7 Tips to Get the Best Out of Your Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign
Are you planning your next marketing campaign? This time, consider combining your channel and creating a multi-channel marketing strategy to boost results even more!
Nowadays, almost all companies have started integrating online and offline marketing channels to increase visibility and generate more leads. Some popular communication channels that you can use for your multi-channel campaign are:
- Physical stores
- Websites
- Blogging
- Text messages
- Social media
- Direct mail
- Billboards
- Newspapers, etc.
You can mix and match the above marketing forms according to your budget or requirements because integrated marketing plans are more flexible and cost-effective. Some marketers focus more on digital marketing channels. But, they should also include offline channels, especially traditional mail.
There are several reasons for direct mail to work. It is personal, emotional, and response-driving. 65% of Australian recipients read every mail piece they get. Also, 81% of Australians open and read snail mail items immediately, proving that people love mail.
Keep reading further to understand what is a multi-channel marketing strategy. We will also discuss ways to boost your campaign performance and increase brand awareness via a multi-channel approach.
What Does Multi-channel Marketing Mean?
Multi-channel marketing is the process of blending several marketing forms to reach out to more people and drive sales. It helps marketers conduct numerous marketing activities simultaneously.
The idea is to give customers a choice—to respond to the brand’s offers. For example, you may conduct an integrated campaign including email and direct mail. Thus, your target audience has a choice to reply either via mail or email.
Why Is Multi-channel Marketing Important?
The concept of hybrid channels and multi-channel marketing is pretty straightforward—become visible wherever your prospects are present. With the growing number of marketing channels, customers have more control over their buying decisions as they have more options now.
Let’s imagine a scenario wherein your prospects are hyperactive on Facebook. Now, if you do not advertise on this channel, you may never be able to get in touch with them. Your potential customers might encounter several ads by other brands—your competitors. Thus, it is easy to lose customers to your competition by not being present on a channel that your target audience uses.
The same goes for every other marketing channel. Customers are everywhere. And you can increase your odds of getting more conversions by reaching out to as many of them as possible. Thus, multi-channel marketing is becoming more of a necessity than an option, making it highly significant.
Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing Strategies
Adopting a multi-channel approach lets marketers customise their plans according to their current goals. For instance, imagine they want to target a specific locality to promote their new store. In this case, they can opt for newspaper marketing, direct mail, and geotargeting. Similarly, they can choose to conduct an Instagram and Facebook campaign to target social media users of a specific age group.
The point is that multi-channel marketing is ideal for all companies, irrespective of their size and industry. Thus, the benefits of a multi-channel marketing system are universal. However, there are several more advantages that it offers apart from universality and customisation, like:
Get More Attention
Typically, brands active on more than one channel get more attention. Customers remember a business when they see it everywhere and tend to buy from it at some point in time.
Increase the Number of Touchpoints
Brands need to connect with prospects at least eight times before they convert them, and multi-channel marketing can help you do exactly that. Remember, the more touchpoints you use, the higher are your chances of generating sales.
Connect With Your Prospects Via Their Preferred Channels
Using multi-channel marketing, you can communicate with prospects on a channel they like. Thus, you can ensure that you don’t leave any stone unturned and miss out on valuable customers.
Improve Your Marketing ROI
50% of marketers who conduct a multi-channel marketing campaign are able to meet their financial goals. Hence, it is evident that this marketing method accelerates your campaign performance and helps you get a positive ROI.
Retain More Customers
Some marketers forget that customer retention is equally crucial as customer acquisition. Luckily, integrated marketing campaigns help companies attract more leads and re-engage existing customers altogether.
Challenges of Using a Multi-Channel Approach Towards Marketing
It is not a simple task to plan and execute a vast multi-channel marketing campaign, but it’s worth it. Marketers need to know about the challenges to make an informed decision. Knowing the potential problems beforehand also helps them prepare in advance. Let’s see what the challenges are and how to overcome them:
Complicated Management
As said above, running a successful integrated campaign is not an overnight task. It takes weeks of your time and effort—to plan every detail in-depth and launch a campaign that guarantees results. The key is automation; you can automate most of your marketing tasks and cut manual effort dramatically. Also, often, automation helps you save a lot of money.
