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Customers got used to having many channels to search for information, shop or ask customer support for help. For example, 67% of shoppers now expect a store will give them the option to purchase an item online and then allow them to pick it up from the store. And they want the same thing from marketing campaigns – getting relevant, consistent, and personalized messages and offers on any channel they use.
Still, for many brands offering this kind of seamless experience isn’t an easy task, especially if they still rely on several isolated marketing channels.
So in this article, we’ll focus on how exactly you can use omnichannel marketing to its full potential and create outstanding cross-channel campaigns your users will enjoy.
What makes cross-channel campaigns so important today?
The first question you probably have here is why even you should design cross-channel campaigns – didn’t the regular ones work well enough? They did – but that was when the line between the various channels wasn’t so blurry. Rather than go to a retail store and buy a product there, shoppers often first check a brand’s online store, read reviews of a product they want, and sometimes also talk with a customer support agent if they have any questions.
But what’s more important, they expect each of these experiences to be personalized, relevant, and connected. For example, if they see that the product prices differ on the app, website, and physical store, they might consider the inconsistency suspicious and look for another store to shop.
And if they already told the brand what kind of products they are interested in but only keep getting offers for irrelevant products, they might decide the brand is not worth their time (and money) anymore.
In one research, two-thirds of customers even said they wouldn’t buy from a brand without an omnichannel strategy!
So nowadays, if a brand wants to keep consumers happy with their shopping experience, they simply must have an omnichannel strategy.
What channels can you use for cross channel campaign management?
What makes running cross-channel campaigns slightly tricky is that it’s nowhere near as easy as just sending your campaign through as many marketing channels as possible. Instead, you need to research the different marketing channels and then decide which would work best for your needs.
Let’s look at the most popular marketing channels now.
Contrary to what many people say, email marketing is far from dead. The average ROI for email marketing is $36 for every $1 spent – so no wonder it’s still one of the most popular marketing channels to warm up leads and engage existing users. Plus, the number of ways you can use it with a segmented list of verified email addresses is virtually endless. For example, your new app users can get a “Welcome aboard” introduction email series, while regular customers can get tailored recommendations.
Social Media
Social media is all about having direct contact with your followers and keeping them engaged. And where else might you find such a large audience as there? Around 5 billion people (60% of the global population) are active on social media – often on more than one platform. So for announcing a new product launch, building brand awareness, or keeping your followers engaged, social media are often ideal.
Websites
A brand’s website is often the first place consumers check whenever they are interested in their products or service. That makes it an excellent place for sharing any materials visitors might be looking for – like detailed product information, blog posts, or knowledge base articles.
Mobile apps
Smartphone users love mobile apps because they can give them something websites can’t – a fully personalized user experience. In one survey, 60% of consumers even said they prefer mobile shopping apps over mobile sites because the former gives them a much better shopping experience. And since most of us have our phones always nearby, using mobile apps is a great way to promote app-exclusive offers or time-sensitive deals, for example, via push notifications.
SMS and messaging apps
The second marketing channel that works great for time-limited offers are text messages and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. Sms messages’ open rate is around 98%, so if you want to, for example, run a one-day sale, it’s a much better idea to let your shoppers know about it via a text message than through an email.
Plus, you can also use text messages to ask your customers about their personal experience with your product or service and how they would rate it. Since sending an sms message back takes much less effort than filling out a website survey, there’s a much higher chance customers will share their opinion with you.
Physical stores
There are also a few smart ways to connect your physical store to digital campaigns. For example, you can use in-app QR codes that shoppers can scan at the checkout for a discount or surprise gift. Another option is to use Geofencing technology, where you send text messages or push notifications to people who are nearby your store to encourage them to stop by.
What can marketers gain by using cross-channel campaigns?
Running your campaigns on several channels instead of just one or two might seem like a lot of work. Is it really worth the effort? Absolutely!
Did you know, for example, that using three channels instead of one for a marketing campaign can give you a 287% higher purchase rate?
Here’s what exactly a well-crafted omnichannel strategy can give you:
A better shopping experience for your customers
An omnichannel strategy gives you all the data you might need to know what offer might pique your customers’ interests, which channel they use most often, and when you should reach out to them with the messages. That makes customers feel you know them well and are ready to adjust their experience at any time they might want it. And when customers have a good experience, they’re more likely to buy from you next time.
Increased reach and engagement
Omnichannel can also visibly increase your campaign’s reach. Rather than using just one or two channels for communicating with your audience, you tap into the powers of multiple platforms on which your users might be. Plus, you aren’t just sending one and the same message through all channels, hoping more people will notice it. Instead, you craft and send the messages the way your audience wants them – so the engagement will naturally also get a boost.
Data-driven insights
You surely do have plenty of data on your audience and their preferences already. Without an integrated omnichannel strategy though, the data is most likely incomplete. Using multiple channels can give you far more information on who your customers are and what they want than ever before. With this knowledge, you can then learn more about their behavior, preferences, and pain points and then build detailed customer profiles out of those.
Optimized budgets
There’s one more benefit coming from the wealth of analytical data you can get from omnichannel campaigns. Namely, you can quickly notice which channels give you the best ROI and which ones are falling behind. This will help you to fine-tune your marketing strategy and plan your budget out to ensure you spend money on the channels that give you the best possible results.
