An integrated approach to multi-channel marketing

Ensight's focus is on the growing area of multi-channel marketing.

In the past 3 years, the number of channels and devices customers use has grown considerably, and marketers are required to adapt their budget and strategies in order to reach and engage with a largely fragmented audience.

In the past, the average marketing campaign consisted of a number of closely linked messages across print, TV and perhaps radio, nowadays that list needs to include web, social media, email, search, apps and display media. In addition, there are few standardised content formats for the majority of these new channels, meaning marketers need to invest in creating content in a number of formats and to support a wide range of screen sizes.

To illustrate the problem, consider that more than 300 million Facebook users accessed the site via a mobile device rather than via PC (December 2011). Given that Facebook’s total audience is estimated at 800 million, it indicates that nearly 40% of the audience prefers using their mobile device to access the site, and naturally all content linked from there.

A marketer wishing to run a campaign via social media will now need to support at least 2 different landing page formats (one for PC users with greater support for Flash and rich media, and one for mobile users with a scaled-down experience). They would also need to consider how the experience will work if the user originated from Facebook versus Twitter (Facebook offers a greater, more integrated approach than Twitter does, but Twitter may offer greater sharing potential).

Finally, they should also consider customers who engage via owned channels such as their website or email list - do they first link via social media, or do they offer direct access with a varied message for known customers? If they choose the former, which channel do they attribute the marketing spend to? A multi-channel approach aims to solve these challenges amongst many others.

Ensight has positioned itself to tackle these problems through our multi-channel marketing platform Ensight HQ.