How to fit email into a multichannel online world: many questions…and some answers

This isn’t the 1990s.

You should be using a Twitter feed embedded on your Facebook page to push your chat channel to PPCSE visitors who saw a banner ad for your mobile app.

By the way, do your business cards carry QR codes yet?

Oh, and in the two seconds you took to read that last sentence, someone just invented a new way of reaching people online.

It might be the new Facebook. Or not.

Time for a stiff drink.

And a deep breath.

How can we make sense of all this intimidating multichannel thinking that is pushed at us from every corner of the media web?

And how does email fit within your multichannel approach?

If I had all the answers I’d be a consultant, not a writer. But there are three sets of issues that strike me as rarely discussed when contemplating a multichannel strategy:

• The need to understand where you stand
• The role of commitment and control
• Deciding what goes where

Let’s explore each, with a special focus on email.

I’ve also picked the brains of Joe Gagnon, President of e-Dialog (a provider of advanced email and multichannel marketing solutions) for some insider tips on meeting the email/multichannel challenge. Thanks Joe!

[...and perhaps some multichannel marketers can pipe up with their own insights.]

Understanding where you stand

If you hang around the online marketing world, you’ll feel a lot of pressure to be active in every channel out there. But much of that pressure is artificial or irrelevant, coming from:

• Constant mentions in Twitter streams and Facebook updates (like FourSquare notifications)
• People pushing what’s new and cool (especially journalists)
• People addressing very specific audiences that include technology first-adopters (which probably isn’t your audience)
• People selling or advocating channel-related services (so they’re biased – I’m sure I am!)
• People who simply like the “multichannel” concept (me again!)

Deciding where to be online first needs an understanding of the playing field, in the context of your own audience, business and business model. Specifically…

1. Audience location

Where is your audience? What channels (or combination of channels) do they favor? And are these preferences shared across your market? (Probably not – different segments, different preferences).

2. Channel basics

What are each channel’s fundamental characteristics? What aspects of business are they best suited to? What do people expect, want (and not want) from an organization through a particular channel?

Gagnon recommends taking any and every opportunity to gather information that helps you power a more informed, relevant contact with your customer. For example:

“How often does she want to be contacted? Through which channel? Send a survey to understand her expectations around channel management and frequency.”

“Does she use Facebook for fashion tips, and email and mobile for offers? How often is she opening an email from you on her mobile device? How are you tuning your program as a result?”

Email for example, is regularly cited as preferred to social channels for receiving commercial promotions online. And subscribers to promotional lists have appropriate expectations, namely that…:

“…they will have access to better offers than the general buying population.”

“Subscribers expect advance notice of new products, sales, price changes, and from a transactional perspective – immediate order, ship and delivery confirmation notices as well.”

All the above also needs to be tempered by the realization that preferences are usually relative, not absolute: most people are multichannel. They may prefer text messaging, but don’t use it to the exclusion of everything else.

Preference analysis needs to be far more nuanced than glib survey headlines would have you believe.

3. Value

What value can you give people through each channel? And what value can each channel deliver to your business?

That second question tends to get ignored in the rush to pay homage to the “customer is in control” mantra that grows in strength with each new version of the Internet.

Consider carefully, for example, whether you want to encourage email subscribers to switch attention to your Twitter account. Emails tend to get at least a cursory glance. Tweets disappear in a stream of Twitter consciousness that makes an inbox look like an oasis of tranquility.

Crocs.com, for example, uses their Facebook presence to enter a brand dialog, but also to encourage people to sign-up for email. Why? Because:

“…the conversion rate for consumers clicking to Crocs.com from an e-mail vastly outpaces the rate for shoppers clicking from Facebook”

It’s about “horses for courses”: choosing the mix of channels and emphasis that best matches a slew of business goals…for your specific business situation.

Measuring the value of multichannel efforts is itself a challenge.

Gagnon admits that measuring, for example, ROI is a bigger issue with integrated marketing initiatives. Marketers seek to understand the contribution of each touch and channel, so they can properly assign credit for the conversion.

He adds:

“In 2011, much of the discussion in marketing has been around this very concept – attribution. In other words, having the ability to look beyond “the last click,” which is a laggard industry standard that gave all the credit to the last ad clicked before purchase.”

“Attribution management is about the 4 C’s – understanding the contribution, so you can create the right complement, of contacts to drive a conversion. Attribution management is key to identifying what components of your marketing program are introducers, influencers and closers…”

As David Baker writes:

“The email channel will remain a constant, yet we have to recognize the stacking effect and prioritize attribution so all channels are rewarded for connecting the experiences.”

