integratedUsers nowadays are to be found in a variety of digital channels, which increases the complexity of the customer journey. Enterprises must be present in all those channels when they plan their campaigns, so that the user is guided systematically, through the use of the right incentives, to the touch points which lead to the destination. This only works, if all the measures interact effectively. Companies must move towards an integrated campaign management and away from autonomous measures on individual channels.

The central question in the integrated campaign management is “how can the user be led most effectively to the desired destination?”

The key is to coordinate the available measures in such a way along the customer journey, that they complement each other.

The first step is to set a common strategy, in which inter-channel as well as channel-specific objectives are defined and the relationships between the channels are determined.

It is important that the communication across all touch points is consistent. Users cannot distinguish between individual channels; rather they expect a single occurrence of an entity in email marketing, social media, on the website, etc. The aim is not only to avoid contradictions, but in particular to communicate a single, central message, as the example of email marketing and social media content, and the need for interrelation with one another, shows.

Challenges of integrated campaign management

In the following, I define the most important requirements needed to implement an effective integrated campaign management:

1. Consistent user insights:

Effective communication is individualized communication. In order to be able to approach the user with individualized and thus most relevant content, it is important to first gather insights about the user: product and brand preferences, willingness to pay or to order online, etc. These insights can be gathered through various analysis tools, ranging from simple scoring models to complex data mining methods, based on personal user data that is collected at the various touch points.

The problem is that most often data is still stored in different, independent silos. The challenge is to interconnect these silos and bring all available data centrally together and merge them in a structured manner. The larger the pool of data from different contact points, the deeper the insights. In particular, this means, however, that all areas have access to these insights. The result: more accurate, more consistent and therefore more effective communication at all touch points.

2. Automated Content Processing

In order to offer individualized communication, it is particularly important to perform a variety of data matching processes, to achieve the desired granular content. This amount increases with each additional channel that is integrated into the communication. The content comes from different sources, but is usually quite often still insufficiently interconnected, which makes a very efficient cross-functional use as part of an integrated campaign management very difficult. The challenge is to establish processes for capturing, sharing, and merging content from different sources and then to technologically perform data mapping. Only through the means of marketing automation technology it is possible to economically and sensibly perform this content processing.

3. And so much more ...

In order to optimize an integrated campaign, it is necessary to know the causal relationships of the instruments used. And last but not least, email marketing then becomes a more and more central instrument of the integrated campaign management, which we will analyze more closely later this month.

By Roger Stadler