performance.


The Future of AI-Driven Mobile Engagement

As AI models continue to advance, marketers who embrace AI-driven insights will see higher engagement, stronger retention, and improved ROI. Now is the time to start experimenting with AI and discovering how it can transform your mobile marketing strategy.

If you’re ready to start experimenting with proven, automated messaging at scale, OneSignal’s Intelligent Delivery leverages behavioral user data to predict and deliver your messages at the most opportune moment.

AI-powered engagement is the future, and having the right platform makes all the difference. With OneSignal, you can send smarter notifications, automate user communication, and manage your mobile messaging strategy seamlessly—without any development work.

Get Started for Free