6 Cross-Channel Messaging Campaigns to Build Customer Loyalty With a Retail App

The rise of direct messaging channels has made it possible for retail brands to open up lines of communication with their customers. But while sending messages to your customers can be a powerful way to build relationships and drive business value, it isn’t always easy to know what campaigns will actually move the needle on these key goals.

Thankfully, our Braze Inspiration Guide is packed with dozens of campaign ideas to enhance customer activation, monetization, and retention. Here are some of our favorite cross-channel retail campaigns that can be used across popular app-based channels, like push notifications and in-app messaging, as well as companion channels like email, SMS, and in-browser messaging.

#1: New product campaigns: Harness the power of cross-channel messaging to highlight your company's newest arrivals. Using key in-product channels within your brand's app, such as in-app messages, along with complementary out-of-product channels, such as email campaigns, can boost 30-day retention by 13%.

#2: Rewards and perks campaigns: Use customer data from your app, such as time spent in the app and purchase activity, to create targeted customer segments and personalized messaging that encourages the right users to keep coming back.

Suggested channels for this kind of outreach include in-app messaging, push notifications, and Content Cards—which are targeted, dynamic, and persistent messages designed to live directly within your brand's app, without disrupting the customer experience. Other key channels that can be used as part of a cross-channel approach for fueling engagement with rewards and perks include email, in-browser messaging, and web push notifications.

#3: Order tracker/fulfillment campaigns: Give your shoppers something to look forward to—like updates about their orders via your app's push notifications and also via email, web push, or SMS, depending on your customer's preference center settings. Consider leaning into automation, too: Real-time, API-triggered updates improve engagement by 3.6X compared to time-based notifications.

#4: Loyalty enrollment campaigns: Use multiple channels across your app and out-of-product messaging to encourage loyalty sign-ups to motivate shoppers to keep coming back to your app. Be mindful about the channels you’re leveraging to ensure that you’re getting the maximum impact for your campaigns. A couple channels to consider:

• SMS campaigns boost loyalty program enrollments by more than 2X
• Content Cards boost loyalty program enrollments by at least 5X

#5: Loyalty campaigns: Once you have shoppers signing up for your retail brand's loyalty program, your next task is to keep them active. To do that, you need to demonstrate the value of participating in the program by informing customers of their savings, earnings, and rewards milestones via well-timed in-app messaging and Content Cards within your app as well as via complementary messaging channels, like email.

API-triggered campaigns that are sent right when shoppers take a specific action, such as immediately after they complete a purchase and earn points, leads to a 6.9X uplift in campaign conversion rates, compared to scheduled campaigns, according to our research.

#6: Win-back campaigns: Building loyalty isn't just about keeping active customers engaged. It also requires brands to pay attention to lapsing users and reach out before it's too late. One option we've found can make a difference? Personalized re-engagement campaigns that contain promo codes. These can be deployed via your app using mobile push and via additional channels, such as email, social media, web push, and SMS.

#6: Abandoned intent campaigns: Is your retail app losing shoppers before they successfully complete a transaction or other key action inside your app? Sending follow-ups via in-app messaging and mobile push as well as via channels that are complementary to mobile marketing, such as web push, email, and in-browser messaging, can help you keep these users from leaving and drive stronger results over time.

Using Liquid personalization, which makes it easy to add basic customer details, attributes, and events to tailor campaigns via an open-source templating language, can boost the effectiveness of abandoned intent campaigns by 4.4X.

Final Notes

In order to better activate, monetize, and retain customers, retail brands need to look for new and innovative ways to engage them. Want to uplevel your customer engagement strategy? Check out the Retail Inspiration Guide.