How 5 Apps Spark Lasting Holiday Engagement With Email & SMS

As users navigate the busy holiday season, the right combination of email and SMS campaigns can transform fleeting one-off interactions into lasting connections. We’re shining a spotlight on five standout apps that excel at leveraging holiday engagement tactics to not only spark immediate action but also increase retention and build loyalty well beyond December. Whether you're an eCommerce powerhouse or a service-based app, we hope these actionable examples will inspire creative ways to keep your audience coming back for more.

1. Humanizing the Gift Guide

Gift guide campaigns are a great way to provide curated, time-saving solutions for users during a busy season, reducing decision fatigue. The above email from National Geographic elevates this tried and true mobile engagement strategy by leveraging in-house voices to contextualize their product selections. This adds a degree of authority to an otherwise arbitrary gift guide and lends a personal touch, as team members share their stories, giving readers a genuine reason to engage with the email.

The emotional connections you forge now, during the holidays, help foster long-term mobile retention by positioning yourself as a reliable source of helpful, curated content. This builds a a strong personal foundation for a relationship with your users, encouraging them to return for future recommendations even after the holiday season has concluded.

Beyond eCommerce

This strategy can be implemented beyond eCommerce use cases as well. Mobile-focused brands, regardless of category, can create guides tailored to their audience, such as experience-based gifts, educational resources, or charitable donation campaigns. It’s a fantastic way to reinforce brand values and deepen emotional connections with your users.

Ready to dive into the psychological drivers behind those emotional connections? Our Mobile Marketing Psychology Guide explores the 10 most powerful ways to leverage real psychological principles in your mobile marketing efforts.

2. The Art of Attention-Getting

This SMS notification from Cynthia Rowley targets one of the most common (and most likely to convert) holiday audiences: procrastinators. Remember, it’s not a matter of “if” but a matter of “when” your customers miss the December 24th shipping window — give them another opportunity to convert.

By using an attention-grabbing gif, this message immediately sets itself apart from a typical transactional alert while priming stressed-out shoppers with the easiest path to a last-minute gift. MMS marketing specifically unlocks various rich media options for senders looking to add videos, multiple images, and gifs and deliver more in-depth information directly to users’ pockets.

By targeting your users at the later stages of their user journey with personalized SMS messages, you create a meaningful mobile-first touchpoint for customers who have yet to download your app.

When you position your brand as a dependable problem-solver during critical moments, you plant the seeds for lasting retention with your brand. Users are more likely to view your mobile messages as valuable and return for future offers, if they see you consistently providing timely, personalized solutions to their problems.

Beyond eCommerce

Non-eCommerce brands can adapt this approach by using SMS or MMS marketing to promote time-sensitive opportunities, such as event registration deadlines, exclusive content access, or reminders to engage with their services, ensuring their outreach resonates with users’ immediate needs.

3. Using Reassurance as Fuel for Engagement

Staying on theme with the busy holiday shipping schedule… there’s nothing worse than not knowing if the gifts you bought will arrive before Christmas. PetSmart helps their customers avoid this engagement barrier (and general anxiety) but taking a proactive approach with this holiday email. They simultaneous inspire urgency by giving customers a countdown to Christmas while also reassuring them that if they shop now, they are guaranteed to have their order by 12/24.

Bonus points here for reminding existing loyalty members of their membership and encouraging them to redeem their rewards while the deals are at their most enticing.

Trust and reliability are key elements in building customer loyalty. By proactively addressing delivery concerns and offering timely reassurance, PetSmart positions itself as a stress-free, dependable shopping destination — an emotional association that significantly increases the likelihood that users will return for future purchases.

Beyond eCommerce

If you’re not in the business of selling physical products, you can still adapt this approach by sending proactive updates related to service deadlines, availability, or perks for existing customers, creating a similar sense of urgency and value that strengthens user confidence and engagement.

Speaking of urgency, take a spin through this guide to sending more powerful last-minute holiday messages to give your conversion rates a last minute kick.

4. Helping Customers With Decision Paralysis

This SMS message from Michaels is a great example of marketing that goes beyond the traditional holiday sale promo. Product discovery campaigns are an effective way to drive sales through the holidays for customers who need a little more guidance with their purchase decisions. Notice how their SMS copy leverages both urgency and exclusivity to motivate action.

By guiding customers toward curated product recommendations, Michaels establishes themselves as a trusted advisor, encouraging repeat engagement beyond the holidays.

If you’re after higher open rates, SMS marketing is a great place to focus your engagement efforts, as 97% of texts are read within 15 minutes.

Beyond eCommerce

Apps across a variety of categories can adapt this approach by using SMS to highlight exclusive content, recommendations, or services — such as seasonal tips, tools, or personalized advice — enhancing your value proposition while fostering deeper customer connections.

5. Leaning on Loyalty

It wouldn’t be a marketing showcase without our caffeinated friends from Starbucks. This holiday email lays the foundation for lasting customer loyalty by embedding users more deeply into the Starbucks ecosystem, capitalizing on the heightened consumer activity and competition for attention leading up to Christmas. This message specifically does a great job of inspiring anticipation with creative copy and a compelling incentive to join the program.

By leveraging exclusive rewards and personalized perks, Starbucks transforms transactional interactions into emotional connections, ensuring customers keep returning long after the holiday season and fostering long-term advocacy beyond the critical holiday shopping period.

Beyond Food & Beverage

Regardless of your industry, you can use this approach by creating mobile loyalty programs that offer unique, value-driven incentives — such as early access to services, priority booking, or exclusive content — delivering an ongoing reason for users to engage and remain active within your ecosystem.

Holiday Engagement That Won’t Melt Away

As these examples demonstrate, creating lasting holiday engagement is about more than just driving sales — it’s about building trust, fostering loyalty, and creating memorable user experiences that extend beyond the season.

For mobile marketers looking to take their engagement strategies to the next level, OneSignal offers tools designed for email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messaging. But engagement doesn’t stop at one messaging channel alone. Our no-code Journeys builder unlocks powerful new ways to mix, match, and maximize retention rates with personalized content and headache-free automation. To see it in action, we highly encourage you to check out our Mobile Engagement Playbook which features tangible examples for  variety of omnichannel campaigns.

When you’re ready to get hands on, try us out for free and start building your dream sequence.