BrainTrust Query: Changing Role of the Mobile Marketer in a Cross-Channel World
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from Signal's blog.
As mobile and social media functions establish themselves, they join others such as email in today's multichannel marketing world. The fact all these channels are digital means marketers have a lot of flexibility with respect to the frequency and timing of campaigns and other types of communications.
It is because of this that an alternative view of multichannel marketing is emerging quickly--cross channel marketing.
Cross-channel marketing--whereby marketers execute campaigns in a more unified fashion across channels in consideration of consumer preferences and permissions--is such a new idea that it often requires clarification.
The most-simple explanation is that it is the inverse of a multichannel, siloed approach where plans and actions occur in relative isolation. On the surface, a siloed-approach makes sense because the pace of change and innovation in digital marketing has been such that quickly adding capabilities trumps potentially time-consuming integration considerations.
Before disconnected efforts become too entrenched, marketing leaders should recognize some challenging byproducts of marketing silos:
- Separate people, products, databases and processes, all essentially working to drive desirous consumer behavior effectively compete with one another, to say nothing of inefficiencies.
- Consumers are exposed to some 3,000 marketing messages every day from various sources and different channels, per Symphony/IRI research. This message quagmire drags down the performance of everyone's marketing efforts.
- Consumer adoption of smartphones increases daily and the devices are used for all manner of activities, at any time or place.
Marketing leaders will soon have little choice but to reconcile disconnected marketing efforts.
Some tough choices will have to be made regarding where to place their bets. I suggest the mobile device is becoming the de facto interface between consumers and business. It is on smartphones that digital channels such as text messaging, email, Web and social media come together. Soon every business will need a conductor of sorts to orchestrate customer relationship strategies targeting the mobilized consumer. The mobile marketer could be that person.
Getting started toward mobile-driven, cross-channel marketing requires a step-wise approach that begins to unwind siloed digital marketing efforts.
Two examples of easy-to-implement cross-channel approaches include leveraging the email subscription list to build the mobile subscriber base. E-mail and mobile teams can work together to develop higher response marketing campaigns that take advantage of the best attributes of each channel--email as visual/explanatory, mobile and text as timely, portable and universal.
The other takes advantage of the reach offered by text messaging in line with the viral qualities of social media. Cross-channel campaign management systems optimized for mobile interactions take advantage of the massive reach afforded by text message communications as well as the viral qualities inherent in social media such as Twitter.
Over time the lines may blur, but the mobile experience will increasingly become the primary interface between business and consumer. That is why mobile marketers are so well positioned to bring cross-channel value to their businesses.
Discussion Questions: How should marketing departments resolve the conflicts and integration issues between mobile, social media and e-mail? What do you think of mobile as the unifying force driving marketing optimization across digital channels?