Increase your brand’s average order value with cross-channel marketing
Published on March 14, 2024
Sarah Kelly
In the evolving landscape of enterprise retail, where success is gauged by metrics that truly matter, average order value (AOV) often takes center stage. AOV measures the average amount a customer spends per transaction and gives valuable insight into how well a brand is maximizing its revenue potential.
But in a time when marketing is no longer bound by individual channels, boosting your brand’s AOV demands a fresh perspective.
A cross-channel marketing strategy has the potential to reshape not only your outreach efforts but also your bottom line. This article explores how a cross-channel approach can help grow your AOV while fostering deeper connections with your audience.
The evolution of marketing channels
In the not-so-distant past, marketing efforts were often confined to individual channels, each with a distinct set of strategies, goals, and metrics. Television, radio, print, and later, digital platforms all had their separate roles in reaching consumers. As consumer behavior evolved and technology advanced, a shift began to take shape toward a more cohesive and interconnected approach to marketing.
Enter cross-channel marketing. This evolution from isolated channels to integrated cross-channel strategies opened up new avenues for brands to engage their audiences more holistically.
Today, brands can connect with customers through multiple touchpoints, weaving a narrative that resonates across platforms, enhancing the customer experience and overall marketing effectiveness.
Cross-channel marketers earn higher AOV
Research shows that customers who interact with a campaign across three or more channels are more likely to engage with those channels, make a purchase, and spend more per transaction.
Customers who engage in 3+ channels are most likely to spend more with your brand.
In one study that analyzed 2 billion marketing automation campaigns in 2018, the AOV of customers interacting with a single-channel campaign was $58.70. Cross-channel campaigns earned a 13% higher AOV of $66.31.
For enterprise brands with millions of customers, any increase in AOV can be significant for the bottom line.
But what is it about a cross-channel approach that leads to the tendency for customers to spend more?
Personalization across channels
For today’s retail marketer, it’s not just about reaching audiences across multiple channels—it’s about orchestrating a seamless and immersive experience that guides customers toward making a purchase.
Personalization plays a significant role in achieving this goal by creating a cohesive and tailored experience at every touch point.
For example, a customer visits your website and adds a pair of jeans and a t-shirt to their cart. They leave without purchasing and later receive an email suggesting a statement necklace to complete their outfit. The next day, while browsing your app, they receive a personalized in-app message featuring a limited-time offer on a premium version of the jeans in their cart.
Showing your customers you understand their preferences and needs by delivering relevant recommendations and offers based on their behavior across channels enhances their overall shopping experience and leads to higher AOV.
A seamless shopping experience
Modern consumers rarely engage with brands through a single channel. Instead, they seek interactions across various touchpoints and expect a seamless experience as they transition from one channel to another. Having a cross-channel strategy in place ensures continuity and consistency as consumers move along the buyer journey.
Your audience should perceive your brand as a unified entity, regardless of where, when, and how they interact. A customer who discovers a product on social media, explores its features on your website, receives an email highlighting its benefits, and then receives a personalized recommendation on a mobile app is more likely to instill a sense of trust and familiarity with your brand.
This consistent multi-touchpoint engagement and smooth transitioning of messaging across channels facilitates a journey where customers feel understood, valued, and guided toward making purchases. The synergy between channels creates an environment where customers can easily explore and consider multiple offerings, often resulting in an increase in AOV.
Strengthened emotional connection
Providing a holistic and personalized brand experience that resonates with your audience paves the way for lasting emotional connections. When customers feel you understand and respect their preferences all the way from discovery to post-purchase, they develop a sense of trust in your brand.
These consistently positive experiences help create repeat, loyal customers who are willing to explore additional offerings and take you up on tailored recommendations. Is it any surprise, then, that these loyal customers tend to spend more per transaction? Loyal customers are more receptive to personalized product recommendations, resulting in more cross-selling opportunities and higher AOV.
Repeat customers mean more purchasing and browsing data for your brand to trigger even more relevant offers. What you end up with is a positive feedback loop: Personalized recommendations lead to higher AOV for loyal customers, which, in turn, refines the recommendations further and fosters loyalty even more.
Accelerate your cross-channel campaigns
When 90% of consumers today want a seamless experience across different devices and platforms, leveraging a cross-channel marketing approach is a must for modern brands.
However, the success of your strategy lies in the capabilities of your cross-channel tech stack.
Many solutions enable marketers to create campaigns in multiple channels, but doing so typically means building the campaign for one channel at a time and using different UIs for each. With a true cross-channel messaging platform, you can build one single campaign and choose the channels all within the same UI. This flexibility can be a huge advantage for your marketing team.
Fully in-sync sends
For many marketers, cross-channel messaging can feel like untangling a web. You have an awesome campaign ready to go, but you don’t want to bombard everyone with the same message across every channel. So, you have to make decisions about who gets what and where.
From there, you need to divide your audience into separate lists and upload them to each channel’s building platform. And maybe you want some people to get both an email and a push. Now you need to duplicate those contacts across multiple lists.
With a cross-channel platform, however, you don’t need to manually figure out who is getting an email versus push or SMS since you are building for each channel within the same campaign.
Save valuable time and effort
With traditional methods, segmenting audiences for different messages across various channels could take days, if not weeks. Cross-channel platforms automate this process, segmenting individuals based on behaviors and preferences in real time.
This means marketers spend less time switching between multiple systems, creating copies of data, and dividing various versions of mailing lists. The outcome? Fewer manual headaches and a lot more time to prioritize strategy and creativity, all while having the confidence that cross-channel efforts are running smoothly and efficiently.
To learn more about how a data activation and engagement platform like MessageGears is the time-saver every enterprise marketer needs, book a demo with our team of experts.