Taking Relationship Marketing Online
Interactive marketing requires a fusion of offline and online skills. Here are some tips to help make that happen and approaches to avoid.
Interactive marketing requires a fusion of offline and online skills. Here are some tips to help make that happen and approaches to avoid.
I’ve focused my career on helping marketers leverage data to better understand and more effectively market to customers on an individual level for nearly 15 years. In my early days in the industry, I worked primarily with marketing groups leveraging offline channels like catalogs and other forms of direct mail. In recent years, I’ve spent most of my time working with relationship marketing and database marketing groups and with online marketing groups.
While these marketers still view themselves as different, their responsibilities are starting to converge.
Marketing Channels Are Evolving
There’s lots of change happening in the marketing domain. It’s a time of uncertainty, but also opportunity. Marketing channels are rapidly evolving:
Addressability Is the Common Link
Addressable channels are outbound and inbound channels through which marketing communicates directly with an individual — identifiable or anonymous. This includes traditional direct marketing channels (e.g., direct mail and phone), Internet channels (e.g., Web sites, e-mail, mobile, and social media), and traditional mass marketing channels (e.g., TV, billboards, and radio).
As addressable channels become more prevalent, marketers are recognizing they need new skills to effectively engage, communicate, and interact with customers. Specifically, marketers must:
What’s more, marketers must do this across inbound as well as outbound channels and in an integrated way.
Interactive Marketing Will Emerge as A Dominant Marketing Discipline
The best term to describe the fusion of these capabilities is “interactive marketing,” which I’ll define as engaging each customer and prospect in a cross-channel dialogue that builds upon past and current behavior.
Although the term isn’t new, few (other than Professor John Deighton of Harvard who is widely credited with coining the term) define it as broadly as I have here.
It’s interesting that, in many organizations, the required capabilities already reside in different parts of the company — relationship marketing, database marketing, online marketing, e-commerce, etc. Unfortunately, many of the companies I talk with are adding duplicate capabilities within stovepipe marketing groups rather than integrating these skills. The result? A widening gap between “online” and “direct” marketing functions.
Rather than continuing to grow the silos, companies should explore cross-training, opening lines of communication, and integrating marketing teams that communicate with customers via addressable channels.
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