Far too few marketers engage their customers with a fully integrated marketing system, according to a whitepaper titled, “Selligent’s Approach to Integrated Marketing.”
Even when they can point to the opportunities−and revenue−lost from disconnected silos or convoluted integration processes, marketers face a series of challenges. From overcoming legacy infrastructure to choosing between different-featured products, marketers need to know what route to take and what capabilities they need to succeed with an integrated system for customer engagement, the whitepaper says.
What’s more, the whitepaper discusses how marketers can integrate their marketing systems to accurately recognize and effectively engage customers across all channels.
“This type of integrated suite gives brands three key advantages,” Jan Teerlinck, Selligent’s vice president of product marketing, said in a press release. “First, brands gain a lot of value from their investment since they can avoid buying different solutions and the IT cost of connecting them. Second, brands can create consistent customer experiences across all channels by operating from a single customer view, available in real-time. Finally, it simplifies day-to-day operations: a single solution for customer engagement, with easy-to-use interfaces, definitely increases productivity, and in the end, that's why marketers look for new tools.”
“Selligent’s Approach to Integrated Marketing” shows marketers the challenges they face, the best practices to follow, and the rewards they can expect from an integrated marketing system.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
THE CHALLENGE
Although not many companies have a fully integrated marketing system, all have some components in place, with configurations that commonly include:
Disconnected email: A typical email system is used for “batch-and blast” campaigns that send identical messages to large groups, rather than engaging in dialogues with individuals.
Impersonal Websites: Most web content management systems (CMS) are designed to optimize web pages, not individual customer experience.
Isolated customer data management: Many companies have no central customer database, with customer-facing systems typically limited to data gathered by the system itself.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Very few companies will replace all of their existing systems with a single customer management suite. Instead, their best move is to use an integrated marketing suite with a mix of functions most valuable to their goals, specifically ones that:
Complement existing web content management systems by creating personalized web pages for delivery by the CMS.
Tap data from existing systems, including a central customer database if it exists, and places it into a dedicated marketing database directly attached to execution systems.
Replace existing email systems, providing full email service provider (ESP) capability regardless of email volume
“Brands will always need high volume delivery, so having email well integrated into an all-channel marketing suite not only saves the cost of a separate email provider, it breaks email out of its silo to optimize conversion in a true cross-channel strategy,” Teerlinck added. “That’s a key point of a smart, integrated marketing system.”
THE REWARDS
This approach to integrated marketing lets marketers create customer interaction scenarios that span channels and time, powered from a single customer view. The suite can provide all-channel execution engines, optimize campaigns and customer interaction for highest conversion, and give marketers the ability to plan campaigns, organize the production team, create budgets, and track ROI.