In today’s Now Economy, if you want to sell more, your marketing must personally speak to your customers at the individual-level. Your customers maintain high standards when choosing how they engage with brands, and your marketing can make or break their decisions.

Brands across the board are feeling this pressure and it’s coming from the top. A recent survey of 1,000 CMOs from around the world depicted a shared urgency around developing better overall customer experiences across the lifecycle—from converting prospects through retention and loyalty.  

This is where technology becomes a brand’s best ally. Marketers are more empowered than ever to turn customer data, integrated tools, and their creative know-how into seamless, personalized cross-channel marketing that “wows.”

Attracting customers by spreading your messaging across multiple channels is the formula that works!

• Nearly three out of every four consumers shop regularly on multiple channels.

• 88% of consumers shop where they receive personalized, cross-channel experiences.

• Customer satisfaction rates are 23x higher among brands with cross-channel strategies.

Great marketing paves the way toward great experiences. Every single message you send across the customer journey—email, push, in-app, postcard or catalog—holds the potential to create interest, capture engagement and drive action.

But here’s the kicker: the leash is short and the margin for error is razor-thin. We want brands to know what we want, when we want it…and yet they often don’t, so we leave them behind.

However, the future is anything but grim. There’s never been a better time for self-improvement; all the resources are ready for use! Marketers have the data, technology, and the know-how to make it happen. Below, we’ll take a deeper look at cross-channel tips for engaging your customers across their journeys.

Activation: From Freemium to Premium

During the early stages of interaction—be it website, app, or anything else—getting consumers hooked on your brand is crucial to fostering long-term engagement. At this stage, they’ve taken just enough interest in what you have to offer to share a little of their information and interact.

For most companies, this is where their post-signup campaigns kick in. Triggered transactional messages, welcome and onboarding campaigns deploy and validate users’ initial engagement. Take it one step further with a personalized postcard as the cherry on top!  Brands using direct mail paired with one or more online experiences generate 118% lift in response rates.

The brands that do this well cross channels seamlessly, piecing together dynamic and cohesive experiences that “stick.” This is how you can get started, too.  

It Never Hurts to Ask

Consumer engagement typically peaks during early interactions and it’s your opportunity to make “asks” which you can use for personalization in your follow-up outreach:

• Filling out profile or preference information to learn more about them
• 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or even paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience.

• Downloading your app for enriched experiences
• The average app user spends about 43 days per year in apps. Learn more about them as they engage to sharpen your personalized outreach.

• Opting-in for push notifications for timely alerts or actions
• 85% of mobile users find push notifications useful when they add value. Push gives your an urgent line of communication to your customers to get your message across when it matters most.

• Sharing address information for exclusive offers to local stores.
• Direct mail response rates are actually anywhere from 10 to 30 times higher than that of digital. Tying together on- and offline interactions rounds out a robust brand experience.  

By unlocking multiple interaction channels, you’re boosting your chances of staying top of mind, a critical element of driving user activation. Even if your customer misses your next email, a timely push reminder can bring them back into your app. If they use an in-store postcard coupon you’ve sent to their home, you can trigger an email or in-app notice asking for their feedback on the experience.
All of your messaging acts as the foundational building blocks of your broader brand experience—a strong start sets the table to nurture long-term relationships.

Nurture: Move Through Channels to Move the Needle

After you’ve blown away your newest customers with a seamless welcome and onboarding experience, it’s time to encourage that first transaction. A study by PwC found that consumers will to spend 16% more with brands offering standout experiences; marketing communication included.

As you nurture your newest customers, you really want to focus on removing barriers from the conversion. You’ve put in the work and captivated their interest early, don’t lose that sentiment with a clunky experience when they’re ready to buy.

Nurture Their Natural Habits

The needs of your business goals dictate what’s best for your prospects and thinking cross-channel can be challenging! Here’s a simple, four step cross-channel approach that caters to consumers natural browsing habits.

1. Dynamic emails: Use dynamic content to send value-adds via customized content and imagery based on phase of funnel and your consumer interests.‍
2. Web push: This newer channel is your chance to act in an engaging, compelling way that converts customers—and stands out from your competition.‍
3. Retargeting: Use retargeting ads in various channels based on content viewed and other behavioral indicators.‍
4. Personalized postcards: Trigger postcards for an extra personal touch, and make sure those mailers drive consumers back online. Here are a few direct mail triggers to consider.

Reactivation: Bring That Browse Back

Staying top of mind with consumers is tough in today’s age. Information overload paired with short attention spans is a recipe for disengagement which constantly works against you.

Every brand out there could benefit from some reactivation campaign fine-tuning. As customer relationships age, how can you create the touchpoints that bump engagement, retention, or loyalty keeping your customers coming back for more?

Up the ante and add an offline component to your traditionally online campaigns.

From Inbox to Mailbox

Re-engagement campaigns are almost exclusively online; you’ve seen them: “We Miss You” emails, push reminders to get back into an app, and so on. But why stop there when you know that 82% of direct mail is read for a minute or more?

Here are a few tips to send direct mail like a pro.

• Identify specific lapsing engagement behaviors for targeted direct mailers.
• If your customers haven’t opened your emails or logged into your site for certain periods of time, trigger a postcard to these audience segments to try and win them back.

• Respond to customer buying signals to help complete purchases.
• Inactive customers will still typically read your emails and casually browse your site. Instead of email, try content-specific postcards to customers who previously  abandoned carts or repeatedly viewed certain items. Offline outreach is a great way to bring people back online.

• Learn from the pros.
• They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. As you’re getting started with postcards, take a look at some fantastic examples of mailers driving proven results.

• Keep the conversation moving across your channels.
• Campaigns using 4+ channels outperform single- or dual-channel campaigns by 300%. Your customer data plus a powerful growth marketing platform is your ticket in to your customers’ minds.

Any Channel at Any Time

Great marketing is multi-faceted: it’s personalized, accessible, relevant, and shapes consumer sentiment like never before. Ensuring your brand stays up to par requires the right tools to get the job done right. That’s why Iterable teamed up with Inkit to expand the marketer’s reach.

With the Inkit + Iterable integration, you can access real-time user, behavioral and event data to trigger personalized postcards, emails, mobile messages and more. You can create highly customized content and send them cross-channel by simply dragging and dropping your channel of choice into your campaign workflow.

Create, click, send! Adding direct mail to campaigns is easy inside Iterable’s Workflow Studio.

Adding personalized direct mail to your marketing arsenal is a powerful resource when competing for attention. If you’re interested in how you can get started, request a demo today.

Ryan Brelje is a Content Marketing Manager at Iterable and creates content which fuels the company’s cross-channel experiences. Connect with him on LinkedIn.