Key takeaways
- Multi-channel email means combining email with other channels to extend reach and results.
- Learn your audience’s device and channel behaviour so you can prioritise high-impact channels.
- Consolidate data into systems that enable real-time access and simpler decision-making.
- Tailor sign-up flows by channel: short and plain for SMS; more formal, built-in forms for social networks.
- Continuously test, monitor what works and what lags and realign quickly.
- Stay agile: use data but be ready to shift channels as consumer preferences change.
Introduction
Even if your familiarity with today’s digital marketing world is fleeting at best, it’s common knowledge that connecting with consumers via their inbox stands above the rest of the field. However, for the brands that really know how to spin the perfect email content, there’s so much more to the process. By connecting other marketing practices to your email campaign, you can tap into the extended reach, and results, of the multi-channel approach. To help get you to this point, let’s take a look at five of the best ways to transform a standard email marketing initiative into the crown jewel of an expansive program that traverses all of today’s most popular forms of digital media.
Learn More about Your Particular Audience
The first key to a great multi-channel campaign comes from learning more about your audience. While this might seem like generic advice at first glance, it’s all about knowing what devices and channels matter most to the people you’re targeting. As Jill Jones of Business 2 Community explains, the more you know about the behavioral patterns of these shoppers, the better your optimization efforts can become.
This concept hinges on the idea that your campaign can benefit from addition by subtraction. As you learn more about your audience, you can hone in on the channels that really matter and cut down the budget allocation of the less impactful alternatives. Whether it’s text marketing in a supporting role or connecting via social media, trimming the fat and focusing on the heavy hitters is the perfect way to enhance your multi-channel approach.
Consolidate Your Data Systems
Unfortunately, the more you dig into the habits and practices of these consumers across a variety of channels, the bigger a burden your data systems become. It’s not that this information isn’t useful, it’s just that you end up having so much to sift through that it becomes overwhelming. For this reason, Jessica Lee of ClickZ suggests that brands looking to conquer the world of multi-channel marketing take data consolidation and handling seriously.
By giving data its due and implementing appropriate systems for the storage and retrieval of this information, your organization can access information in real time and make the right calls when it comes to campaign management and direction. When compared with the alternative – clunky data referencing and inefficient decision-making – it’s easy to see the appeal of a fine-tuned and consolidated data system.
Keep Registration Flexible
By connecting via multiple supporting channels, such as telephone, text, and social media, you naturally move away from the “one size fits all” approach to signing up consumers to your email contact list. Because of this, David Kirkpatrick of Marketing Sherpa notes that brands utilizing varying platforms need to cater to these specific channels when building registration material – specifically sign-up sheets. For instance, keeping things short and sweet, while avoiding slang and abbreviations, works best when sending out supporting text messages, while the social media world, particularly Facebook, enjoys more formal sign-up sheets and registration forms that come built into the network.
Constantly Test and Evaluate Your Results
As your campaign gets in motion, don’t lose sight of the practices that you’d normally conduct in a regular email marketing program – specifically testing and evaluation. As Jay Acunzo of HubSpot explains in his post on the subject, just because you’ve switched up your approach doesn’t mean you should say goodbye to optimization and adjustments. Sure, there’s an increased amount of variables in the equation, but the basic process doesn’t change too much – monitor what works and what lags behind as often as possible and realign from there.
Leave Your Fear of Change Behind
The final key to multi-channel success focuses entirely on your mindset regarding movement between channels. Dan LeBlanc of Experian’s marketing resource blog highlights this mentality by pointing out that today’s consumer is constantly evolving and shifting in regard to platform preferences. With this concept at the forefront of your approach, it makes sense to remain fluid and adaptive when building supporting content for your email marketing campaign. While your data might suggest certain channels today, the next big technological or culture shift can render this guidance meaningless in the blink of an eye.
This doesn’t mean you need to discredit the value of consumer data completely, but rather keep your head up and your finger on the pulse of the latest industry trends. By doing this, along with the rest of what you’ve learned about building a powerful multi-channel approach, there’s nothing stopping your brand from expanding the reach of its next email marketing initiative to unparalleled heights.
FAQ
A multi-channel email marketing approach pairs email with supporting channels (text, phone, social media, etc.) so a campaign reaches people where they prefer to engage. The goal is to extend reach and improve results by connecting email to the other channels that matter for your audience.
Study your audience’s behavioural patterns across platforms to see which devices and channels they use most. Use those observations to focus on the ‘heavy hitter’ channels and reduce spend on less impactful ones, essentially ‘addition by subtraction’.
Centralize customer and channel data into systems designed for efficient storage and retrieval so teams can access information in real time. That reduces clunky referencing and enables faster, better-informed campaign management and direction.
Match the sign-up format to the channel: keep SMS-based sign-ups short, plain and avoid slang or abbreviations; use more formal, built-in registration forms for social networks (for example, Facebook). Tailoring sign-up material by channel improves registration success.
Test and evaluate continuously. Monitor what performs and what lags as often as possible, then realign the campaign accordingly. The core optimization process remains the same even with more variables in a multi-channel setup.
Let audience insights guide you: identify channels that drive the most engagement and results, then concentrate budget on those heavy hitters while trimming spending on lower-impact channels.
Adopt a fluid, adaptive mindset: use current data to guide choices but stay alert to industry and cultural shifts. Be prepared to change supporting channels when consumer preferences evolve rather than rigidly sticking to past assumptions.
