Rev Up Your Marketing with a Multipronged Approach

It used to be that if a retailer sent out a quality email once or twice a month to their customer base, they were on top of their online marketing. Not any more. Smart online players have raised the bar by connecting email marketing with social networks, direct mail and clever promotions. Today, email marketing is the minimum standard for doing business, but to really be in the game you need to have multi-channel marketing (MCM).

What is multi-channel marketing?

Multi-channel marketing, or MCM, connects all the ways that a customer can interact with a business, making the marketing effort richer and more effective.

For instance, you may send out a personalized direct mail piece that prompts your customer to signup for a discount at your website that can be redeemed in-store or online. Meanwhile, you capture the customer’s email address, add them to your email marketing list, and reinforce your relationship by asking them to follow your business on Facebook and Twitter.

Once they are part of your social media network, you can easily send messages about current promotions, advertise new products, run contests, and drive traffic to your store’s blog. In this way, something as simple as a direct mail piece has its impact increased tenfold.

And by bringing customers into your online world, you can better track their interest and interactions, as well as segment your customer lists to design offers and events for certain groups.

Tracking is an essential part of the process and one that multi-channel marketing firms can help you with. Not only can they design email campaigns and special landing pages, but also provide tracking that allows you to see which strategies are working, and which to shelf.

So, if you are frustrated by the lack of attention paid to your singular email blasts, consider using social media in combination with offline marketing efforts to increase the effectiveness of your campaigns.

If you need help, give us a call and we will help connect you to our multi-channel marketing partners, E-Mail Logic, which is in the process of changing its name to E-Marketing Logic to reflect the expanded Internet marketing platform it offers clients. They have worked with high-end, independent specialty stores since 2001 to help them transition from traditional marketing to Internet marketing.

After all, the retail world is evolving quickly, and it’s the forward-leaning retailers who have the most to gain.