4 Steps to Leveraging Integrations for Better Multi-Channel Marketing Campaigns

Did you know that nearly all of your customers (90%) expect consistent interactions with your brand across multiple channels? Moreover, the average customer maintains more than five social media accounts and switches between them with increasing frequency. It’s no wonder that more than half of all companies (51%) are using eight or more channels to reach their customer base.

Ensuring customers get the right message, at the right time, and on the right channel is a coordinated effort that seems to require the precision and dexterity of an Olympic gymnast. And yet, adding a few strategic integrations to your marketing technology stack can make your mission of delivering a seamless customer experience across multiple channels not only doable, but highly rewarding.

Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing

If you are looking for motivation to add more channels to your marketing mix, consider these compelling statistics sourced from recent research:

• 30% is the increase in customer lifetime values a business can expect from customers who use multiple channels to engage with them
• 3X is the increase in effectiveness for marketing campaigns when multiple channels are used
• 50% of marketers who employ a multi-channel approach always hit their financial targets

Challenges of Multi-Channel Marketing

Despite manifold benefits, many marketers have found that deploying a multi-channel marketing strategy is not without its challenges.

• 23% say a lack of time and resources makes multi-channel marketing difficult
• 21% say the absence of a budget to invest in additional marketing tools is a major barrier
• 21% cite a lack of understanding of how to run a multi-channel campaign as a hurdle
• 23% cite a lack of board-level buy-in as their top barrier

The good news is all of these challenges are easily addressed by today’s economical, effective, efficient and automated martech integrations. In fact, securing C-Suite buy-in should be a cinch given that most tools are able to demonstrate a measurable ROI within months, and sometimes weeks, of implementation.

Step 1:  Pre-Integration Prep

Before you begin adding new integrations to your stack to facilitate high-performance multi-channel marketing campaigns, it’s important to query your customers and find out which channels they prefer to use. Consider emailing them a quick survey to gather the intel you need. Coincidentally, this information will also help you make a case for adding more channels if you are experiencing pushback. If you are able to offer an incentive for responses, such as a future discount on products or services, do it. According to Delighted by Qualtrics, a response rate of 20 percent or more will give you a good understanding of the current mindset of all of your customers. Keep your survey, short and simple and ask multiple choice and open-ended questions such as:

A)  Check the box of all media channels you currently use:

• Email                    
• Text                      
• Messaging Aps
• Chat
•  Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Instagram
• Twitter

B)  Please list any other channels you use that are not included above:

Gathering this information will help you discover which channels are worth investing in, as well as how you should prioritize each addition.

Step 2:  Integrate a Data Orchestration Tool

The impact of the quality of your data on campaign performance cannot be overstated. You can integrate a dozen channels and even reach every customer in your Total Addressable Market (TAM), but if you use dirty (more than a month old) or incomplete data, you will fall short of your marketing campaign goals every time.

Adding a good data orchestration tool to your martech stack enables you to equip your campaigns with the best possible chance of succeeding by ensuring that the contact information you use to personalize campaigns is clean, complete and consistent across all connected data sources. In addition to centralizing data access and equipping you with a micro and macro view of all data enterprise-wide, a data orchestration tool offers your campaigns several automated advantages, including the ability to:

• Automate how data is routed and shared across tools and platforms
• Automate the processes of finding and filling in the right data for personalized campaigns
• Automate the process of managing and maintaining superior data quality
• Automate data workflows that reduce each campaign’s manual steps

Step 3: Integrate a Message Orchestration Tool

Ensuring the right message gets to the right person at the right time is the crux of every data-driven account based marketing (ABM) campaign—and the primary objective of a message orchestration tool. Every marketer knows that highly personalized campaigns lead to leaps and bounds in ROI. In fact, companies that use advanced personalization see returns of approximately $20 for every $1 spent. Other exciting campaign personalization statistics include:

• 760% is the average increase in revenue that segmented and personalized email marketing campaigns deliver
• 50% is the amount by which personalized campaigns reduce customer acquisition costs
• 30% is the increase in marketing spend efficiency personalized campaigns provide

With personalized campaigns delivering so much measurable goodness, it’s easy to see why it’s a top priority for every marketer. However, many still struggle with scaling personalized campaigns, which is where a message orchestration tool comes in. These tools integrate seamlessly with your martech stack and automate the process of pulling content that matches each customer’s interests. It then places this personalized content in the right template for each channel your campaigns employ, and then sends it automatically or on-demand. In short, a message orchestration tool is what makes personalized campaigns possible, whether you are sending to one contact or one-hundred-thousand contacts. Other benefits of integrating a message orchestration tool with your martech stack are:

• Ensure customers experience consistent messaging across all channels
• Save money by repurposing content for a variety of channels
• Increase customer engagement by sending messages via their favorite channels

Step 4: Integrate a Customer Journey Orchestration Tool

These days, the customer experience is king, which begs the question, how do you make yours a good one? According to B2B customer research conducted by Temkin Group, there are three components involved in providing a good customer experience:

1. Success:  Was the customer able to accomplish what they wanted to?
2. Effort: How much effort did the customer have to put forth in interacting with your company?
3. Emotion: How did the customer’s experience make them feel?  

Temkin found that, “Emotion actually has a stronger impact on customer loyalty and repeat purchases than either success or effort.” Because customers are humans, they have an inherent desire to be seen, heard and known, which brings us back to the critical role personalization plays in the success of your marketing campaigns. Personalization is how you tangibly demonstrate to customers that you are focused on them, listening intently, and committed to understanding and meeting their needs.

• 55% of marketers say the #1 benefit of personalization is better customer experiences
• 88% of marketers say their biggest goal with personalization is to improve the customer experience
• 80% of customers are more likely to buy from companies that provide personalized experiences

In order to create a seamless, intuitive and personalized buying journey, you need to integrate customer journey orchestration into your current martech set-up. This tool enables you to coordinate the functions of all the connected tools in your martech stack and activate targeted communications across multiple channels in real-time. This allows your customers to have a fluid, consistent and friction-free experience with your brand, regardless of the channels they choose to use in communicating with your company.

In summary, a customer journey orchestration tool is like the maestro in a musical orchestra in that it creates harmony between the diverse array of tools as they each perform their specific functions. It manages the flow of leads, brings simplicity to complex workflows, and empowers you to monitor the performance of campaigns with an ease that can only be equated with the wave of a wand, or conductor’s baton as the case may be.