A useful resource here is MineThatData, where Kevin Hillstrom regularly explains how to calculate the true incremental value of a particular channel to key metrics and where your analytical efforts should really focus.

Commitment and control

The second set of issues concerns your capacity to sustain a multichannel strategy.

1. Resources

What resources do you need to commit to and coordinate a particular combination of channels?

The commitment aspect is particularly important for social channels, where success is intimately related to your ability to deliver value through that channel.

Commenting on email/social integration, Margaret Farmakis writes:

“Don’t underestimate the time and resources it takes to manage your social initiatives and have a plan in place for disseminating content on a consistent schedule.”

Email Marketing Reports has no Facebook page. Not because I think Facebook pages are a bad idea (my FamousInboxes.com site has one), but because I don’t have the time to maintain it in a meaningful way.

I’m not alone.

A recent survey of small business owners in the US found over half “will not boost their multichannel marketing efforts because of limited resources and time.”

We’ve all experienced the Mayfly effect: blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, LinkedIn Groups, discussion lists, email newsletters etc. that launched in a flurry of exciting content and died away in no time at all.

2. Scale

Are there easy multichannel wins you can exploit? Do you really need to wait until you have an integrated customer database and expensive software before you begin to tackle multichannel online marketing?

And what can you do now to make multichannel marketing easier in the future?

In terms of data, Gagnon suggests you ask yourself three questions:

1. What data are you gathering now that will help drive a more informed marketing decision – not just tomorrow but a year from now?
2. What report(s) do you have in place to understand how your customer’s channel consumption is evolving?
3. Do you know the true contribution of each channel to your overall marketing spend?

3. Control

Another element to consider is your control over each channel, particularly your degree of independence from third parties.

Email and websites are a fundamental part of the Internet’s core structure. Many (social) channels are commercial monopolies. The costs and practicalities of such channels are subject to the whims of the owners. Worse, as Chris Penn writes:

“If these companies go out of business (and many have), your social platform that you’ve worked so hard to build goes with it.”

Deciding what goes where

Gagnon says marketing success is ultimately about getting all customer channels to operate in harmony, thereby maximizing the overall customer experience:

“…the marketer needs to deliberately and thoughtfully utilize all possible channel connections.”

1. Marketing role

Should the channel drive response through the channel itself or support responses through other channels? Or both?

Gagnon already outlined email’s role as an outlet for promotions. But he also feels it has considerable potential as a facilitator of other channel success.

Email subscribers have made a clear choice to get brand-related communications, so email:

“…provides a natural jumping off point for messaging – it sets the foundation for regular communication…it plays a foundational role for the multichannel marketer.”

He cites some practical examples:

“…reaching out to subscribers to notify them of the newest mobile app, driving them to an in-store event, informing them of a contest on your social site, and so on. All can (and should) be done using email.”

It’s a concept echoed by others. Scott Cohen, for example, recently described email as:

“The Great Facilitator… the lubricant that makes the engine of conversation run on other channels”

Email’s role here is particularly strong in growing social media engagement. As Gagnon says:

“Some of the low-hanging fruit for the use of email includes strategies whereby they draw consumers online, by using email as an integral and integrated part of a social media growth initiative.”

“Email strategy works exceptionally well for this because it enables the brand to engage the consumer in discussions while occasionally presenting them with offers.”

2. Repetition versus originality

How do content and offers differ between channels? This is an issue I long struggled with!

Do you simply vary the presentation to fit the flavor of the channel? Or do you change the fundamental offer or content itself?

How do message frequency increases through multichannel approaches affect positive (like sales) and negative (like unsubscribes) metrics?

How do you account for people communicating with you through different channels and those who restrict their communication to just one?

These questions go back to the understanding of each channel’s strengths. As Gagnon told me:

“…it’s important to identify the right tool for the job. Are you trying to engage your customer in conversations or are you trying to target information and promotions exclusively for them based on their preferences?”

“If it’s the former, Twitter and Facebook are perfect channels for creating dialogs and sharing experiences while also allowing the brand to “listen” to this activity and learn from it. If it’s the latter, email is still the only channel that can really target messages to customer needs and preferences while moving them along the customer lifecycle.”

And, of course, it’s not an either/or scenario. Gagnon says:

“…if brands give consumers enough reason (read: value) to engage in both email and social media, they can leverage the strengths of both…”

So, how do you view multichannel marketing and email’s role in it?

P.S. When I started out online, multichannel online marketing meant email marketing and organic SEO for the Alta Vista, Lycos and Hotbot search engines. In fact, there WAS only organic SEO: paid search ads hadn’t been invented yet.

I’m really not that old…but I certainly feel old sometimes.

Find related articles:

• Channel: Email and social media

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