Looking to find new ways to connect and engage with your customers? According to a recent Braze study, cross-channel messaging might just be the trick. Braze found that brands that used cross-channel messaging saw as much as an 844% lift in engagement vs. no messages. But cross-channel doesn’t just mean mobile—moving your messaging across platforms can be just as important.

If you feel boxed in by all you’re already doing with in-app messages or mobile push, web messaging tools like web push and in-browser messages have the potential to open up new horizons for your campaigns

Web messaging gives you opportunities to reach users in new ways and desktop is far from dead. While mobile usage is hot, desktop usage is actually on the rise. According to Bill Magnuson, Braze cofounder and CEOin, “Americans spend 24% of their screen time on computers, and the time people spend on desktops has grown 37% in the last five years.” On top of that, web messaging can also work through mobile browser usage—providing even more chances to communicate with users (or future users) outside of an app.

Magnuson argues that now is the time to embrace web push. Based on the trends we saw with mobile push, early adopters will set the tone and reap the benefits of this emerging channel. He wrote in Forbes, “It’s still possible to convince users to opt in [to mobile push] if you’re strategic and thoughtful, but it’s tougher than it used to be. So brands that encourage their web audiences to enable push notifications now will likely see a higher percentage of them opt in—which will expand the benefits of having web push notifications at all—than brands who try later.”

Pairing web messaging with other channels could be the missing piece you’ve been looking for—so let’s check out these channels and what they can do for your customer engagement efforts.

The Channels

Web Push: Much like push messages associated with apps, web push can make your messages stand out and reach users even when they aren’t on your site. Web push requires an opt-in but allows you to reach users as long as they have a browser open. Only a small number of companies have embraced this channel, so for the time being, your web push will stand out even more.

In-Browser Messages: These can take many different forms but can only be viewed by people who are actively on the site. Unlike web push, in-browser messages don’t require an opt-in. In many ways, these interstitials are better than pop-ups, but they can still impact your search rankings if you aren’t thoughtful about how you use them, particularly on mobile.

Email: Email is a great channel for rich or dynamic content that reaches users on their own time but outside your app or website. It can be great for relationship building, but there is a tremendous risk for your email to be lost amid the torrents of emails, or filed away due to email client algorithms. To give your email the best chance of being read, be sure to use IP warming and other email best practices.

Personalized Web Homepages: Once you’ve collected and integrated customer data (SDK), you can populate personalized web content. Personalized homepages can help create more relevant experiences for your customers, helping them to feel like your brand really knows them.

News Feed Cards: News Feed cards on your site are a great way to show activity and stories that could entice users. If the News Feed is one of the first things users see upon opening the site (or app), it becomes valuable real estate for timely messages or promotions. It’s also a great place to feature social content to establish your brand as an expert or encourage users to follow you on other sites.

The Campaign: New Offering Promotion

Let’s look at a promotional campaign for Enhancify, a beauty product company that is expanding to offer jewelry and accessories through their Stylify product line. While they have some regular users, many only visit the site to buy new products, so it’s important for this campaign to start by driving traffic to the site.

Email: The campaign starts in the morning with a visually appealing image and message to Enhancify users to let them know about the new accessories. A personalized coupon code helps them feel valued by the company and encourages them to visit the site.

Web Push Notification: A web push notification midday can help to catch people browsing elsewhere and encourage them to come to the site to learn about the new product line. This message has more of a sense of urgency and will be a good backup in case the email was lost in the shuffle—but keep in mind it will only work for those users that opted in to web push.

In-Browser Message: The first time users visit the site after the announcement, an in-browser message pops up to show that the Stylify products have a new tab in the menu. This message will stand out, taking over the screen, and will help the customers make the most of their browsing experience..

This full screen approach is best for desktop only, since it would negatively impact mobile Google rankings to have this intrusive interstitial. For mobile, a slider style message is a much less intrusive, yet still impactful option..

Personalized Homepage: While the in-browser message could have been personalized, we thought it would be sleeker without any personalization tokens like name or preferences. Plus, personalization will really come into play on the homepage, where Enhancify will make recommendations about the new product offering based on previous activity.

This also may be a good time for a re-permission campaign around web push because you can highlight the value of staying connected.

News Feed Card: The News Feed has hopefully become a homepage fixture that users are familiar with referencing for updates or new content. The top card for a week will feature the new product offerings and then the new line can regularly shuffled into the cards as part of Enhancify’s ongoing strategy.

The Gist

Web messaging presents so many opportunities, and when you overlay these channels with mobile, you can find plenty of avenues to reach your users. The trick? Finding the balance of breaking through the noise without over-communicating and overwhelming customers. The best advice we can give to avoid this is to simply, put yourself in your users’ shoes. Create campaigns that are thoughtful, responsive, and relevant to create the connections you’re looking for.