Email Marketing Strategies for Cross-Channel Marketing
Email has forever been the holy grail of marketing, outperforming other marketing channels by a long haul. So much so that 80% of the marketers would rather give up social media marketing than email (as reported by Hubspot).
But do they need to?
The thought of making marketing channels compete with each other is where the problem begins. New-age marketing does not need to exist in siloes. And this is precisely where cross-channel marketing comes in.
The Role of Email:
As a 21st century marketer, you can use email not only to complete your cross-channel marketing campaigns but to drive them as well. By infusing your email strategy with suitable data sets from other platforms and brand-customer touchpoints, you can keep email at the helm of conversions.
Here is a blueprint of how this can be done.
Steps to make email the center of your cross-channel marketing strategy:
1. Using Multiple Data Sets
Data sets from other platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. can be used to gather information about your target audience. This can then be infused into your email marketing for segmentation and targeting. For example, you can use your data from Adwords to serve a hyper-targeted campaign on Facebook to gather new email addresses. Then, you can send personalized re-engagement emails to every subscriber while leveraging their existing behavioral profile. This way, you get the best of both worlds.
2. Incentivize Your Audience To Involve Them In The Process
Incentives work like magic when it comes to enticing prospects into taking part in your email campaigns and helping you convert more. You may use incentives such as exclusive and personalized coupons that take into account every subscriber’s past purchases. They will not only engage with your messages but also be on the lookout for them, giving a boost to key metrics such as open rates and click-through rates.
3. Bring In Brand-Customer Touchpoints To The Table:
When cross-channel marketing is at play, your brand and customer touchpoints such as email, phone calls, store visits, etc. can all be used to make even more personalized communications. This will help you gather data about their preferences and interests and based on this, you can craft even more emails to drive up conversions.
Authorship may also play a role in this. How? Simply because your target audience will be more open to your communications if they can see that it is coming from someone they know or have heard of.
4. Make Email Marketing Work For With Automation
One of the biggest advantages of digital marketing (especially email) over traditional channels such as TV, radio, etc. is its automation capabilities. But keep in mind that this should not be considered as a replacement for human-to-human interactions. You can use automation features like triggers and rules to send specific emails to certain customers at predefined times throughout the week (or month). This will ensure that your target audience is engaged with your messaging and you can drive more conversions than ever before.
5. Try, Test And Measure:
The most important rule of cross-channel marketing is to always try and measure as many variables as possible. You cannot be sure about what will work for your business unless you test it out first. Also, user behavior across different devices may have a big impact on how emails are being opened, read, and responded to. So test, try, and measure for yourself!
And that is how email can be at the forefront of your cross-channel marketing strategies. You can see email not just as an inbox, but also as an opportunity to achieve digital success through multiple channels. Remember that the right combination of data sets, incentives, touchpoints, and automation can make your emails the stars of the brand story!
5 Email Marketing Strategies For Cross-Channel Marketing
Cross-channel marketing is all about engaging with your customers where they are and in a way that they are most likely to respond to. Let’s take a look at some email marketing strategies that can help you in this aspect.
1. Make Use Of Unified Customer Profiles:
Customer profiles for email marketing campaigns can be made in the same way they are made for other customer-related activities. You need to start with knowing who you are talking to and gathering information about their interests, preferences, and behaviors from all possible channels. Data sets related to social media and website activities form a good basis for these profiles. By using this data, you can understand what type of emails are most likely to be engaged with.
2. Implement Personalization at Scale:
You can generate communication templates (for all channels) that are customized for every individual customer. This will not only increase engagement but also help you gather more data about them, giving you the opportunity to improve marketing campaigns over time. Personalization at scale can be achieved by creating different segments of customers based on their needs and wants. For example, you may have a segment of customers who are frequent flyers and want to stay updated about discounts on airfare. These customers can be targeted through personalized emails that give them information about the deals they may find interesting.
3. Share Relevant Content At the Right Time:
You can also use emails to share relevant content with subscribers. This can be implemented in tandem with cross-channel marketing automation tools that make it easy to pick out and share the best-performing content at the most appropriate time for engagement. For example, a regular Friday email might have a link to your website’s blog with the most recent article. This way you can seamlessly connect your call-to-action in emails to different touchpoints in social media and other customer communication platforms.
4. Let Authorship Guide Your Emails:
Having a well-known personality or brand endorse your emails can be extremely advantageous to campaign performance. Whether you are trying to drive traffic to your website or developing brand awareness, having an influencer on your team can give you the additional push to achieve these goals. You may even consider implementing some sort of contest with free giveaways as rewards for participation. For example, if you are launching a new product line and want customers to pre-order it, you can run a contest offering giveaways to people who get the most pre-orders through your email campaign.
5. Use Personalized URLs:
You can impress your customers by using personalized URLs in your email campaigns. This will not only look more professional but also make it easy for them to remember your site’s link, which can give you an advantage over competitors. You can use the information gathered about customer preferences and behaviors to create micro-websites that represent their interests. For example, you can create a micro-site that sells only products related to fishing if your customer has shown interest in the same.
Benefits of Cross-Channel Marketing:
Cross-channel marketing is all about connecting the dots – which channels work best for specific customer segments, what types of content get shared at what point in time, etc. Here are some benefits of implementing a cross-channel marketing strategy:
- Consumers receive value from engaging with your brand on different touchpoints, leading to increased retention and customer satisfaction.
- Marketers have more opportunities to engage with their audience through personalized emails, content sharing, email-related contests, etc.
- Better ROI for marketing campaigns by focusing on the needs of specific customer segments.
- Targeted messaging that reaches out to specific segments within your audience can lead to increased conversions and sales.
- Ability to personalize marketing campaigns at scale with relevant content and tailored links.
- Ability to target customers across platforms that share similar interests, messaging, or preferences.
Email is still the most powerful marketing tool in your arsenal. When used intelligently, it can produce results that help you connect with customers in unique and personalized ways.
What’s Next?
By following these strategies, you will be able to stay ahead of competitors and increase your email marketing success rate. Implementing cross-channel marketing automation tools also helps with better campaign tracking, which ensures that you have a great ROI on all of your marketing activities.
But this is not all.
Cross-channel email marketing is a towering beast that can be difficult to tame for beginners. Here is a great infographic we created in collaboration with Cordial to explain the nuances of a cross-platform marketing strategy. You can check it out on this link.