For example, using PostGrid for direct mail automation allows you to execute highly-efficient and productive campaigns affordably. Click here to know more about how PostGrid helps marketing teams achieve their goals.
Targeting and Personalisation
Using multi-channel marketing to reach your audience is no longer enough—thanks to the ever-increasing competition. Thus, you need to target the right people and deliver personalised messages to them. Generic marketing can help you increase your awareness to some extent; personalised marketing is what gets people to respond to you.
Marketing Attribution
You may find it confusing to select the ideal mix of marketing channels to appeal to your prospects. After all, there are a plethora of options available—each having its own pros and cons. Thus, sometimes, marketers cannot find the correct formula to conduct a successful multi-channel campaign and end up not getting the desired results. So, what can you do to solve this issue? The best way to find out which channels work for you is to test them. We will cover more about that in a little bit.
Keeping Up With the Latest Trends
Until a few years back, companies were working on their Facebook ads and how to optimise this channel. But, soon, they felt the urgency to master other platforms, like Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. They need to upgrade their knowledge and update their plans constantly. Thus, multi-channel marketing needs marketers to do a lot of research and devise strategies around trending marketing channels.
7 Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Multi-Channel Marketing Plans
Below are some most popular and effective ways to make your multi-channel campaign a huge success:
Understand Your Customer Persona
Knowing who to target is the first step while planning a multi-channel marketing campaign. Try to identify and list the common characteristics of your audience to define customer persona accurately. You can find the answers to the following questions to do so:
- Where do most of my existing customers reside? Are there any customer-dense neighbourhoods in particular?
- What is the age of my customers? Is it possible to club them into specific age groups?
- Do my prospects have a similar taste in (your product or service type)? What are some more preferences or buying habits that are common among them?
- How well does my audience respond to my messages?
- Is there a pattern in the buying process of my customers? For example, some companies witness high sales levels in spring, whereas others get more engagement during the holidays.
Follow-Up On Every Response
You may get hundreds of replies from every channel under your multi-channel campaign. And sometimes, keeping track and following up on each of them is overwhelming. However, you cannot afford to miss out on any respondents as they may turn out to be genuine, valuable, and long-term customers.
Also, not getting in touch with your campaign respondents may present your brand in a negative light and tarnish your reputation. These unattended respondents might feel ignored and buy from your competitors. Hence, develop a robust follow-up mechanism that pays adequate attention to every respondent, solves their queries, and takes them ahead of their customer journey. Only then can you fulfil the purpose of your campaign, recover campaign costs, and generate impressive results.
Measure Campaign Results and Draw Up Precise Reports
A multi-channel marketing strategy involves the execution of several types of campaigns, often at the same time. However, don’t let this stop you from keeping an eye on every channel accurately. Just like you need to pay heed to every respondent, you also need to ensure that you utilise every channel properly.
Thus, measure your multi-channel campaign results as soon as you can to make the necessary changes on time. Also, it helps you draft reports and analytics helpful in shaping your future campaigns and assuring better results.
PostGrid’s direct mail API enables you to access timely campaign insights and reports to keep you informed.
Employ a Multi-Channel Marketing Platform
Now that you know what is a multi-channel strategy- consider leveraging an automation platform to help you with it. Such a platform can help you complete tasks like launching campaigns, tracking performance, sending automated messages to respondents, automatic sales manager assignments, etc.
It can also help you save a lot of time and effort, which are also significant assets for a company. For instance, PostGrid helps businesses automate their offline mailing campaigns and allows them to focus on other operational areas of their company.
