The Vital Role of Email Marketing in a Cross-Channel Customer Experience Strategy

Email marketing has long been one of the most trusted marketing channels for brands. For years, it reigned supreme as a direct line of communication with consumers, offering brands an opportunity to send promotions, reminders and announcements at scale. Today, email remains one of the first conversion points for a brand with consumers who opt to share their email address in exchange for value in the form of exclusive content, breaking news, discounts, rewards and more.

However, maintaining steady email engagement has become more challenging as consumers engage with brands across a growing number of channels and platforms. Email open rates have been dropping precipitously over the last five years and Airship research found that an overwhelming 79% of the consumers ignore or delete marketing emails from brands they’ve subscribed to half the time or more. Waning attention spans, market saturation and information overload have only compounded the problem. 

Needless to say, the role of email marketing has evolved with the rise of cross-channel customer experiences. Here’s what you need to know to give it the right attention in your channel mix:

Understanding Email Marketing’s Unique Strengths

Despite waning open rates, email remains consumers’ preferred communication channel with brands. Why? While push and SMS are delivered on a brand’s terms, email empowers consumers to search for brand communications whenever they want with the right level of detail. This flexibility helps customers reach their goals faster and on their own terms. For this reason, email is a win-win for the brand and its customers.

Email’s longstanding history in marketing campaigns has made it a go-to for critical use cases, including:

1. Onboarding: After a customer signs up for an account on your website or app, introduce your brand and guide them through your offerings with a personalized onboarding series.
2. Post-Purchase Engagement: Deliver order updates, feedback requests or personalized product recommendations after a purchase.
3. Retargeting Campaigns: Remind customers of the items they left behind and offer incentives to complete the purchase.
4. Promotional Campaigns: Announce sales or new product launches, driving traffic to your app,  website or physical store.

The Key to Successful Email Marketing Lies in Cross-Channel Integrations

While email remains a trusted engagement channel, it does have limitations. Push notifications and SMS often have higher opt-in rates, while apps and websites reach 100% of customers. With consumers now flitting between all of these touchpoints, marketers need to reach customers in a way that matches how they consume content today — across channels and destinations. 

Airship’s cross channel customer experience platform can help with that. Our platform empowers brands to create, test and optimize personalized customer experiences across all channels — email, SMS, push notifications and mobile wallet — as well as apps and websites. 

With our cross-channel capabilities, we help our customers tap into the power of email where and when it matters most, while integrating email campaigns seamlessly with other channels. Airship’s in-app Preference Center capabilities enable brands to collect their customers’ preferred communication channels, giving them control over how, when and where they receive messages.

Here are just a few ways you can benefit from integrating email marketing into a broader cross-channel strategy:

1. Scale Personalization & Segmentation

Scaling your cross-channel marketing efforts means you also scale your customer insights. By integrating email marketing into your channel mix, you can tap into data from other channels or your app and website to deliver targeted messages tailored to their unique preferences — or vice versa, leverage data from email to support personalization efforts elsewhere. 

More robust customer insights also empower marketers to get granular with segmentation. You can focus efforts on reaching people who fit the ideal profile as easily and affordably as possible. Good segmentation drives higher engagement across channels and destinations, which results in more conversions and better business results.

2. Guide Customers to Value with Unified Communications

As consumers engage with brands across a growing number of channels, disjointed and disruptive messages with different CTAs across email, SMS, push notifications and even mobile wallet, have become more common. What customers see from you in one channel should be contextually connected with what they see from you in other channels. That’s where orchestrating cross-channel messaging comes into play. By connecting your email marketing with other channels, you can deliver more unified interactions that guide customers to take high-value actions with your brand.

3. Drive App + Web Traffic & Conversions

Building and engaging your app + web customer base is crucial to success. Why? Acquisition costs are on the rise, while referral traffic from social and search platforms is waning. You can combat these challenges by using email, alongside SMS and push notifications, to drive customers to conversion destinations like your mobile app or website. For example, a retailer could send an email to a customer that was recently browsing shoes on their mobile app, offering a limited-time discount on those same shoes to incentivize an in-app purchase. 

4. Capture More Holistic Measurement Insights

Integrating email marketing into your cross-channel strategy also enables you to capture a more comprehensive view of the entire customer experience vs. siloed engagement channels. You can look beyond opens and clicks to obtain detailed views of cross-channel performance and see what content is driving customers to take valuable actions. Email campaigns are also a great playground for A/B testing content across different segments. You can quickly validate the effectiveness of your messaging with audiences and apply these insights to other channels too.

Optimize Your Email Marketing with Airship’s Cross-Channel Customer Experience Platform
According to new research from Airship and EMARKETER, 71.0% of brands are actively taking steps for a more integrated mobile strategy. You should be too. Book a meeting today to learn how we can help you deliver hyper-personalized, cross-channel customer experiences that drive results.