From Bronto Press Release (through BusinessWire)
Consumers continue to spend more money online than ever before as revealed by the 2011 holiday shopping season, with online spending up 15 percent to reach $35.3 billion, according to ComScore. Cross-channel marketing has been the call-to-action for retailers to increase online engagement and drive more revenue, but rolling out a fully integrated and optimized cross-channel strategy remains a daunting challenge for many retailers. Bronto Software, the leading marketing platform for retailers and other commerce-focused companies, has developed “Taking a ‘Crawl, Walk, Run’ Approach to Cross Channel Marketing,” a new white paper outlining a step-by-step approach for retailers to plan, implement and evolve a successful long-term customer engagement strategy by integrating email, mobile and social marketing. The white paper is free for download at bronto.com/CrossChannel.
“Bronto developed the ‘Crawl, Walk, Run’ approach to help retailers take their integration of email, mobile and social marketing to the next level, whether they’re in the early implementation phase or already executing successful cross-channel marketing campaigns.”
“Retailers have already made great strides in adapting their marketing mix to meet the needs of today’s digitally connected consumers, but it has been an ad-hoc process for many merchants,” said Jim Davidson, Bronto’s Manager of Marketing Research. “Bronto developed the ‘Crawl, Walk, Run’ approach to help retailers take their integration of email, mobile and social marketing to the next level, whether they’re in the early implementation phase or already executing successful cross-channel marketing campaigns.”
The white paper includes a step-by-step approach for planning, implementing and maintaining a successful cross-channel marketing strategy. The following is a quick summary of the top recommendations:
Crawl: Initiate a Multi-channel Dialogue
- Break the silo mentality between email, mobile and social channels by gathering more detailed audience preference and profile information and getting consumer permissions to communicate via multiple channels
- Leverage campaign themes across multiple channels, mapping content to the channel preferences of the audience
- Optimize content, messages and multimedia to build fans, followers and subscribers
Walk: Connect the Dots
- Execute campaigns to connect audience identities from different channels
- Identify your best customers through their engagement in more than one channel
- Use analytics to develop a more complete picture of your customers and subscribers
Run: Ramp up to Full Cross-Channel Speed
- Leverage data from related systems (e.g. e-commerce platform) to develop personal, relevant messages
- Utilize the best channel for different types of messages as opposed to sending the same message through multiple channels
- Refine consumer profile and behavior data on an ongoing basis
Retail marketers can find more details in the complete “Taking a ‘Crawl, Walk, Run’ Approach to Cross-Channel Marketing” paper. Download the free white paper at bronto.com/CrossChannel.
