Surmounting the cross-channel marketing challenge

multichannel

With consumers now looking for a seamless experience across different devices, cross-channel marketing is more important than ever. Marketers face an ongoing challenge to deliver a personalised, effective campaign that yields ROI while also increasing long-term brand loyalty and engagement.

During a recent Criteo Live event in Sydney, discussion commenced among some of Australia’s biggest names in retail, concluding with the fact that the path to purchase is no longer linear as online and offline shopping continue to merge.

To overcome the challenge of transitioning from multiple, disconnected customer journeys to a consistent unified experience across all platforms, there needs to be a shift in not just organisational structure, but in the way companies collect and store data, and the technology they use to make that data useful for campaigns.

Our recent report, that surveyed more than 400 senior marketing professionals across Asia, Australia and New Zealand, found that 75% of respondents said the biggest growth driver over the next 12 to 18 months will be in mobile and cross-device advertising. The customer’s path from first to last click has transformed with the advent of multi-device shopping, particularly with mobile apps, which now make up 57% of retail transactions.

Therefore, getting this right is critical for businesses to stay in the game and keep up with competitors. Here are things to consider in order to overcome the cross-channel marketing challenge:

Data, data, data

It’s not about how much data you have, it’s about how you use it. Data plays a vital role in the success of a marketing campaign. It enables marketers to determine what works and what doesn’t and then tailor campaigns accordingly. If data is not being used effectively, campaigns can quickly become depersonalized, with ROI dropping as a result.

Retailers have huge swathes of market and consumer data, but leveraging it to deliver personalised messages remains a major challenge for 55% of retailers in Asia Pacific, according to our research.

Most retailers still struggle to follow customers in their journey across different devices and channels with only a handful of companies effectively leveraging customer data across platforms. Retailers should be looking into different technologies that can enable them to use customer data and provide an in-depth view of customers’ browsing patterns and behaviours.

Personalisation is critical

According to Criteo research, 2017 is set to be the battle for the customer. Marketers are turning their attention to personalisation with more than four in 10 companies predicted to spend between 40% and 60% of their budget on these types of campaigns.

Creating a personalised cross-channel marketing campaign is no easy task – brands must take the time to identify all the different connection points between the consumer and the company, analyse the different customer journeys and map them out. This will create a richer understanding of each customer experience and also identify any gaps in the process.

The challenge for marketers is to be able to provide a personalised experience across different devices. The future is bright — cross-device technologies can now provide user identification with exact matching, which is the most reliable way to engage consumers across different devices in a consistent way.

Departments need to work together

In order to succeed and create a truly personalised customer experience across all devices, different departments need to work together. This may seem obvious but a lot of brands are still getting this wrong and continue to be heavily siloed.

Businesses must move away from disjointed departments that lack integration and move toward a more unified approach with a common goal. If team members work separately on cross-device marketing campaigns it is impossible to provide a seamless experience for customers.

Pressy Sankaran, ANZ Commercial Director, Criteo