Navigating Multi-Channel Marketing for Ecommerce

Ecommerce brands need to be in touch with their tech-savvy shoppers in order to stay relevant. Focus on single channel marketing campaigns provides the user with a disconnected feel and not the well-rounded campaign experience marketers want to give.

Multi-channel marketing campaigns are increasingly becoming a necessity if brands want to retain their customers, especially since 73% of consumers use multiple engagement channels in their interaction with a single preferred retailer (source),  

Time to switch from single channel strategies?

With consumers active across different channels, brands have to adapt to a strategy that will engage their customers where they actually are. Plenty of brands are focusing too heavily on a single channel, and then just peppering the other channels as and when needed.

We know that the average consumer has 4.3 internet connected devices at their disposal, including smartphone, desktops, laptops, tablets, smart tv and wearable devices. So targeting just one channel will see ecommerce brands miss out on potential engagement opportunities with their customers.

Consumers will move between these devices throughout the day, which is another reason why a multi-channel marketing strategy will provide more engagement opportunities.

Introducing additional Channels

To achieve maximum engagement, brands need to first understand which channels customers are most active on, which channels are driving the most purchases, which channels are driving traffic but failing to convert and which channels are stagnant.

Conducting some detailed customer analysis will provide answers to the above questions, and from this point forward will aid in putting together a winning strategy.

There is a caveat, if a brand is not active on a channel then the results are not going to provide metrics on those channels, something to bear in mind as even though you are not there, your customers might be.

An additional benefit of a multi-channel approach is customer retention. It is widely reported that the cost of acquisition is much higher than retention and with a multi-channel marketing strategy. 7-Eleven achieved  4 times higher than industry average app retention rate when working with Xtremepush, which showcases how Xtremepush has worked with some of the worlds largest brands to drive engagement and retention.  

Which Engagement Channels can enterprise brands introduce?

Mobile

If a Retail/Ecommerce brand doesn’t have an app, they are missing out on a huge market. Shopping apps saw a 54% increase in usage between 2016 and 2017 (source), but beyond just having an app, engagement opportunities need to be driven. Push Notifications are a fantastic way to alert users of new products, recommended products or offers and sales. Additionally, Push Notifications provide re-engagement opportunities targeting users who haven’t engaged or opened the app for a while. A recent  Xtremepush blog looks at how Push Notifications can boost revenue for ecommerce brands.

Web

Increasing engagement opportunities and increased sales for an ecommerce store can be achieved by the introduction of Web Push Notifications. A successful approach to reducing shopping cart abandonment by creating an intelligent personalised communication that will bring the customer back to their pre-populated basket, even when they are on a different website.

Another powerful engagement opportunity can be provided by utilising a Web inbox. A great way to target customers on site with important information about products, deals or any other important information.

Social

Social channels provide another huge opportunity to extend reach and drive engagement. By incorporating social messaging into a marketing strategy, brands can generate more leads and turn them from conversations to conversions.  Social media also can provide a store with a simple signup process, be enabling account linking and giving the users a quite route to purchase.

Additionally, brands can use Social Channels to re-engage their users through tailored messages, that can push them back to your ecommerce app or store.

Joined up Approach

Using each channel as a single entity can offer potential pitfalls, and essentially sending disjointed messages across the channels. As we have already seen, users have an average of 4.3 internet connected devices at their disposal, so sending customers four different messages on four different channels will create a confusing experience for the customer.

A Multi-Channel Experience and Engagement marketing platform like Xtremepush empowers marketers to create campaigns across multi-channels that will deliver the right message to the right users on the right channel at the right time.

Running & Testing Campaigns

Untested campaigns can provide unsuccessful results. For brands, it is not only important to get the message out to the right person on the right channel, but it is also crucial that it is the right message too. A lot of enterprises will already be testing some channels, namely email, however, how often are campaigns on other channels tested before they are sent out.

There will be some enterprise brands who are testing as they go, as in they send out a campaign and make some changes then send out a new campaign, make changes and so on and so on. There are better ways to test campaigns than just running with them and seeing how they go, then changing future campaigns based on the results.

Utilising control groups enables brands to try out different campaigns on smaller sections of your users/customers to determine which campaign would be most successful before it is rolled out across the remaining groups.

What tools do you need?

To run multi-channel marketing campaigns you need to either have plenty of time on your hands and are exceptional at keeping to a schedule, or you need a system that will enable you to run multi-channel campaigns effectively.

Analytics

Xtrempush’s Multi-Channel Experience and Engagement platform has all of the tools you need to run powerful and targeted marketing campaigns. With the enterprise-class analytics available through the platform, creating user profiles and gaining a granular understanding of your customers in real-time is simple.

The in-depth funnel analysis available will enable full understanding of when, where and why customers are dropping off and not converting.

Full Multi-Channel Marketing Support

Xtremepush’s platform provides brands with full multi-channel marketing capabilities, including Push Notifications, Email Marketing, Location Technology and In-Web Messaging. The platform empowers brands with world-class tools across multiple channels that maximise real-time engagement opportunities.

To find out more about multi-channel engagement and introduce multi-channel marketing campaigns,  speak to our experts today.