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Today the term “cross channel marketing” is old news for marketers. At least it better be. According to one report, in this year alone successful marketers are nearly 35 times more likely to use cross channel marketing with their customers vs. under-performing teams who struggle to use this tactic at all.
Many marketers are still trying to learn the best way to use cross channel marketing. It can be difficult. You need a strictly integrated martech stack so you are familiar with the customer across a broad range of media. Each customer receives a personalized message — not just one time, but every time.
But don’t even think of giving up if you’re not understanding any of the above. Here are the four main keys in plain language to success in cross channel marketing:
Visibility
The prime principle for cross channel marketing is being visible. Customers move frequently between devices and channels. Google says that 90% of shopping consumers never stay on just one device when making a purchase. They skip around before buying.
The primary step to a unique view of customers is to use a completely integrated tech stack. In other words, your stack should include CRM, retargeting platforms and marketing automation solutions. This means you’re tracking each interaction a customer is having with your brand across all devices and channels.
But what occurs when customers go offline to make a phone call? According to a report by CallTrackingMetrics, the thread is snapped without having call intelligence. Lacking visibility into offline behavior, marketers misfire when trying to get a full view of the customer’s journey.
From the first interaction to the completed sale, marketers must stay focused on the proper set of tools to give them complete visibility on the customer’s purchasing journey.
Measurement
A report from The CMO Club revealed that 82% of CMOs stated that the reason they can’t implement an effective cross channel marketing strategy is because of their ability — or lack thereof, to measure it in the first place. That is an incredibly high number of CMOs saying they lack the ability to measure a cross channel marketing campaign.
It goes without saying that precise measurements on multiple customer touch points is vital to cross channel marketing success.
Once there is visibility with all the customer interactions concerning your brand, it becomes possible to measure the impact of current marketing campaigns with good accuracy. You’re able to see just what landing pages or retargeting ads or a host of other platforms have done to engage the customer, and via which platforms and devices.
A marketer needs to accurately measure impacts of marketing efforts in different fields such as online and offline, as well as devices or channels. Measurements must come from several different perspectives in order to get the proper view of performance. One set of measurements alone may skew your view of how a platform is performing, causing you to boost it while ignoring another platform that is actually doing better.
Then of course there is customer service and customer service today involves optimizing channels, devices, and platforms to get a complete measurement of customer reactions. Anything less will lose you customers, guaranteed.
Personalization
Seamless cross channel customer service involves the use of offline and online data. A third of marketers in one study say they rank personalization first because it’s what the future of marketing is going to be. But it’s not going to be easy. A survey conducted by Experian revealed the biggest challenges to personalization including not having immediate access to insights, not having enough data while having too much inaccurate data.
All your marketing tools are useless without adequate data from potential customers. This includes social media analytics, real-time personalization, CRM, and marketing automation. And all the rest, too. Full data allows you to design a platform to convert customers who call in or begin a chat.
The most successful cross channel experience for a customer comes when marketers integrate and automate offline and online consumer behaviors.
Optimization
Neustar and Multichannel Merchant ran a survey that found 78% of those quizzed hope for a significant lift in sales with integrated cross channel marketing in place. But that’s only half the battle. Next step requires capability and accuracy in marketing strategy budgeting that is based on full visibility into the marketing performance.
Your marketing campaign(s), as well as budgeting, depend on knowing what landing pages, services, or products drive your traffic to make the next step. You must know exactly which channels bring in the purchases, and why. This is what is meant by full visibility into your customers. Without that knowledge and correlation, without that cross channel marketing, you’re not optimizing your marketing strategy — you’re still using the shotgun approach.
You can optimize your decision making by acquiring full insight into the offline and online impact on customers of every single one of your channels, platforms, and landing pages.
With visibility, measurement, optimization, personalization and the right technology — you’ll be ready to take full advantage of cross channel marketing.
This article originally appeared on Forbes.
