Glossary

Cross-channel

customer experience

Marketing is an intricate process and cross-channel marketing is one of its unique branches. Keep on reading to learn how cross-channel marketing is different from other forms of marketing and why implementing it into your business operations gives you an edge over your competitors.  

What Is Cross-Channel Marketing?

Cross-channel marketing entails reaching out to customers or your target audience through several interconnected marketing channels. The customer journey is personalized as data flows between your multiple marketing channels to create a seamless end-to-end customer experience. 

Cross-Channel FAQs

What Is the Difference Between Cross-channel Marketing and Multichannel Marketing?

We can say cross-channel marketing takes multichannel marketing one step further. While multichannel marketing only constitutes reaching out to customers on multiple separate channels, cross-channel marketing additionally utilizes the information collected on one marketing channel to create a customized customer journey that reflects on every other channel.

What Problems Can Be Solved With a Cross-Channel Strategy?

Your target customers move through a plethora of platforms across the internet and you have to interact with customers on these platforms to influence their buying decisions. Customers also have complaints about inconsistent experiences across these different platforms. 

Cross-channel marketing takes marketing to all these platforms and additionally shares data between platforms to provide customized and streamlined experiences.  

What Are The Benefits Of Cross-Channel Marketing?

Cross-channel marketing comes with a barrage of benefits specifically stemming from its incorporation of personalization into the user experience. Four of the most crucial of these benefits for your business include:

Creating Customer Personas With Aggregate and Person-Level Data

Implementing cross-platform marketing strategies allows you to collate customer data, with many customers willing to share information for a personalized experience, 90% willing to share behavioral data for a cheaper experience, and 50% willing to share data for personalized discounted offers

Collating and utilizing individual customer data allows you to create even more personalized customer experiences. Aggregating this data gives you the chance to create effective marketing messages and strategies for the wider target audience. 

Customer Journey Optimization

By interconnecting multiple marketing platforms, you streamline your customer journey and create personalized end-to-end customer experiences. This helps you convince at least 91% of your target audience to shop with your brand.

Increasing Customer Engagement

Cross-channel marketing improves your visibility amongst your target audience and helps you achieve increased engagement with 72% of customers. Having these engagements across over 10 platforms then allows you to convert 49% to 62% of customers at least once per week, depending on their familiarity with your brand.  

Building Better Relationships With Customers

The effects of cross-channel marketing on building customer relationships are apparent, with  70% of customers admitting that the satisfaction of personal needs affects their loyalty to your brand. The strategy helps you retain 44% of customers.

What Are Some Examples of Cross-Channel Marketing?

One great example of cross-channel marketing is its implementation by Spotify across digital and physical channels. We see Spotify's use of user data in outdoor billboard adverts, with these campaigns constituting both individually personalized and general messages that resonate with the wider audience. These messages were pooled from aggregate and user-specific data to create unique user experiences.

On digital platforms, we also see the music platform utilize user data and its Spotify Wrapped feature to promote user sharing across multiple platforms.

Another example of cross-channel marketing is Amazon's use of user data across its owned platforms to drive sales on Amazon Prime Day.