Maximising Mobile Masterclass Warsaw

Top of the agenda were some exclusive insights from the hot-off-the-press Apadmi Tech Trends Report 2026, with Apadmi’s Chief Innovation Officer Adam Fleming on hand to provide the detail.

The report offers a view on the ingredients for successfully creating a mobile experience capable of unlocking genuine business growth.

The key sections include: a view on the trade-offs between different platforms; the importance of integration to avoid frankenstein architectures; the critical nature of testing and avoiding brittleness; security basics, regulation and threats; and finally a look to the future and how AI is causing not just artificial intelligence, but also an artificial sense of needing to move quickly when real world scenarios require due care and consideration.

Adam said: “A key takeaway from the report is something that’s implied from start to finish, which is that you should be very thoughtful in the way you deploy these technologies and the way you build these projects. It’s very easy to jump on the bandwagon and follow the hype train, but that’s very different to delivering something that’s actually going to drive real value.”

The gamification of loyalty

Standard loyalty points and prizes alone simply aren’t enough anymore. That’s the view of Open Loyalty’s co-founder and CSO Kacper Cebo, who was also on hand to share the learnings from a piece of Open Loyalty research involving how 300 brands are using gamification to improve customer experiences.

Unlocking rewards through interactions creates a sense of progression and at the same time a dopamine hit alongside that sense of achievement. Making loyalty too transactional - where users are encouraged to simply spend more to earn more - creates an expectation of discounts, while delivering an experience is much better for creating emotional value.

Kacper said: “Loyalty promotions have become predictable. With always the same 10% off, vouchers aren’t surprising. They can be used, but not just by themselves anymore - they have to be coupled with gamification.

“It’s not just ‘how can I get a discount’, but more ‘how can I progress’ with streaks, quests, progressions, challenges and ongoing interactions.”

Personalisation potential

The potential of personalisation is huge, but it’s always helpful to hear how brands  are actually doing it in the real world. App Product Manager at Topps Tiles, Jordan Twiggs was on hand to talk about how they are creating a new tailored mobile experience for trade customers with help from Apadmi and Katsiaryna Kuchuk, Senior Account Manager at Bloomreach.

Together, Jordan and Katsiaryna discussed how AI-driven experiences are changing what modern customers expect from brands.

Katsiaryna said: “More and more brands are paying significant attention to mobile and increasingly we’re seeing a mobile-first approach not just transactionally, but also for communicating with customers. Add to that the capability which AI can offer to quickly adapt content or a specific message which is served to a customer and you have some powerful personalisation capabilities.”

Jordan added: “Mobile gives us a much richer, real-time view of how our trade customers actually work. Our stores and web are important, but the app sits in our customer’s pocket and is able to support and influence at the exact moment when decisions are made, whether that’s at home, on site, travelling between jobs or even in store.“

Decathlon delivers results

The final slot of the evening was left to Decathlon’s Head of Loyalty & CRM, Bartosz Żochowski to bring everything together by sharing how the leading sports retailer has used its app experience to genuinely join mobile and in-store.

A clear strategy was laid out to show how mobile was central to supporting customers at varying touchpoints, including TV campaigns to raise app awareness, making in-store scanning easier with the app and improving customer lifetime value through improved engagement and personalisation.

The approach has created some impressive results, not least the fact that 80% of app customers are also making in store purchases. Poland is now the second largest European market after Decathlon’s home market of France.

For more insight from the Apadmi Mobile Tech Trends Report, you can download a copy here. And if you’d like to find out more about how mobile could help your business, we’d love to hear from you.