Channel integration doesn’t just reflect the way users interact with brands online, says Jimmi Prebble, Strategy Director at agency Pancentric Digital. There are also tangible benefits for ROI
The proliferation of new devices combined with changes in the way we interact with brands online has forced marketers to rethink the relationship between previously distinct channels. Users no longer recognise those distinctions, so why should brands still try to impose them? Integration is key to the successful development of any digital strategy but how can marketers ensure they’re tying those strands together securely? The answer, says Jimmi Prebble, Strategy Director at digital agency Pancentric, begins with defining each channel’s role.
Working Together
“To strip it back and make it simple,” he says, “integration means different channels working together and benefitting from each other. Rather than running them as disparate streams where you do a bit of search, a bit of social and a web-build, now it’s about understanding that when you’re developing a site, search and social media have an integral role to play within that digital framework, and they can all feed traffic back to your site. It’s about looking at the whole picture, picking the most appropriate channels for that project and then ensuring they’re working together. Once they’re up and running you can use the data insight you get from those channels to start informing where you spend your budget, where you create content and how all those elements together can drive traffic.”
So, rather than beaming out blanket messages and hoping for the best, marketers need to think about the responses and behaviours they want to elicit in users – and the context in which those messages will be seen – and use that insight to inform their strategy.
“Because Pancentric is a full service agency we are, in some respects, channel-agnostic,” says Prebble. “We like to take a step back and understand a client’s business first. Then we’ll pick the best platform for the solution. We won’t insist that social media is part of a campaign if we don’t think it’s relevant. We look at the insights we have into a client’s customers and use that information to map a solution.”
Underpinning this new approach, of course, are profound changes in the way we all consume media. “Mobile, in particular, has had a massive impact on the way we approach a site build,” says Prebble. “Integration means we build from mobile upwards with responsive design techniques. It’s also true that the integration capability of all these different channels has improved dramatically. Because our teams don’t work in silos, they can share their knowledge and transfer data. Let’s say, for example, that a user leaves their details and their email address on a data-capture form. That automatically triggers an email which pushes them through to social media to consume more. Tying the channels up has become easier and also more important for the client. That’s what’s really driven this change.”
Rates Of Return
While it’s clear that an integrated approach reflects the way users actually interact with brands, how can this sort of strategy benefit brands where it matters most: on the bottom line?
“Every campaign is unique,” says Prebble, “but there are certain uniform benefits. The first is in terms of transparency and measurability. You can see the impact everything has – whether that’s in traffic-generation or the sharing and consumption of content. Allied to that is the fact that you can actually learn. Let’s say you’re an online retailer. With an integrated approach you can see the impact each channel has on driving traffic to your site. You can see which channel converts which products most effectively. You can see which channel is responsible for the biggest drop out and which channel has people coming back again and again.
sssIntegration can provide you with a snapshot of your online business, and that’s true whether you sell something, you’re a content provider or you’re simply looking to enhance your brand’s reputation. You can see the channels that work best for your consumers and that lets you better invest your time and your energy.”
From Attribution To Insight
As with so much in the digital arena, then, one of the key advantages of closer channel integration is the access it affords to data.
“Data and attribution are certainly important factors,” says Prebble. “But the other side of that is consumer insight. You can achieve better segmentation of your customers by understanding the types of people that interact with you on social media versus your website versus your email. Then you can start to create pictures of that consumer, and that means your behavioural targeting gets much better. Having an integrated approach helps you develop better lifecycle marketing programmes as well. You get to understand your customers and prospects better and then you can create programmes tailored to those lifecycles. It is an ongoing process and it allows you to keep up that conversation after the conversion.”
As an example of how this sort of approach is being implemented effectively, Prebble points to Pancentric’s work with L’Oreal who’ve been able to take data harvested online and apply it to their real-world strategies. This involved taking information about the content users have searched for and viewed online and using that insight as the basis for further promotions and campaigns. “The content is captured in our eCRM programme,” says Prebble, “and forms the basis for a continuous communications cycle. At every step we’re looking at consumption across different channels and then tying it into in-store purchasing. With L’Oreal we’re creating channel-coded vouchering which consumers can print off and take in to a store. We can then see in which channel the voucher was generated and that allows us to attribute ROI.”
Online, Offline, No-line
That brings us to a broader issue currently exercising digital marketers in every industry – the blurring of the distinction between what has conventionally been online and offline activity.
“This is something marketers definitely need to be aware of,” says Prebble. “It’s vitally important. We work with Zurich Insurance, for example, and one of the most important things for them is having an integrated approach which enables them to see the impact their digital activity has on end-customer purchase, even though that purchase is through an intermediary. In that case, they’re almost reverse engineering – looking at a sales spike many months after a campaign and trying to see whether a particular broker has benefitted through digital activity.
“People see integration as a good way to get visibility across multiple channels in order to attract prospects. But it’s also very important for continuing with existing customers. Once they’ve gone through your site, undertaken a transaction or interacted with your brand, there are lots of opportunities to continue the conversation. The first interaction is just the beginning. If your channels are integrated you know where those people are, where they’re likely to go and what they’re likely to look at. Once someone actually becomes a customer, the way in which they interact will change. Integrated marketing gives you the capability to have a holistic view of the customer which is always better for long term retention.”
Article by Jon Fortgang