The right message at the right moment can deeply engage consumers, improving their relationship with your brand and leading to greater loyalty and customer lifetime value (CLV). But how can you leverage your cross-channel marketing to win and keep consumers’ attention when they face an avalanche of brand messages? Consumers ultimately want to be known by the brands they shop with, and you can satisfy their needs with the right technology.

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Here are four ways to improve your cross-channel marketing engagement.

1. Use all of your data

In Cordial’s recent customer engagement study, 81% of consumers agreed that they’re more likely to buy from stores and brands that communicate with them in personal, relevant ways.

Marketers have a huge amount of data available. But if they can’t access it and activate it in real-time, they can’t use it to send better messages. For too long, data migration has frightened marketers away from simplifying their data experience. Many martech options have an extended lead time and require IT resources that marketers simply don’t have.

Most marketers’ technology constrains their abilities in many ways, most notably with “legacy solutions” that fail to connect to a marketer’s entire tech stack. Nearly all (91%) of marketers told Cordial they wished it were easier to use real-time data for high-impact marketing campaigns. They also said they struggle with data access and formatting, preventing effective data orchestration, activation and engagement. The time and resources required to overcome these obstacles with last-generation cross-channel marketing platforms prevent many marketers from reaching their personalization goals — or satisfying consumer expectations.

2. Drive more automation for 30-50x return on your messages

Right now, brands have smaller teams, higher gross margin pressure and greater demands from the CFO to demonstrate the value of their marketing efforts.

Automation backed by a robust customer data platform enables brands to back off generic, promotional messaging and focus on hyper-personalized, cross-channel marketing so their messages reach the right audience at the right moment. The result is higher revenue per thousand messages (RPM), a better customer experience and increased CLV.

And according to McKinsey’s latest personalization study, consumers like targeted messaging from brands. You can set behavioral triggers for almost anything with the right customer engagement platform. Start by incorporating triggers that add value for customers and improve the shopping experience. Some popular triggers include:

• New account welcome and onboarding.
• Cart abandonment and reengagement.
• Back-in-stock alerts.
• Price-drop notifications on products they like.
• Loyalty rewards and opportunities.
• Birthday and holiday greetings.

Marketers who expand their use of triggers see, on average, a 43% increase in average order value (AOV). But when marketers can’t access real-time data — or when that data can’t flow easily from any source into their cross-channel marketing platform, it’s impossible to provide up-to-the-minute recommendations, promotions or other personalized communications.

3. Enhance your first-party data activation

Using the first-party data consumers share with your brand improves your personalization efforts while boosting your bottom line. Consumers increasingly think of their own data as currency. They know brands have it and want to benefit from the data they share. Cordial found that 80% of consumers expect to receive relevant offers after sharing their data with marketers. And 7 in 10 consumers said they would willingly offer a brand more personal information if the data improved their shopping experience.

Brands benefit the most from their first-party data when they use it strategically. Personalization efforts usually drive a 10-15% revenue lift. However, organizations willing to put first-party data at the center of decision-making achieve closer to 25% revenue growth.

4. Expand your channels

The value of personalized messages extends beyond your email marketing strategy. Apps and texting are increasingly important channels to communicate meaningfully with consumers.

Consumers across generations told Cordial they’re shopping through apps more now than a year ago, including using a retailer’s app while shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. And more than 75% of consumers said they prefer shopping on a brand’s mobile app rather than a website.

Texting represents a huge opportunity to reach consumers: 83% of Millennials open a text within 90 seconds of receiving it. But sending a generic or irrelevant message has significant consequences. Most consumers have received text messages from brands, but 75% told Cordial that brands didn’t personalize their messages, and 60% said the messages weren’t helpful or interesting. In addition, about 30% of consumers will opt out of brand texts after receiving two or three generic messages. Personalized messages offer the promise of an experience instead of a mere transaction.

Marketers need streamlined technology 

Improving engagement will require marketers to have better access, activation and orchestration of their data. When marketers can seamlessly — and instantly — use the data consumers freely share, they can send highly relevant communications across multiple channels, connecting to shoppers at the right moment with the right message.

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