A digital marketing strategy requires meaningful, personalized engagement with customers down the funnel and across multiple channels. To maximize the value of digital channels and engagement, and their impact on customers’ shifting digital behaviors, marketers need to plan, execute and evaluate the impact of digital marketing efforts holistically.
Multichannel
Multichannel is the marketing practice of using more than one channel to communicate with customers and prospects. Best‑in‑class digital marketers drive business growth by leveraging multichannel to span a multitude of touchpoints with target audiences.
These include websites, paid and organic social media, search and display advertising, TV, over‑the‑top (OTT) streaming media, digital video, email and mobile marketing (e.g., SMS, push notification, in‑app messaging and consumer messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp), and voice‑enabled endpoints (e.g., smart speakers and smartphone‑based virtual personal assistants).
Personalization
Scaling the delivery of personalized content and experiences is one of marketing’s most important roles in driving effective digital experiences, and it’s imperative to align personalization approaches to overall multichannel marketing objectives. Yet according to Gartner research, 63% of marketers face a moderate or significant challenge in delivering personalized experiences to customers.
The challenge is how to connect a customer’s experience of “rightness” with a digital marketer’s ability to measure, and hopefully optimize, “rightness.” Although 86% of individuals responding to a recent Gartner personalization survey said they are open to some personalized communication from brands, 55% say they’ll stop doing business when a brand communicates in a way they find invasive. A further 40% said they would stop doing business when they perceive a brand’s communication as irrelevant.
With such a fine line and big consequences separating good from bad personalization, it’s no wonder the topic continues to drive digital marketing leaders’ objectives as a critical element of their digital marketing strategy.
