George Hollister
In a recent blog post titled Our Many New Phones, Chris Brogan laments the number of locations that he checks for messages each morning and asks the question “Have we really improved the world?” Chris checks email, Twitter, web sites, blogs, etc.—a total of 13 locations daily. Not long ago, there were only three options—mail, phone, and face to face.
My initial reaction was that Chris is an extreme case (and he is!), but I quickly counted 10 for myself (3 email accounts, Facebook, LinkedIn, SMS/Text, Voicemail, Twitter, Google Voice, and face to face) and suspect that most of us have five or more.
That prompted me to think about the impact that diverse set of communication options has on companies trying to talk with me. And with you.
What does your communications landscape look like?
Multichannel marketing campaigns need to be increasingly sophisticated to be effective in this ever increasingly complex communications environment. Customer segmentation and lead generation programs need to be crafted to account for channel preferences. Marketing analytics must be backed by customer data integration processes that bring together both online and offline channel activities.
Additionally, web analytics need to be integrated with other direct marketing data. Digital marketing and direct marketing need to be driven from the same marketing database and customer acquisition and customer retention activities need to be tied together into a cohesive approach to customer loyalty management.
Currently, most organizations manage this marketing mix through a complex combination of departments, agencies, vendors, and internal teams, often with mixed results. But as this category matures, a new breed of tools are emerging that allow for the mechanics to be simplified and for the communications flow to be altered on the fly, based on online and offline actions taken by the individual.
The market will continue to invent new ways to communicate and, therefore, new channels for marketers to master. The flexibility of a multi-channel tool to adapt to new channels will be a key factor in the success or failure of marketing initiatives as the communications landscape continues to evolve.
Resources:
Image: LandscapeDesigns.net
Our Many New Phones (Chris Brogan)
About the Author:
George Hollister is a B2B Practice Leader with SIGMA Marketing Group. Connect with George on or follow him on .
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