The abundance of marketing channels which have developed and evolved over the last decade is both exciting and daunting to marketers. The initial goal was sifting through these various channels and mountains of data to select the best option for reaching a target market. Initially, a full campaign would be derived and launched within that channel of communication, limiting marketers to one platform. As marketers evolved, campaigns would be launched over multiple channels, but these channels remained separate and had to be monitored and managed individually. Now, the objective is to utilize all channels – or at least all appropriate channels – simultaneously instead of maintaining singular marketing campaigns separately. While marketers had a wealth of channels to reach their audience, they did not have a corresponding increase in staffing and tools to manage these channels – thus, the birth of Automated Cross-Channel Communication.
Creating marketing solutions with simultaneous channel use allows for increased efficacy and targeting lifting response across all channels – rather than, for example, launching a direct mail campaign and then a separate email campaign to a target audience. Marketers can now devise solutions where a campaign uses both platforms at the same time thanks to marketing automation technology. What this means is marketers can now send direct mail pieces in the mail with a message to the target, often times to buy a product or to sign up for a service. With the marketing automation capabilities, they can time an email to be sent the day the direct mail piece arrives, or even after the direct mail piece arrives. Depending on the original message marketers can utilize both platforms simultaneously and either alert their target to incoming mail or use the email as a follow up with the same message as the direct mail piece. The technology can “trigger” communications across a range of channels from direct mail to targeted social media campaigns.
Sandy Alexander’s capabilities provide the support to manage and execute these complex campaigns without the need for clients to invest in complex technology and staff to manage that technology. With state-of-the-art facilities and technology our direct mail, email and digital marketing capabilities encompass a wide variety of technological components that can be added into any marketing solution. For example, a simple marketing automation strategy (such as the one above) can be efficient in itself, but by adding technology such as Quick Response (QR) Codes, Augmented Reality (AR) Codes or Near Field Communication (NFC) Tags to the direct mail pieces and personalized URLs (PURLs), Sandy’s solutions are interactive for the target audience and yield efficient and greater responses. Sandy Alexander’s flexible cross-channel communication strategies and solutions create multiple options for consumer response, boosting response rates by measurable levels through heightened click-through rates and thus increasing marketing ROI and any business’s share of wallet.
