How do your marketing campaigns work? Do they start with the fun idea you think will engage? Or, do they begin with the product? If you are full of the joys of research do they begin with the personas of existing / potential customers?
Integrated marketing is great but responsive integrated marketing is even better! If it is responsive then it doesn’t particularly matter what is leading it. Your message and content can adjust and engage accordingly.
It is all very well and good having a loud and clear message/presence on all channels but if the engagement this promotes does not transfer between them then this is just plain frustrating for those you are trying to reach!
Sophisticated personalisation of your content marries all of these things and means that the response of your customers is what informs the content they see. Your content is augmented by the response and adapted to the platform.
We work with a lot of membership organisations and they find that they have a very good idea of who their clients are, how they view their brand and what they use them for. The devices that they use to engage with their brand changes day to day. Take mobile as an example, maybe a lot of interactions happen on a mobile. Many of the brands we work with do their direct marketing via mobile. This is often unwittingly done as an increasing number of end users view their emails on their smart phones – 68% an Econsultancy report recently announced.
What if not only your message adapted not only to their response but also to their device and their use across many devices? This would be truly integrated marketing.
We are still in this evolutionary process but there are very promising examples of success which give an indication of where this will go.
What I wonder is if this sophistication will start with B2B or if it will start with B2C? I would be really curious to get your views. Does anyone here work in or for B2B and B2C?
The most sophisticated personalisation we have delivered was to a B2C travel company but personalisation is something that really excites our B2B clients.
Multi-device case study here.
Information on multi-device design here.
