How Cross-Channel Marketing Can Improve ROI

A positive customer experience is vital for growing your brand and improving your ROI (return on investment). Cross-channel marketing helps you not only understand your customers better but also serve them better. Discover how to create a successful cross-channel marketing strategy and the benefits of doing so. 

What is Cross-Channel Marketing?

Cross-channel marketing involves promoting your brand’s consistent messaging across multiple digital marketing platforms, including social media, web, email, blogs, text notifications, apps, and more. An effective cross-channel strategy must also involve passing data and metrics between these different channels and having them communicate with each other. That is what creates a seamless, personalized user experience across all platforms.

What is an Example of Cross-Channel Marketing?

An effective cross-channel strategy looks like this: A customer visits your website and views your products. Specifically, they view phone cases for the latest iPhone. Then, the customer leaves your website without making a purchase, which triggers your email system. Right then, the same customer receives an email from you with photos of the iPhone cases they were viewing. This is an example of cross-channel marketing because your web platform and email software communicated to send a personalized marketing message to the customer. 

Benefits of Cross-Channel Marketing to Improve ROI

Implementing a cross-channel strategy is a great place to start if you’re looking for ways to increase your ROI. There are four key benefits of cross-channel marketing that lead to more engagement and sales.

1. Cross-channel marketing improves the customer experience

First and foremost, cross-channel marketing enhances the customer experience because it personalizes the experience. In the example above, because the channels communicated, a customer received a personalized email featuring products they showed an interest in. 90% of marketers use personalization and, in doing so, significantly increase their profitability because customers are more likely to engage with personalized content than general advertisements. In fact, customers say they are likely to become repeat customers when their shopping experience is personalized. Simply put, effective cross-channel marketing efforts increase personalization, and personalization improves ROI.

2. Cross-channel marketing increases brand exposure and awareness

Wherever your target audience looks for you, they should be able to find you. A cross-channel strategy makes that happen. When you promote your business across socials, web, email, text, and more, you expose your brand to more people and naturally increase brand awareness. With more awareness comes more engagement, which leads to an increased ROI. 

3. Cross-channel marketing keeps your audience engaged

Keeping your audience engaged with your brand is essential, especially when you’re looking for ways to improve your ROI. Rather than showing up in an email inbox with a general message every few months, a cross-channel strategy keeps you in front of your audience on various platforms with consistent messaging relevant to them. This increases engagement and will help you build trust with your audience. Rather than waiting for your audience to find you, find and interact with them to encourage increased engagement. Produce great content frequently to give your audience more reasons to keep coming back.

4. Cross-channel marketing provides valuable data

When you promote your brand across various channels, you can gain valuable data and insights about your audience and their behaviors. The information collected gives you a better idea of the type of content and advertisements your audience deems most engaging. With this information, you can tailor your cross-channel marketing campaigns to better connect with your audience and target them in ways that are proven to be successful. 

For example, you can collect data on where the email was opened — a desktop or mobile device if you send an email. With this information, you learn more about your audience’s preferences. You can even segment future emails based on this information, giving those who open emails on a desktop a tailored experience, as well as those who open emails on a mobile device.

How to Develop a Successful Cross-Channel Marketing Campaign

Because one of the most important aspects of a successful cross-channel marketing campaign is a streamlined experience, you need to create consistency. When a customer interacts with you on any platform, everything from your voice and tone to your look and feel to your brand principles and content marketing strategies should be consistent.

The other important aspect of developing a successful cross-channel campaign is timing. When your audience receives their personalized messages plays a significant role in how effective they are in improving your ROI. You want to send notifications when a customer is active. In the example of the customer shopping for iPhone cases, they received a personalized email with photos of the products they viewed as soon as they left the website without making a purchase. Setting up automated processes will help you reach the right customers with the correct personalized messaging at the right time. 

Automate Your Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy With AdRoll

AdRoll’s automation builder is the only place you can manage a true cross-channel marketing automation strategy. Create and launch consistent and personalized campaigns across display ads, social ads, and email from one place. Save time and money, plus get better data from your cross-channel marketing efforts.

Cross-Channel Marketing FAQs

What is the difference between cross-channel marketing and omnichannel marketing?

Cross-channel marketing describes the ability to create a campaign that is consistent across multiple online channels. For example, having similar messaging about an offer in your emails, social ads, and display ads.

Omnichannel marketing takes cross-channel marketing to the next level. This is when online experiences reflect in-person experiences in brick and mortar locations or pop ups. For example, a retail site may offer the ability to try on sunglasses utilizing AR on their site. The same retail store may offer the same experience when visiting their stores. 

What is the difference between cross-channel marketing and multi-channel marketing?

You know that cross-channel marketing refers to when a campaign has a consistent message across digital channels. Multi-channel marketing is taking one step back from cross channel. A multi-channel marketing effort simply means that your marketing campaigns are not consolidated to one channel.

For example, if your small business started out on just Facebook and you decide to create a website, this is the start of a multi-channel strategy.

Are there cross–channel marketing platforms to manage my campaign?

Yes! Cross-channel marketing may seem daunting, with all of the different platforms requiring unique knowledge and individual interfaces, but AdRoll makes it easy. You can launch, manage, edit, and automate with the AdRoll automation builder. Learn more about running your next campaign with automation builder here! 

Last updated on May 9th, 2023.