Top 4 retail trends defining messaging in 2025

The retail industry is gearing up for a record-breaking year in 2025, with global sales projected to hit an astounding $24.9 trillion. That’s a lot of opportunity for retail brands to connect with customers – but standing out in a crowded marketplace requires more than great products. To win, retailers need to create personalized, seamless experiences that resonate with today’s shoppers.

The challenge? Many brands aren’t hitting the mark.

• 72% of consumers expect businesses to recognize their interests, yet 56% of retailers say they don’t personalize more than half of the shopper journey. 

• Companies risk losing $3.1 trillion in consumer spend each year due to subpar customer experiences.

• 71% of adult shoppers are more likely to make a purchase from a company they can message with.

• 43% of consumers ranked messaging as their preferred choice for pre-purchase communication, but only 36% of companies surveyed said they use rich messaging to connect with new subscribers.

This disconnect is a missed opportunity: Shoppers are asking for tailored, timely, and engaging interactions. So how can retailers deliver?

In 2025, four major trends are shaping retail messaging, and they all highlight the need for richer, more dynamic customer interactions.

Retail messaging in 2025 is evolving rapidly to meet customer expectations for more personalized and interactive experiences. Here are the four key trends driving this transformation.

Gone are the days of casual browsing. Today’s shoppers want to explore, engage, and interact. Data shows that:

• 83% of customers are asking for video tutorials that provide in-depth product insights.

• 76% want buying guides to simplify decision-making.

Retailers can meet these expectations by incorporating interactive messaging formats – like videos, product carousels, or live chat – to enhance engagement. Rich Communication Services (RCS) takes this a step further, letting retailers showcase product features through carousels and provide real-time support within the native messaging app on a user’s smartphone.

With over 60% of all website traffic coming from mobile devices, retailers need to meet consumers where they are: on their smartphones. This shift requires brands to think beyond mobile-optimized websites and apps, extending that seamless, on-the-go experience into their mobile messaging strategies. 

In 2025, retailers can create a great shopping experience entirely within mobile messaging apps, from allowing consumers to browse products via RCS or WhatsApp, to making purchases, and even getting customer support all in one place. 

Modern shoppers expect brands to listen as much as they talk: 

• 71% of customers say they’re more likely to do business with a brand they can message.  

• 53% of consumers feel frustrated when they can’t respond to a mobile message. 

This demand for two-way interactions underscores the growing importance of conversational commerce, where business messaging is a conversation rather than a broadcast. With this strategy, retailers can turn routine updates into opportunities for deeper engagement – and, ultimately, conversions. 

Shoppers crave authenticity – and building trust with customers has never been more critical. Modern shoppers want brands to be transparent and proactive:  

• 77% of customers say they appreciate abandoned cart updates. 

• 70% of carts are abandoned. 

This is a great opportunity for brands to swoop in with RCS, which allows for personalized messaging to be sent from branded, verified sender profiles. These messages can help establish credibility and strengthen customer relationships – turning one-time buyers into lifelong fans.

These trends make one thing clear: Customer expectations are evolving, and traditional approaches aren’t enough for retailers to keep pace. While brands have traditionally used SMS for quick, efficient communication, its limitations – like 160-character cap, lack of images, and inability to include suggested actions – restrict how engaging and interactive messages can be. That’s where RCS can come in to help retailers get ahead.

RCS gained major traction when Apple announced it would support RCS on iOS in September 2024. Now, with Apple supporting RCS for both person-to-person (P2P) and application-to-person (A2P) messaging in some markets, the channel is becoming mainstream, allowing more consumers to experience the benefits of rich, interactive messaging.

And retailers are taking note of what RCS offers:

• Rich media: High-quality images, videos, and shoppable content tailored to customers’ preferences.   
• Branded, verified messaging: Logos, company colors, and verified business profiles build instant recognition and reinforce brand identity. 
• Read receipts and analytics: Real-time insights into campaigns like read receipts so brands can understand exactly how customers engage with messages.   

With RCS, retail brands can offer customers a full shopping experience inside the native mobile inbox with features like rich product images, carousels for browsing, click-to-buy buttons, real-time updates, and more.

Retailers are already using RCS in their campaigns and seeing measurable results. From higher engagement rates to increased conversions, brands using RCS are transforming customer interactions into real business impact.

Clarins, a leading luxury skincare brand, was looking for innovative ways to meet customer demands for personalized, interactive communications. They partnered with Sinch to launch RCS messaging for their holiday season campaign. With RCS, Clarin’s customers received branded messages with rich media and action buttons linking to holiday gift sets, an Advent calendar, and current offers.

The campaign resulted in: 

• 79% read rate 

• 22% click-through rate 

• 35x more redirections than Rich SMS 

• Double the CTR for their “Les Journées Privilèges” sales event  

By using RCS in their messaging strategy, Clarins turned their holiday promotions into dynamic, high-performing customer interactions.

Sneaker retailer, Courir, was looking for creative ways to maximize engagement and boost conversions in a crowded retail space. Their long-standing collaboration with Sinch had led to many successful messaging campaigns, but their move to RCS was a true game-changer. They created a campaign featured a GIF with animated text to highlight Courir’s holiday sale and a button leading to the sale page. And with RCS enhanced analytics, Courir was able to see the impact their campaign had with customers. 

_{See how Courir used RCS to boost sales, drive engagement, and achieve a 137% ROI!}

The promising results? A 70% read rate and 137% ROI compared to Rich SMS.

Micromania-Zing, part of the GameStop family, was looking to boost customer engagement and increase brand visibility. So, they turned to Sinch RCS to simplify transactions and take customer engagement to new heights. 

With RCS messaging, they made it easier for customers to explore promotions, pre-order games, and access loyalty offers – all directly in someone’s native messaging inbox.

The results of this campaign speak for themselves: 

• 7x higher click rate compared to Rich SMS 

• 120% higher website redirection rate 

• 86% higher read rate than newsletters 

• 2x improvement in brand visibility

As the retail industry continues to evolve in 2025, the brands that stand out will be the ones who embrace trends like interactive experiences, mobile-first shopping, two-way conversations, and building deeper customer trust. This requires a commitment to enhancing the entire customer journey, ensuring every interaction is meaningful and aligned with customer expectations. And that’s where RCS comes in. 

RCS helps retailers take everyday messages and turn them into rich, personalized, and interactive experiences that keep customers engaged, informed, safe, and happy. Whether you’re trying to create AI-powered shopping experiences, give real-time updates, or just trying to establish more human connections with your customers, RCS lets you do all this (and more!) in the same mobile messaging inbox. 

At Sinch, we’re ready to help you use RCS and other innovative messaging solutions to transform how you connect with your customers. Ready to make 2025 your most engaging year yet? Get in touch with our team today!