Posted by: ClickZ
Posted on: 5/14/2019
In the early days of digital marketing, the key to connecting with prospective customers was getting a message in front of as wide an audience as possible. But the days of flashing banner ads have become museum-worthy. In our new digital landscape, irrelevant messages are easily and regularly ignored, blocked, and deleted.
Research shows that consumers are more responsive to better, more relevant experiences. The more information they give to brands—from email addresses to purchase history—the more consumers expect brands to integrate that information into personalized experiences.
According to a recent study by Salesforce, 84% of consumers say that being “treated like a person, not a number” is very important to earning their business.
[Graph from Salesforce report]
And part of building those human connections is offering personalized, multichannel experiences that offer value, deliver relevance, and make an impact in real time. This approach ultimately leads to increased revenue, retention, and return on investment.
Here’s how taking a consolidated approach to your marketing campaigns can increase ROI no matter what the metric.
Content produced in collaboration with Swrve.
How much does a multichannel marketing strategy improve revenue, retention, and conversions across campaigns?
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Revenue: 15-35% increase from multichannel marketing
Not too long ago, I wanted a dress that was a teeny bit out of my price range. The first time I saw it was through a targeted ad on Facebook, and then it appeared as sponsored content on Instagram.
Eventually, I visited the brand’s website (okay, I visited it multiple times). I googled the name of the dress to see how fashionistas were styling it in magazines, which led me to the brand’s blog. Finally, I decided to just take the plunge and buy it—only to find that a bunch of other customers had the same idea. So I gave my email address and waited.
When I got an email saying it was back in stock, I pounced. About two months after I decided my life wouldn’t be complete without this dress, I owned it.
My dress stalking may sound excessive, but the widely accepted marketing “rule of seven” states that the average customer takes seven touches to convert to a sale.
And while I was obsessing over this dress, I reached out to the brand on multiple devices across many different channels. And the fact that my experience with the brand remained consistent from click to click probably made all the difference in my decision to purchase.
According to research from Swrve, an integrated multichannel marketing program can deliver revenue uplift in the range of 15%-35%.
Whether you measure revenue in terms of in-app purchases (processed by the relevant app store), via financial transactions directly with the business, or simply by an increased number of regular visitors to product or service, seamlessly appealing to customers at multiple points in their online journey is the best way to reach customers with your message—and make sure that message sticks.
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Retention: 46% increase in app retention rates
But earning a new customer is only half the battle. While lead generation is incredibly important, making sure those leads not only become customers but become loyal customers is more crucial than ever before. And unfortunately, customers can be a bit fickle.
For example, 25% of all app installs use the app once and never again. Poor retention is effectively the equivalent of burning 25%, 50%, or, in some cases, even 80% of your acquisition spend.
So, what’s the best way to make sure leads that become customers stay customers? Integrating campaigns from onboarding to purchase creates a unified experience that helps keep brands top-of-mind for new and seasoned audiences alike.
Case in point, when a major global publisher wanted to improve their app’s onboarding process in order to increase retention rates, it partnered with Swrve to redesign and test opt-in screens, along with an integrated program of push, in-app and email campaigns designed to drive ongoing engagement in the crucial first few days since install. The result? A 46% increase in retention rates over the course of the project.
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Conversion: a 49% increase in conversion rates from free trial to subscription
For many decision makers within organizations, conversion is the only metric that matters. That sponsored post got 20k likes? Great. Now, how many sales?
And while it can sometimes be difficult for marketers to get decision makers outside their department on board with spending big bucks on campaigns based on some other key metrics, showing them dollar signs is generally a pretty good way to get them on board.
Luckily, the same integrated, multichannel approach that works for other KPIs. It generally also leads to an uptick in sales, a 20%-50% uptick, according to the experts at Swrve.
One industry where conversions matter more than ever before is the media industry. Swrve recently worked with a global magazine publisher that needed help converting free trial users to actual subscribers. To turn those try-and-see types into paid readers, the company launched a large-scale program that built on user actions and behaviors during the free trial.
Rather than delivering a simple one-size-fits-all campaign, an integrated solution based on millions of individual interactions focused on the user’s specific interests ensured that each touch with the company was tailored to the individual user. During that highly personalized campaign, conversion rates from free trial to subscription rose by a full 49%.
To learn more about how an integrated, multi-channel marketing campaign can boost your ROI, check out Swrve’s white paper, “Time Is Money: Your Path to ROI in Today’s Multichannel World.”
The post How does a multichannel marketing strategy improve revenue, retention, and conversion? appeared first on ClickZ.