7 Steps to Leverage Customer Data in Your Multichannel Campaign Strategy

The InterACT! conference held last week in Chicago put the spotlight on how consumers are engaging with media in different ways, and the way marketers must adjust their strategies to reach them. The focus continually fell on using data and direct interaction to more effectively target and speak to consumers. Chris Bondy, group director of show co-presenter InfoTrends, suggested that companies scrap campaign-centric strategies in favor of a circular approach to customer interaction that would create a sort of rolling, ever-adapting marketing strategy.

According to Bondy's workflow, out goes the isolated campaign focused on its own media and creative—establish a message, select its media, then pick an audience to send it to. Instead, marketers should select the audience first based on data analytics, determine campaign strategy and how to deploy it, then begin again with the new data generated by that campaign.

Bondy's new marketing mantra is "acquisition, retention and growth." The marketer puts the customer at the center of the dialogue and crafts a marketing campaign in these cyclical steps:

1. Data analytics. Start with regression analysis to gauge what you've done before, who you're targeting and what they want. Bondy suggested that companies who do this well start with analytics to understand as much about that segment as possible.

2. Develop a strategy and define targets for acquisition and customer retention.

3. Design the campaign and choose media and channel with content, constituency and look in mind. According to Bondy, "the strategy in many cases dictates the channel."

4. Deploy the campaign in a data-focused drip that allows you to adjust on the fly. "We don't do rollouts anymore in huge quantities," said Bondy. "Most of the top direct mail folks are always doing a control package and two or three tests against the control."

5. Interact with customers through a real-time dialog using the tools the target audience uses, whether that's Twitter, live chat or a phone call,

6. Track results and collect consumer-specific data.

7. Analyze the results and begin the cycle again with refinements based on the new data.

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