Maria Robinson, CMO, Airship
Marketing budgets continue to shrink. According to Gartner, 59% of CMOs report that they have insufficient budget to execute their strategy in 2025. This budget pressure is colliding with intense competition, price sensitivity and soaring customer expectations for hyper-personalised and intelligent experiences. Forrester Research states,“Consumers connect digitally, accessing products and services through a range of devices, channels, and platforms. And they now expect seamless service at their moments of need, often seeking curated and personalized experiences to achieve their goals.”
This challenge is magnified by a fragmented digital landscape and organizational silos. Today’s consumers navigate dozens of channels and expect a seamless, intelligent experience across them all. This fragmentation presents a critical question, especially on a tight budget: How do you deliver unique value on the customer’s channel of choice to build loyalty and growth?
What if the answer to this actually demands an entirely new approach to meeting your customer where they are and with what they are looking for?
Broken customer experiences lead to cart abandonment, and lost loyalty. Generic marketing messages that ignore past purchases or preferences no longer work. Even personalisation based on first name is inadequate; in fact, using only this type of personalisation has an equal chance of decreasing message open rates as it does increasing them. Customer expectations have gone beyond legacy customer experiences that are not engaging or relevant. They expect businesses to recognise them as individuals and tailor interactions to their unique needs, anticipating what they want and delivering it on the right channel, at the right time.
To meet these new expectations, brands must shift their focus from channels to customers, creating personalised and seamless interactions everywhere they engage. This entails anticipating customers’ needs, re-engaging them without creating fatigue, and applying learned insights to future interactions.
Success starts first and foremost with orchestrating a cross-channel strategy that meets the consumer where they are. Backed by a strong and progressive first- and zero-party data strategy, businesses can deliver unique value when and where it matters most\. When done correctly, this approach builds the foundation. This approach transforms tactics to signal-based moments of value that build emotional loyalty, drive measurable growth, and deepen the relationship between brand and customer.
5 Steps to Drive Conversions with Hyper-Personalised Cross-Channel Orchestration
- Identify the customer
Disconnected or repetitive interactions can block progress with customers. The key is to turn anonymous browsers into identified customers early in the relationship—ideally during activation—to drive relevant and personalised experiences
By recognising individuals across channels, brands can break down data silos and gain a more holistic view of the customer across each touchpoint. This enables deeper personalisation and more unified experiences, leading to better experiences and higher ROI for your brand.
- Let customers guide you
In order to build a customer profile, it’s crucial to understand where, when and how often they want to be engaged. Each channel will offer a different experience and advantage, and not every customer will want to receive the same content everywhere.
Use tools like cross-channel preference centres to gather this information directly. These insights allow your brand to interact with customer’s life where and how they prefer. This fosters deeper trust and creates greater mutual value.
- Focus on the goal, not the channel
Once you’ve identified a customer and know where they’re engaged, the next step is to move them toward action. Growth teams must remain flexible in how they map customer journeys. The primary aim is to guide customers seamlessly toward their goal, no matter which channel they use. To do this successfully, weigh channel costs, customer preferences, and recent behavior to create the most efficient path and drive business value more quickly.
- Optimising the end-to-end experience
In a constantly evolving digital landscape, businesses must continuously adapt. To do so, you must understand what works and what doesn’t to reallocate time and resources for the biggest impact.
Optimising for engagement is important, but metrics like open rates and clicks don’t always reveal the quality of an interaction. Go beyond these to measure what truly matters: conversions and long-term loyalty. To get the most value from a smaller spend, rigorously test and optimise every audience segment, journey, feature and message. Treat each interaction as a chance to learn more about your customers and boost valuable outcomes through better personalisation. Experimentation helps identify which channels and strategies extract the most value, reducing wasted time and resources.
- Zero-party data to scale personalisation
The success of any cross-channel strategy depends on unifying experiences at every touchpoint. However, with the decline of third-party data and the fact that 59% of consumers don’t like to share their personal information with brands unless they get something in return, this has become harder than ever. Today, there needs to be a mutual benefit and value exchange for customers and brands.
This is why leading brands are turning to zero-party data—information that customers intentionally and proactively share. By asking customers directly for their interests in exchange for clear value, businesses gain a more accurate view of each individual. The payoff is significant: Twilio found that 54% of consumers spend more when engagement is tailored.
Ultimately, a cross-channel strategy focused on personalisation will not only help businesses navigate a fragmented landscape but will also directly impact growth. By focusing on the customer over the channel and continuously testing your approach, you can drive more intelligent customer experiences that accelerate conversions, loyalty and revenue.