In a world where customer attention is fragmented across countless digital and physical touchpoints, creating a cohesive brand experience has never been more critical—or more challenging. We’re joined today by Milena Traikovich, a demand generation expert who specializes in transforming chaotic customer interactions into seamless, effective marketing campaigns. With her deep experience in analytics and performance optimization, Milena helps businesses navigate the complexities of cross-channel strategy to nurture high-quality leads and foster lasting brand loyalty.
Many companies struggle with siloed customer data and vague goals. How would you guide a team to define specific, measurable objectives for a new campaign, and what is the first practical step you’d recommend for consolidating data from sources like a CRM and website analytics?
It’s a problem I see all the time—teams aim for something nebulous like “brand awareness” without a clear path to get there. The first thing I do is push them to audit every single touchpoint they currently have, from social media accounts to offline marketing, to truly understand the existing customer journey. From there, we define concrete objectives, like improving conversion rates or deepening brand loyalty, because those measurable goals will guide every subsequent decision. The most critical first step for data consolidation is to aggregate everything into a single customer data platform. You have to physically pull your website analytics, CRM data, purchase history, and engagement metrics into one unified view. Only then can you stop guessing and start building the rich customer profiles needed for true personalization.
Once data is unified, the focus shifts to the customer journey. Could you walk me through how you would use behavioral data, rather than just demographics, to segment an audience and then decide which mix of channels—like email, social media, and digital ads—is most effective?
This is where the real magic begins. Demographics tell you who your customers are, but behavioral data tells you what they do and what they want. Once all your data is in one place, you can segment audiences based on their actions—what they’ve browsed, what they’ve purchased, how they’ve engaged with past campaigns. This allows for precision targeting that prevents you from sending irrelevant communications that just feel like noise. For choosing channels, the data dictates the strategy. We map out the ideal customer journey for each segment and select the channels based on where those specific customers reside and interact. The goal isn’t to be everywhere, but to create an integrated mix of social media, email, and digital ads that meets each customer segment exactly where they are on their path.
Let’s consider a scenario like a customer abandoning a shopping cart. How would you orchestrate and automate a cohesive dialogue using a paid ad and a complementary email campaign? Please share how you would use A/B testing to optimize the messaging for this interaction.
A cart abandonment is a perfect moment for a coordinated, cross-channel response that feels helpful, not haphazard. The key is orchestration through marketing technology. The moment the cart is abandoned, it triggers an automated workflow. The customer might first see a paid retargeting ad on their social feed featuring the exact product they left behind, creating a gentle visual reminder. Shortly after, a complementary email arrives in their inbox—not a separate, disconnected message, but part of the same conversation. For optimization, A/B testing is crucial. We would test different email subject lines to see which one gets the highest open rate, or experiment with different ad creatives and calls-to-action to discover what message most effectively brings that customer back to complete their purchase.
Implementing a strategy requires robust tracking. Beyond standard engagement metrics, which attribution models do you find most effective for understanding how multiple channels truly contribute to a conversion? How does that insight then inform your decisions on where to optimize or reallocate your budget?
Standard engagement metrics are fine, but they don’t tell the whole story. To truly understand performance, you have to implement robust attribution modeling that shows how multiple channels work together to drive a conversion. Last-click attribution is incredibly misleading because it gives 100% of the credit to the final touchpoint, ignoring the email that introduced the brand or the social ad that piqued their interest weeks earlier. By using a more sophisticated model, we can see the entire chain of interactions that led to a sale. This insight is everything when it comes to budgeting. It allows us to identify the high-performing strategies that are genuinely driving value and pinpoint the underperforming channels that are wasting spend, so we can reallocate resources to maximize efficiency and ROI.
Effective post-purchase engagement is key to building loyalty. Can you describe an automated, cross-channel sequence you’ve seen work well, perhaps combining email, push notifications, and a social community, to make a customer feel valued long after their initial transaction?
The post-purchase phase is a massive, often-missed opportunity. A great cross-channel sequence starts immediately with an automated thank-you email, but it doesn’t stop there. We can follow up with helpful product usage tips and an invitation to join an exclusive social media community where they can connect with other users. Then, using their purchase data, we can send a personalized check-in email or use push notifications to alert them to new features or sales relevant to their interests. I’ve even seen a simple, direct mail thank-you note create a powerful, lasting impression. The goal of this sustained engagement is to make the customer feel recognized and valued as an individual, not just a transaction, turning them into a reliable source of repeat business and a powerful advocate for your brand.
Bridging the online-offline data gap is a major hurdle. Could you describe a practical tactic you’ve used, such as tracked coupons or in-store Wi-Fi data, to build a truly unified customer profile? Please elaborate on how that enriched data improved marketing personalization.
Absolutely, this is what separates a basic multichannel approach from a truly advanced omnichannel strategy. A fantastic tactic is using tracked coupon codes. You can send a unique code in a direct mail campaign, and when a customer uses it in your online store, you’ve just connected a physical touchpoint to their digital profile. Another powerful method is leveraging in-store Wi-Fi sign-in data to link a customer’s physical visit to their online account. Once you start enriching profiles with this data, the level of personalization you can achieve is incredible. You suddenly understand their complete journey, both online and off, which allows you to tailor every single message and offer to their holistic experience with your brand.
What is your forecast for cross-channel marketing?
I believe the future of cross-channel marketing lies in a relentless, systematic cycle of insight, integration, and iteration. The technology will undoubtedly get more sophisticated, making automation and data consolidation even more seamless. However, the core principle will remain the same: leveraging that technology to build a deeply personalized and cohesive customer experience. It will be less about simply being present on multiple channels and more about orchestrating a single, unified conversation with the customer across every touchpoint. The brands that master this will be the ones that drive meaningful engagement and foster the kind of lasting brand loyalty that is impossible to replicate.