Select the Right Combination of Marketing Channels
As said earlier, choosing the right marketing channel combination is a must. A channel may work great for one company but lead to opposite results for another. Thus, you must test a specific set of channels and check if they work for your brand. If yes, you can go ahead with them. But, if they don’t, you would have saved yourselves tons of effort and investment.
Multi-channel marketing can be tricky, but proper testing can help you significantly. Start with small samples and move ahead based on the conclusions. The popular combinations are:
- Newspaper, direct mail, and digital marketing
- Direct mail and email marketing
- Email, social media, billboards, direct mail advertising
- Direct mail, email, social media marketing, etc.
You can create your own set of channels after testing and gaining knowledge of your audience. However, ensure that you integrate offline and online channels both, and preferably include direct mail. With excellent results that supersede other platforms and an ROI of 29%, it is naturally hard to say no to snail mail.
You may integrate direct mail with your online channels via the use of:
- QR codes
- Personalised URLs
- Redeemable coupon codes
- Hashtags, etc.
Choose An Appealing Artwork and Copy
No matter which channel you choose, marketing campaigns always need design and copy. You must try to use consistent artwork throughout your multi-channel marketing campaign to increase brand recognition.
Use a copy that best describes your products and services and compels readers to take action. Try to excite them about your business and get them on board immediately. The best technique is to open with a confident and head-turning line. It should either be a question about the reader’s needs or a bold statement offering a solution.
There are several design elements you need to focus on for the success of your multi-channel campaign, like layout, colours, imagery, etc. Ensure that these aspects match your campaign objectives and can drive responses. You can use the same copy and design across all channels, but don’t make them too monotonous. Your content should be consistent; it doesn’t have to be the same.
Select an Actionable Offer and CTA
40% of your multi-channel marketing campaign’s success depends on your offer. Even a simple offer like a 10% discount can make a big difference to your campaign results. Again, remember to add the same offer everywhere to amplify the effect. Also, use an upfront CTA that allows your target audience to move ahead of the sales funnel.
Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign Examples
Although a multi-channel campaign is relative, we have mentioned some top-notch examples below that you can use:
Direct Mail Featuring QR Codes
Combining QR codes with direct mail is one of the most innovative ideas for multi-channel marketing. Printing personalised QR codes on your mail items helps you direct the recipients anywhere you want. From your website and social media pages to the recipient’s abandoned cart, you can teleport your prospects to a page where they are most likely to complete the CTA.
Email and Direct Mail
Most people are sceptical about replying to marketing emails, but you can convince them to do so by running simultaneous direct mail campaigns. This way, people know your brand better and are confident to reply to your offers.
Also Read: Direct Mail Marketing GuideSocial Media Hashtags
Hashtags are one of the trendiest marketing devices in today’s time. You may have noticed several global brands posting online and asking their followers to use a specific hashtag. And not surprisingly, they do! Evidently, you can engage thousands of people online via hashtags, so why not use it as part of your multi-channel marketing campaign?
Furthermore, you can also ask your direct recipients to use a specific hashtag and post pictures of the mail item. This way, you can blend the power of direct mail with the magic of social media.
How Can PostGrid Help You Plan and Launch a Profitable Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign?
PostGrid’s automated direct mail services help you execute effective direct mail marketing campaigns. Just integrate our API with your CRM and get started. Our API is integrable into several popular platforms, like Salesforce, Hubspot, Marketo, Zapier, etc., making it easy for you to conduct multi-channel marketing. Here, we have stated some of our best features that will help you understand how PostGrid works:
- Print and mail fulfilment
- PDF and HTML design templates
- List compilation
- Address verification
- Per-piece tracking
- Analytics and reporting
- Dedicated customer onboarding
- 24 x 7 technical assistance
- API documentation
- Triggered campaigns
- Variety of direct mail formats- postcards, letters, flyers, etc.
- Variable data printing (VDP), etc.
Click here so we can get in touch with you and discuss how you can multiply the results of your multi-channel campaign with direct mail!
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