Playing to Channel Strength Key to Successful Cross Channel Marketing Part 1
As noted in this recent article, the first step to reaping the benefits of cross channel marketing is to obtain a 360 degree view of customer channel preferences and permissions. In the process, marketers identify and grow the base of customers who desire a fully cross channel relationship with their business – across mobile, email and social media. As a segment, this is a highly engaged audience that represents a business’ most valuable customers.
To call these customers to action most effectively, marketers must develop, orchestrate and measure marketing efforts which span channels. Doing so recognizes that various digital channels serve different customer needs as part of the business/customer relationship lifecycle. Cross channel marketing is a rather breakthrough idea, because it takes this notion a step beyond the mutually exclusive targeting of customers within channels. Cross channel marketing instead seeks to utilize each channel’s strength in unison to create a better outcome more efficiently than could otherwise be possible using multiple, disconnected applications and databases.
Mobile Strengths
Text messaging sometimes gets a bad rap relative to more content-rich digital mediums such as email and the web, yet it’s that simplicity which makes SMS the one communication method shared by almost every mobile phone user. The beauty of SMS text messaging is that it meets a marketer’s hurdle for maximum reach, while also offering the opportunity to tailor calls to action on a one to one basis, just as you could with any typical CRM system. Few marketers have seized that opportunity, however.
SMS is also real time and its destination is not an email inbox stuffed with spam or multiple messages to sift through. Instead, text messages are based purely on a highly structured opt in process that makes SMS completely different than email. Moreover, consumers have little choice but to see their messages upon receipt, a timeliness SMS shares with standard telephone communications. Also like phone communications, SMS can be completely interactive, which offers marketers the ability to create highly personalized interactions that, for example, prompt consumers for answers to questions which can in turn trigger unique offers or other calls to action such as directions to a brand’s nearest store.
It is the timeliness and brevity of SMS that makes it ideally suited to registering customers for offer programs, such as coupons and loyalty clubs, where a call to action mentioned in an email, on a billboard, or on in store signage provides the context for the business/consumer relationship. SMS is the digital glue that connects consumers to the business relationship.
Continued on the next page
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