In recent years, cross-media campaigns have become an important tool for anyone involved in marketing. These types of campaigns give marketers the tools to not only reach their target audiences, but to gather valuable information that can further advance their marketing efforts.
Yet for all the promise that cross-media campaigns bring to marketers, many marketing service providers are still struggling with how to successfully implement cross-media campaigns.
In this post, we'll take a look at what steps you need to take to achieve success in your cross-media marketing efforts. Whether you are doing a small campaign to a few hundred people, or targeting a list of thousands, the steps to creating successful cross-media campaigns are the same.
What is a cross-media campaign?
Cross-media campaigns reach a target audience using a mix of online and traditional media channels including direct mail, email, personalized URLs (PURLs,) and microsites. Successful cross-media campaigns make extensive use of one-to-one customized marketing messages.
What are your goals?
Before developing your cross-media campaigns, it's important for you and (if you are creating this campaign as a service) your client to define what the goals campaign are. Begin with the end in mind, and ask yourself, "What will a successful campaign will look like after it's been executed?
Some specific questions you'll need to answer are:
Who are we trying to reach with this campaign?
What action to do we want them to take?
How we will measure success?
Data is King
Once you decide what you want to achieve with your campaign, you'll need to identify to whom your campaign will be sent. This is where you'll need to look at your data.
If you are using your own data, you'll want to ensure that it's "clean" data - that all the records are complete and up -to-date, there are no duplicates in the data, and that any invalid or incomplete contacts have been removed.
If you are buying a list, you'll want to ensure that you get your list from a reliable provider and that your list selection is based on helping you meet the goals you set for your campaign.
Design for Your Audience
The design you choose for your campaign will need to resonate with your target audience, so keep that in mind when selecting images and designing the look and feel for your campaigns.
To be successful, all the aspects of your campaign should have the same look and feel. So be sure that your branding, images, and messaging are consistent across all elements of your campaigns.
Map Your Plan
A customer once said to me that our Campaign Manager software should come with a giant white board!
He spoke the truth, because once you have your goals, design, and list together, you will need to define how to use each of the media available to you and how the campaign will flow.
For example, if you want to see results quickly, you may choose to send out an email that directs users to a landing page as the first part of your campaign, then follow that up with a direct mail piece. If you want to create awareness of your product in advance of sending an email, you may choose to send out printed product information first, then follow up with an email and landing page.
Tracking and Using Your Results
The responses - or lack of responses - in a cross-media a campaign generate "triggers" which are used to facilitate cause and effect relationship marketing.
For example, if someone doesn't respond to your campaign, you can use that information as a "trigger" to send them a different offer. If someone does respond to your campaign, a trigger can be set to direct them to a landing page that includes details designed for them.
The results can also be used to evaluate and report on the campaign's return on investment - information that is critical to today's' marketers.
Learn from Experience
Each campaign you do provides valuable information for you as well. After each campaign, be sure to evaluate what went well and where you can improve.
Cross-media campaigns clearly require a lot of planning, preparing, and tracking to be successful. But if you manage each step carefully, these campaigns can produce information and results that surpass traditional marketing campaigns done alone.
