Women engaging mobile shopping with the display and technology advances in stores.
“I’ll have what she’s having” goes the famous line in the romcom “When Harry Met Sally” in response to Meg Ryan’s iconic deli performance. Off the big screen and onto the small one, marketers want a piece of an entirely different kind of action – mobile commerce, as the device and the channel become ever more central to consumers’ and shoppers’ lives.
The signals have been there for over a decade. As early as 2012, marketers anticipated the “year of mobile” as the next major industry shift. Like many trends, it seemed to happen gradually, then all of a sudden. Year by year, as devices became smarter and the user experience improved, consumer behavior changed, and mobile gained ascendancy.
In October 2016, mobile devices overtook desktop for web browsing globally – and browsing is the first step to buying. But rather than fully embrace this trend, many marketers resisted it, insisting their brand or category or retailer was different, and consumers would prefer to shop in-store and via desktop.
Today, there is no longer a single category or sector from auto, to luxury, to healthcare, that can ignore the power and prominence of mobile. The flywheel went into overdrive at the start of this decade. Adobe Analytics reported that back in the 2021 U.S. holiday season (Nov.1 – Dec. 31), 43% of online sales were made on mobile devices. By 2023, the figure had tipped over to 51%, and this year Adobe expects 53% of e-commerce holiday transactions to be on mobile. (Of course, that is nothing compared to China, where mobile is far and away the #1 channel – almost 98% of Chinese internet users access the web via mobile.)
The latest “Future Shopper 2024” report (full disclosure: authored by my agency VML) shows that globally, 36% of all online spending is now done via mobile phones (in Thailand, it’s 51%), and 53% of consumers prefer to use that channel to shop. Meanwhile, 66% of global consumers feel “retailers and brands need to work harder at making their mobile experiences better.”
And that’s the point. Frankly, shopping on your mobile is often a lousy experience. Mobile marketing is often worse – consumers are bombarded with text messages and bland emails, which arrive too frequently, and are too generic, or superficially personalized in artificially friendly language. (“Hey there Beth Ann – thought you’d be interested in this deal!”) Or, remember when you used to get continuously pinged for the red dress you already bought? Or worse, offered a discount on it, after you just paid full price?
Not. Good. Enough. With consumers craving contextually relevant and personalized experiences, brands need to do better. And they can. First new year prediction here; 2025 will be the year we move on from the “year of mobile” claim and use the tools in our marketing kit to truly deliver on the promise of mobile shopping. Nothing feels more personal than our mobile device – it’s a true extension of ourselves. And the ability to personalize in truly relevant ways has never been more possible as it is now with GenAI. We know that a typical bounce rate without the right content is 30 seconds. GenAI enables the right text, in the voice of the brand, tailored to individual consumers.
With AI here to help, mobile marketing doesn’t need to be difficult. Companies like Attentive, Yotpo, Klaviyo (and the big guns like Salesforce) are harnessing Artificial Intelligence to personalize SMS and email experiences for mobile. Attentive alone has trained its AI on over 2 trillion customer interactions, across more than 70 verticals from major brands, such as UGG and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Attentive’s CEO, Amit Jhawar, told me recently that “it’s about reaching consumers where they are, and recognizing them individually.” The power of personalization at scale with AI is impressive. “In a fraction of a second, we can understand an entire consumer’s history,” Jhawar said. “Where they browse and what they’ve bought, their preferences, their demographics, their intent – and then automatically write and send messages that are valuable to them, converting them into purchasers and repeat customers over time.”
Attentive claims a 2x larger ROI with a 2.4x higher conversion rate when compared to traditional messaging platforms.
Beyond messaging, AI can be used to personalize and streamline an entire mobile experience, from the home screen to check out, and to rescue shoppers who abandon carts. Conversational commerce can support customers throughout the buying cycle – answering questions, making recommendations, and communicating in a way that is authentic to the brand personality and voice. When it comes to the transaction, Pay Now links, one-click payments, and secure payment gateways can maximize conversion, by minimizing shoppers’ efforts. Getting to the cart itself remains a big area of focus – shoppers want less steps and a more intuitive, more user-friendly process.
With all of the channels vying for attention and investment, it can be overwhelming for marketers. But given the importance of mobile, you can no longer deprioritize optimizing for experience and conversion leveraging GenAI tools. This is the most important channel today, and now with AI, we have the ability – at relatively low cost – to engage more effectively and efficiently than ever before.
Mobile and AI are made for each other, and my tip is that this will be a relationship which will only strengthen over the coming decades, bolstering your relationships with your best consumers at an entirely personal level.

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