Nuts & Bolts - Multichannel : 4 Tips for Creating the Integrated Marketing Illusion

It turns out Mom may have been right: Don't be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Instead, master one marketing channel and then present customers with the illusion of integration.

That's what 83 percent of top performing companies do, according to a research report released in May by Evanston, Ill.-based market research and advisory services firm Gleanster. "Deep Dive: How Top Performers Rein in the Chaos of Disparate Marketing Data" finds that eight out of 10 of the paper's readers are using two or more marketing technologies, making integration a challenge.

"Top-performing organizations focus integration efforts on one or two core marketing channels, such as email or print," the research reports. "As such, investments in new channels are launched by integration with a core channel."

A company with strong email skills, for instance, may want to use that channel to invite customers to respond with their mobile numbers in connection with a promotion or contest.

Then, companies may want to keep track of all that gathered data through marketing management technologies, which the research terms "back-office marketing infrastructure." CRM tools fall under this definition.

The Gleanster report advises:

• Consider using CRM as a hub for aligning data from disparate marketing technologies. Use these data attributes for improved segmentation and targeting in customer engagement.

• Don't forget about investments in back-office marketing operations technologies. Integrated back-office technologies lead to more efficient production of content for customer engagement channels.

• Top performers focus integration investments on core channels. These are the channels the organization already knows how to measure and likely has relied on for growth.

• Create the illusion of integration through cross-channel campaigns in which a consistent message is orchestrated across multiple marketing channels.

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