Multichannel Marketing

In today’s marketing environment, more and more marketing and advertising firms are stressing an integrated marketing approach, combining both more traditional and proven core offline marketing activities with the seemingly uncoordinated, unproven online marketing capabilities that offer high potential and unprecedented reach. It is no longer possible to keep the metrics of these separate and distinct, thus beginning a “new era” of integrated online-offline analytics.

Akin Arikan, author of the Multichannel Marketing book and blog, goes on to define what he calls on-site off-site integrated marketing approach as “the ability to nit your web site, email marketing, SEM, display advertising, etc. so closely together that they work together as one intelligent organism rather than silo’d, uncoordinated online channels.” Akin goes on to point to the areas in which this integration seems to just be starting:

·         Behavior triggered, personalized email marketing with relevant promotions and varying landing pages

·         Behavioral Ad Targeting based on purchase behavior

·         Ad server – Web Analytics integrations with reverse path analysis of the ad exposure of visitors

·         Search-integration that combines web analytics with bid management and search metrics

Funny that “traditional” now applies to inbound web marketing, but Akin makes a case towards a move within web marketing to this “outbound, off-site integration.” I think the same definition Akin applies to this on-site off-site approach applies to integrating the complete marketing pacakage.

With the recession taking a bite out of the marketing budget for many companies, the focus is on quantifiable results, and companies can chose the cost-effectiveness of online campaigns or the cornerstone traditional campaigns that have achieved results in the past. Combining the two, however, can not only diversify the risk of ad spending but also lend to a seamless brand integration across channels. Now, more than ever, are cross-channel analytics so imperative.