It is more than coordinating across channels that is important to successful marketing campaigns. Customers must be effectively engaged and by actively soliciting their input and preferences marketers can maximize the return of every marketing dollar spent. The errors to avoid continue.
x Controlling the Conversation
Today’s marketer, more than ever, must let the customer control the marketing conversation. By letting the customer choose the channels and content, relevancy will increase and response rates and ROI will follow. This choice can be active or passive. Tracking links on a page is a passive technique while asking a question is an active one.
x Not creating 2-way communications & asking questions
Customers will answer any question you ask. By simply giving tperhe opportunity to easily provide input the quantity and quality of data collected can be staggering. Most customers need a good reason to provide an email or phone number, but they will answer preference questions without hesitation. By using personalization across media we can identify these prospects and assign the feedback to their customer record.
x Not implementing data collection mechanisms
Every contact is an opportunity to learn more about your customer. Always have link tracking, opt-in, quick surveys, and other feedback mechanisms on every touch you make to increase your market intelligence. The wen makes this easy to execute.
x Creating data silos
Assure that internet, CRM, trade show, direct mail, email, SMS-text, social media, broadcast, point of sale, and phone contacts ultimately feed into one database. Even if this process must be done manually, data is data and can be combined. Virtually every system in use has an export feature and managers at every level must make this collection a top priority.
Driving customers to the web and presenting the opportunity to provide input is the first step in creating sophisticated cross channel campaigns. There can be no excuse for not beginning to coordinate marketing efforts, even if the first step is as simple as creating a new landing page that each channel in a project uses to collect data. Even small efforts will rapidly build a powerful house file of warm leads that will provide the best source of revenue.
