Multichannel Marketing and Customer Engagement

Multichannel Marketing and Customer Engagement

Multichannel marketing is defined by “the practice of interacting with customers using a combination of indirect and direct communication channels – and enabling customers to take action in response – preferably to buy your product or service – using the channel of their choice.”

To be more relevant and effective, campaigns must be better aligned and integrated across all channels. With the increase of available channels today, our customers have greater access to information and more choices when deciding how they want to receive it. Because of this, our customers have the upper hand when it comes to the buying process and it is our job as marketers to become as strategically exposed as possible in these channels.

Gone are the days that we can rely on a one-time direct mail campaign or single billboard on the highways to be a successful attribute to our ROI. Our customers are everywhere, constantly on the move, and through multichannel marketing we are able to be everywhere our customers are.

To put it in perspective, in terms of spend, multichannel customers spend three to four times more than single-channel customers do. *

We now have the ability to reach more customers than ever before, and as the number of channels continues to rise, the need to embrace multichannel marketing will become not only a good idea, but a critical one. Having an expectation that customers will change their channel of choice is not realistic. That is why executing a consistent message with a fluid tone, across multiple channels, is imperative to success.

Being present across multiple channels is just the first step. Now that we’ve been given a voice we need to speak to our intended audience in a way they will connect with and want to respond to. Due to people having access to so many ways of collecting information, delivering the right message to the right audience is no longer enough. By remaining consistent and having a presence across all channels, we are building relationships. Our customers must be attentive, receptive, and willing to act – regardless of the channel.

Three steps to getting multichannel marketing right:

1. Create and maintain a single view of the customer across all channels
   • Customers change and it’s important for your messaging to change along with them. It’s not just the initial data you obtain on your customers that’s important, it’s making sure it constantly evolves and then what you do with it.
2. Establish a multichannel marketing platform
   • This allows you to house campaign management, analytics and execution of the campaign in one viewable space, saving on time, and resources while increasing effectiveness.
3. Create consistent customer experience across all channels
   • Customer experience and consistency is one of the most powerful competitive differentiators. If you treat each channel as an individual entity, you run the risk of turning customers against you if you fail to deliver consistency.

In the most simplistic terms, multichannel marketing is all about choice and accessibility for the customer.

*Larisa Bedgood, “Did You Know Multi-Channel Customers Spend 3-4 Times More? Here’s 6 Ways to Get on Board”, Datamentors.com, 11/20/2015