The core concept of any marketing campaign is to connect with your target audience and clearly communicate your message.
In today’s world, there tends to be a divide between print and digital techniques.
But as many are now finding out, the two do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Using multi-channel communications is all about finding what options are available and appropriate for your business and using them simultaneously.
Give Your Customer Options
Let’s say for example’s sake you have just sent a print item to your customer via direct mail.
We assume that in one or two weeks, we should follow-up with that customer, right?
But because you have already established contact, you don’t need to send another mailer the second time around.
Instead, send an email as a follow-up.
And just like that, two different channels have been utilized effectively.
As an added bonus, your customer now has a range of options on how and why they should respond to continue their buyer’s journey.
It’s an extremely basic example, but nevertheless, multi-channel communications are about giving the consumer control over how they receive and respond to your messages.
Collation, Consistency, and CMS
We’ll admit, mastering multi-channel communications takes a few more steps than sending an email follow-up to your direct mail piece.
So to start, you want to establish a single, unified view of your customers across every channel you use.
Collate all the information you have so that each channel appears as a natural extension of the next.
This also allows for a deeper level of customization that will attract your customers right off the bat.
Next, you must create a consistent experience across those channels.
You want every e-mail, mobile ad, and letter to look like they are coming from the same company.
Failing to do so will make your business look a little schizophrenic.
And it may confuse your customers.
Lastly, develop your own multi-channel platform to keep track of everything.
A campaign management software can be extremely helpful and give you the ability to execute all aspects of your campaign, whether print or digital, from the same unified workflow.
It will also give you a better view of your campaign to show where edits may be needed based off analytics.
Mulit-channel communications show that it doesn’t have to be print or digital, but that print AND digital is possible and extremely effective.
Don’t play favorites!
Leverage all of your available tools and put your company in a better position to succeed.
