5 good reasons to switch to multi-channel marketing!
In just a few years, with the advent of the internet and its multiple media, your customers' purchasing path has become increasingly complex and diversified.
Consumers seek information on the internet, ask for advice in-store, order via their smartphone and have items delivered to their office... On average, according to ECR France, each consumer uses 2.1 different channels to make their purchases, and 30% of French people use more than three channels.
Your customers are multi-channel, so be multi-channel too! Given these changes in consumer habits, driven by the digital revolution, it is becoming essential for brands to implement a multi-channel marketing strategy.
Although it's highly likely that your media strategy already includes several communication channels, here are 5 key reasons why you should consider diversifying your range of advertising distribution tools even further.
What is multi-channel marketing?
Before going any further, it's important to understand what multi-channel marketing is.
This marketing term refers to the use of a wide variety of communication channels to distribute advertising content. Depending on the audience you wish to reach, the channels used will be different, adapted to the expectations and habits of your target audience, for optimum effectiveness.
The challenge of a multi-channel strategy is to improve the profitability of each channel by using it at the best moment in the buying cycle to meet new customer expectations.
The channels used can be numerous, such as e-mail, the Web, SMS, SMS or Web notification, but also points of sale or the company blog, etc.
As you will have realised, a multi-channel marketing strategy offers a host of advantages, which I'd like to explore in this article.
1: Optimising your data
Positioning yourself as a brand on different communication channels enables you to gather a huge amount of information about customer habits and behaviour. Each channel provides access to different types of information. Using this precious data is a major asset for personalising your advertising campaigns and, as a result, achieving excellent conversion rates.
Thanks to this 360° view of the customer journey, you have complete control over the management of your marketing strategy.
By using a multi-channel marketing solution, you'll be able to collect a wealth of information about your prospects and customers. This functionality, offered by ExpertSender, will help you to create a relationship that is as close as possible to your customers, by individualising exchanges.
The information collected on the different channels is combined to create a virtuous synergy, so that you can send the right message, at the right time, to the right person, via the right channel...
2: Scripting and automating your communications
A multi-channel marketing solution will enable you to put in place a well-crafted and, what's more, automated communication system. Once you have programmed a strategic scenario, the multi-channel marketing tool will take into account the reactions of your prospects in a completely autonomous way so as to adapt to their habits and support them as closely as possible in the customer relationship cycle.
Let's imagine, for example, that you send an email to a list of prospects with a specific profile (data collected at a trade show, for example). The scenario can then define that prospects who open this first email but do not buy directly will automatically receive, 24 hours later, a second email containing a promotional offer.
Prospects who do not open the email will automatically receive an SMS, a channel that may be more effective than email for this type of prospect.
The automated scenario can comprise as many stages as you wish, so as to adapt to your different needs, while always maintaining the primary objective of obtaining the highest possible conversion rates.
No. 3: Develop and satisfy your customer base
In France in 2019, according to Hootsuite, we spend an average of 4 hours 38 minutes on the internet, all media combined. While mobile is now the leading communication channel, television and the computer are a close second.
However, depending on demographic criteria, the preferred media vary enormously. That's why a multi-channel approach allows you to extend the reach of your marketing activities and reach target groups that previously could not be covered by a single-channel strategy. So in the long term, multi-channel will boost your sales and even enable you to position yourself in new markets, accessible thanks to these new communication channels.
By introducing flexibility into the communication between consumer and brand, multi-channel also improves customer satisfaction and, as a result, loyalty.
No. 4: Centralise and save time
Gone are the days when a multi-channel strategy required a greater investment of time. Just a few years ago, it was a matter of managing multiple channels, one after the other. But those days are gone, because the tools have evolved. It is now possible to centralise a large proportion of your communication channels on a single platform to save you as much time as possible. You no longer need to log on to different platforms, which are often not connected to each other. Now you can programme numerous channels from a single tool.
What's more, as we saw in our "Good reason No. 2" above, automating multi-channel campaigns also saves time. An essential factor for marketers keen to optimise their already busy schedules.
5: Remarketing, retargeting for better conversion
Remarketing is an incredibly powerful lever that involves sending highly targeted emails to prospects who are already well into the customer relationship cycle. It is a marketing tool that transforms purchase intentions into sales.
It is based on a multi-channel exchange of information. Following a prospect's visit to the brand's website, the famous "cookies" are responsible for collecting customer, transactional or behavioural data (products consulted, time spent, etc.).
This browsing data is then analysed to determine the level of interest of the web user and whether it is appropriate to retarget them. Once again, all this is done completely automatically.
You don't have the contact details of these visitors? That's hardly surprising when you consider that up to 95% of website visitors are anonymous. We've got good news for you! The email retargeting module we provide at ExpertSender offers you the possibility of sending messages to your anonymous visitors, thanks to a network of partner publishers who have the corresponding data. A simple link between your site's cookies and those of our publishers and that's it.
Anonymous retargeting is an essential technique when you know that these visitors have already gone a long way down your conversion tunnel!
Conclusion
There's no doubt that multi-channel marketing is a powerful strategy for substantially increasing your sales. The choice of your mailing solution will be crucial if you are to achieve your objectives.
Guest article. Expert contributors are authors who are independent of the appvizer editorial team. Their comments and positions are their own.
Article translated from French