In this guest post, David York, CEO of marketing apps firm SureShot and marketing automation guru, says having a cross-channel marketing strategy need not be one huge headache for you and an even bigger one for your customers. And to prove it he offers seven surefire tips to get you there…

Being a cross-channel marketing mogul is a lot like being an air-traffic controller. If you manage all your moving parts well, your audience will relax and enjoy the ride. But, if you don’t plan your audience journey you may sustain a serious loss of prospects and customers.

To ensure your campaigns don’t crash and burn, we’ve assembled seven simple cross-channel rules that will keep your campaigns and customer relationships flying high.

• Rule #1: Respect Customer Preferences:  There are certain rules that apply to all relationships, including business and customer relationships. Customers are people and people have unique needs and wants. If you want to stay in a relationship with them, you need to know and respect their preferences, such as how often they want to communicate with you and through what channels – email, text, phone, etc.
• Rule #2: Delegate and Automate: However, you’re not just a marketer, you’re a person, too, and keeping up with the individual likes and dislikes of one person is exhausting, let alone a customer base of thousands of people. The good news is we live in an age where technology makes it easy for us to be personal and attentive to an endless stream of customers. Enter cross-channel marketing automation.
• Rule #3: Create a Seamless Brand Experience: Cross-channel marketing is simply creating a seamless customer experience by ensuring your marketing campaigns are integrated across all channels. Instead of hosting a stand-alone campaign for each channel, cross-channel allows customers to switch between the channels they like and experience your brand as a whole, not as several disjointed or repetitive campaigns.
• Rule #4: Leverage Big Data:  When you create a cross-channel marketing campaign, all channels you use to communicate with customers are united via a central platform, providing you with an all access pass to rich and wonderful data (AKA Big Data). This data not only gives you amazing visibility into your customers’ experiences, it allows you to see trends, behavior patterns and areas that need attention. It also empowers you to take action in real-time and move quickly to capitalise on unique opportunities.
• Rule #5: Deliver Relevant Content:  So where does automation come into play? Automation basically takes the complexity out of creating a marketing campaign that provides personalised information to customers via the channel of their choosing. By using a software platform to automate your campaigns, you can ensure you address customers with content that’s relevant to their place in the sales cycle.
• Rule #6: Develop Mutually Rewarding Relationship: The great thing about automating the cross-channel process is that you create a natural progression for prospects and customers that speaks to them in the place where they are, without being annoying, invasive or repetitive. You relate to them based on their behavior towards you, which enables them to feel as though they are in a relationship with a company that is listening to them and respecting their needs and wants. In short, this is how you build brand trust and loyalty. It’s also how you increase lifetime values for each customer.

Example of Actual Automated Cross-Channel Campaign

Campaign Goal: Generate leads for cross-channel marketing apps

Step 1: Look at data from web visits and develop an eBook that highlights use cases and tips for the most popular apps

Step 2: Write a guest blog post on a site frequented by the target audience

Step 3: Send emails to existing leads and contacts inviting them to download the eBook

Step 4: Send an MMS message to everyone who downloads the eBook that invites them to an event

Step 5: Mail a postcard to responders attending the event

Step 6: Send a reminder SMS message the day of the event

To experience how this campaign works, click here.

• Rule #7: Never be afraid to seek professional help: For more information download, Visions From the Future of Marketing Automation: An Explorer’s Guide to Cross-Channel Marketing today. This report covers a host of use cases and best practices for a variety of apps that integrate seamlessly with your platform, including: SMS and MMS, calling and voice-messaging, payment and geo-targeting, direct mail and more.

This article originally appeared on B&T’s sister business site www.Which-50.com