Through every phase of the customer journey, you need to think cross-channel. Whether you’re onboarding new customers or reaching out to returning customers, the most successful brands interact with users across the web, email, social media, and more in thoughtful, cohesive ways. And if you need any more convincing, the data shows that cross-channel campaigns can increase engagement by more than 800%!

You’ll be happy to learn that driving effective cross-channel engagement isn’t rocket science. In fact with the right data, technology, and teamwork, the sky’s the limit. So let’s explore three simple ways you can get started using cross-channel strategies to drive better customer experiences and outcomes.

1. Welcome Customers Effectively with Cross-Channel Onboarding

While acquiring new customers is an important priority for any business, many companies aren’t nearly as focused on holding onto those customers once they’re acquired. One of the best ways to turn a new customer into a long-time one is through a thoughtful cross-channel onboarding flow.

Imagine that a new customer has just downloaded the app for UponVoyage, our (fictional) travel platform. Once they open the app, we can greet them effectively by triggering a scrolling in-app message that instructs them how to turn on push notifications for future travel updates. Customers who do opt into one of these channels will receive an a push confirming that they’ve opted in and walking through how the channels will be used to keep them informed; customers who don’t can be targeted for an unobtrusive Content Card that will nudge them to opt in for notifications the next time they open the app.

If you’re trying to deliver a similarly cross-channel experience, explore Braze Canvas. Canvas lets you visualize the customer experience from beginning to end—making it possible to deliver campaigns that feel seamless across the whole customer lifecycle.

2. Keep Users Coming Back with Cross-Channel Activity Messaging

Once you’ve effectively onboarded new customers, it’s time to reach out so that they keep engaging. While some users will be highly engaged from the very beginning, that won’t necessarily be the case for every customer—and leveraging cross-channel campaigns can be a powerful way to boost engagement.

What does that look like? Let’s imagine that our (also fictional) streaming brand Movie Canon is looking to nudge their less-engaged users to come back to the app to watch new content. They can use an eye-catching, urgent channel like push notifications to pique users’ interest and then follow-up with an email providing more information about the content they’d teased in the initial message, giving new customers more reason to come back and log a session.

3. Win Back Lapsing Customers with Cross-Channel Re-Engagement

Are you trying to re-engage customers who haven’t visited your app or website in a while? Then you might want to use segmentation to target lapsing customers based on when they last engaged with your messages or visited one of your digital platforms. Reaching out to them outside of your site—over email, for instance—is a great way to win them back through the channel they prefer.

Imagine that your (fictional) fitness app Steppington was looking for ways to nudge people who hadn’t logged a workout in two weeks to come back to the app. You could segment that audience of lapsing users by location and use dynamic content to send an email campaign to people in areas with nice weather urging them to go outside and exercise. Then, once they opened your app, you could trigger an in-app message that refreshed them on how to log a session—and offer them an exclusive discount on Steppington athleisure if they log a second workout this week.

By using segmentation to drive targeted messaging, you’re making it possible to reach customers in a personalized way. And if you want to give your campaign an extra kick, use dynamic segmentation to make sure you’re segmenting by up-to-date, highly relevant data.

Anything Else?

Before you can send powerful, cross-channel campaigns, you need the right strategy and the right technology at your disposal. To learn more about how cross-channel engagement can support better customer engagement outcomes, check out our Cross-Channel Data Report.