How to design an effective cross-channel campaigns
Convinced now that crafting cross-channel campaigns is worth the hard work? With the data coming from multiple sources, you could build a detailed customer profile that will show you who exactly your customers are and how you should craft your campaigns to make them delighted.
From where should you start though? Here are the key steps:
Research your audience
The first and essential step for cross-platform campaigns is researching in detail who your target audience really is. How do they use your product or service, what content they like, which channels they use, and what makes them frustrated. The data will both help you to create messages that will resonate with your audience but also suggest which channels you should use for the campaign for the best results.
Segment your audience for personalization
Once you’ve collected a good amount of data on your audience, divide them into groups based on demographics, purchase behavior, location, or any other relevant metric for the campaign. Segmenting your audience base will help you to create and deliver personalized content to each segment, leading to better engagement rates.
Ensure you have consistent content for every channel
Buying a product or service or signing up for a newsletter is a sign that a customer trusts your brand and product. How can they trust you though if you have four different messages on four other channels and your customer team themselves are confused which is the correct one?
So, when planning out content for cross-channel campaigns, message consistency is vital. Of course, you might need to adjust the message format to match the channel’s requirement – but what the message says should be the same on all channels.
Pick the tools you will use for the campaigns
It’s technically possible to develop and run an omnichannel campaign manually, but that would:
- Take you far too much time
- Make it difficult to focus on all channels
- It might not give you the results you expect.
So why not leave the heavy lifting to the various automated tools you can now “hire” for the campaign?
Xtremepush can help you connect all of your marketing channels and data sources into one platform, so you and your employees would have all the data you might need for the campaigns in one place.
Plus, the customer data inside the application will be updated in real-time, so you can be sure that the customer profiles inside Xtremepush are always up-to-date.
Monitor the campaign performance
A campaign is only as good as the results it delivers. That’s why it’s so important to regularly monitor your campaign’s performance when it comes to engagement rates, conversion rates, and ROI.
Again, modern tools can handle the monitoring and analytical tasks for you as well – and then turn the data they gather into clear and actionable insights. What’s more, they can also update the results in real-time, so you will know straight away whether everything goes smoothly or if you should maybe tweak some parts of the campaigns.
We covered the omnichannel strategy steps in more detail in our other article, “How to Create an Omnichannel Strategy,” so you might want to check out this one as well if you are struggling with implementing omnichannel campaigns.
Common challenges with implementing cross-channel campaigns and how to overcome them
Forrester Consulting group found that out of the Canadian brands surveyed, a staggering 85% of B2C businesses lag behind their omnichannel strategy. What makes it so hard for brands to develop a seamless omnichannel strategy? Well, the reasons are varied – let’s look at some of those now.
Data silos
The key to the omnichannel approach is having all your marketing channels like websites, mobile, social media channels, etc., integrated and all the data you might need about your customers in one place. However, many brands still have their channels isolated one from another and customer data scattered across multiple databases and platforms.
In the Zendesk report, only 22% of business leaders say their teams share data well.
With the scattered data, understanding what the customers really expect from a brand and tailoring the campaign messages to their needs is nearly impossible though.
How can you solve it?
What you need here is one platform that can consolidate all your marketing channels and data sources into one, easily accessible place for everyone. Here’s where Xtremepush CDP can come in handy. The platform will gather data from multiple sources and then turn it into comprehensive customer profiles, ready for you to use in your campaigns.
Inconsistent branding
With different teams responsible for handling the marketing channels and a lack of a single place for customer data, it might happen that the messages or aesthetics vary between channels. It might be even harder to build a consistent omnichannel experience if the teams don’t have a convenient way to share information or content between themselves.
How can you solve it?
An excellent way to ensure everyone is on the same page when it comes to the brand’s voice and style is to establish clear brand guidelines and requirements. All those should be stored in one place, so all employees have easy access to it and can share their own materials with other team members.
Overlapping communication
Getting the same message on multiple channels is a fast way to get the users annoyed – even more if the message isn’t even relevant to their needs. Validity report found that 96% of consumers got annoyed at least once by SMS marketing messages, and 56% of consumers have even stopped purchasing from a brand entirely because of those.
How can you solve it?
Having a centralized platform where all customer interactions would be tracked is a clever way to ensure you aren’t sending repetitive messages to them.
Xtremepush can help you with this task as well by tracking and recording all interactions with your customers. That way, you’ll always know what messages you send, to who, and when – and can later adjust the timing so the messages appear at the right time.
Do you want to see how Xtremepush works in practice? Then, how about scheduling a demo presentation with our team? You’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to create cross-platform campaigns when Xtremepush is at your side.
Conclusion
A seamless omnichannel experience is what all customers want nowadays. They want to get precisely the information they need, whenever they need and on the channel of their choice. For brands though, meeting those expectations isn’t always such an easy thing. But with our tips and Xtremepush platform capabilities, moving from several isolated channels into a perfectly integrated omnichannel strategy and crafting exceptional cross-platform campaigns can go much smoother.
