Tips for Mastering Multi-Channel
Communications in Your Campaigns
You can essentially
boil down the goal of any marketing campaign to one impossibly simple core
concept: you're trying to connect to your target audience and communicate a
message in the most natural and organic way possible. In today's modern
environment, marketers tend to fall into two distinct camps: those who are
sticking to the tried-and-true print technique and those who see digital as
the way of the future. The fact of the matter is that these concepts do not
have to be mutually exclusive. Learning how to take all of your available
options and use them in tandem with one another is a large part of what
multi-channel communications are all about.
Let the Customer Discover Your Message on Their Own Terms
For an example of effective multi-channel communication in action, consider
what happens after you send out a print item to a customer using direct
mail. Logic dictates that you should wait a week or two and send a
follow-up message, right? As you've already established contact, that
follow-up doesn't have to come in the form of another mailer sent to the customer's
mailbox. It can easily be an e-mail sent to the address for that customer
you have on file. Suddenly, you've used not one, but two, different
channels effectively, allowing the customer a full range of options
regarding how and why they respond and continue their journey.
That may be simplifying the situation a bit, but the benefit to the
consumer of getting full control over how they're receiving and responding
to your message is what multi-channel communications are all about.
Better Campaigns Mean Better Results
In order to master multi-channel marketing and really put it to good use
for your organization, you'll need to keep a few key things in mind. For
starters, you'll need to establish a single, unified view of your customers
across all channels. Any available piece of information will need to be
collated together, not only so that each channel seems like a natural
extension of the next, but so each channel can allow for the deeper level
of customization that attracts customers in the first place.
Another factor to consider has to do with your organization's ability to
create the most consistent experience possible across all of those channels
at the same time. When a customer gets an e-mail, sees a mobile ad, and
receives a letter in the mail from your campaign, they all need to feel
like they're coming from the same company. One can't be casual, while the
other, stuffy and overly professional. Failure to grasp this basic concept
can result in your organization coming across as a bit schizophrenic.
You'll also need to develop your own in-house multi-channel platform to
help keep track of all of these materials. You'll need things like campaign
management software, for example, giving you the ability to execute all
aspects of a campaign (including both print and digital materials) all from
the same unified workflow. This will also give you a better idea of tweaks
that you can be making to your campaign by way of things like predictive
and actionable analytics.
Multi-channel communication, in general, just goes to show you that print
and digital don't have to be an "either/or" scenario for
marketers. By leveraging all of the tools you have available to you instead
of playing favorites, you'll put you and your team in a much better
position to succeed moving forward.
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