cross-channel Archives - Page 2 of 5 - Social Email Marketing

People use social media. Companies as well. Increasingly. Those are facts. Despite discussions concerning the ROI of social media marketing and many questions regarding the how, what and when, it remains a fact that social media marketing exists and work, whether we debate it or not. However, social media marketing is an extremely broad concept. For example, there is an enormous difference between the using social bookmarking for SEO purposes, customer service via social media and social CRM, to name just a few. Time to look at it in another way!

Social media marketing is an umbrella concept, something that entails many forms of interaction, media and marketing. However it is not an isolated island in itself. If people today combine various channels to inform themselves and interact, it is logical that we as companies and marketers should also do this.

Cross-channel marketing is a matter of customer-centricity and requires a very fundamental knowledge of customers, prospects, fans, etc. which is amongst other reasons what we strive for with social media monitoring.

When talking about cross-channel marketing we often think about digital and social media, while forgetting offline channels and customer interactions. Although a lot is happening online and mobile communications, emerging technologies and social media are very hot (and important) topics, cross-channel marketing and its challenges are not new.

In 2005, the MIT Center for eBusiness published a report, called “The Cross Channel Impact of Marketing Communications”. It showed that the cross-channel impact of marketing campaigns and programs was already a hot topic then, among others, because of the Internet.

All online channels, as they existed then, formed a challenge for cross-channel marketing and for a global and holistic look regarding the identification of the sources where customers and prospects came from and how their buying journey developed throughout all possible interactions.