Maximize Trigger Campaigns With a Multichannel Approach

Two-thirds of customers are already behaving in a multichannel manner, yet the current best practice for triggered-based messaging is single channel in its approach. This is to the disadvantage of marketers who seek to use this approach to deliver relevance.

According to Forrester, 68% of U.S.-based e-business managers say their company desires to deliver a consistent, non-fragmented, cross-channel customer experience, but only 29% have the ability to do so. Fewer than 35% are able to measure cross channel behavior. That’s a shame, because multichannel customers tend to be three to four times more profitable.

Consumers have traditionally been at the mercy of brands, which broadcast advertising on a mass basis. But today, consumers filter information and tune out messages they don’t want. Enabled by technology, they are now in control of their consumption of advertising and marketing.

Forrester reports that 49% of marketing organizations don’t take any action based on their customers’ preferences. This explains why 50% of consumers consider email from companies with which they regularly conduct business unacceptable, and underscores their desire for relevant engagement that caters to their needs. So how can a marketer’s brand stand out from the herd?

Combine Customer Insight with Timeliness and Location
To maximize the effectiveness of trigger-based messaging, marketers need to improve their understanding of customers and their activity. An example of this is when customers browse product information on a company’s website but abandon the shopping cart. Should a marketer treat these customers as a loss and trigger a message that tries to win them back? How does the marketer know they didn’t eventually make the purchase in a retail store?

Understanding the time, location, the device of consumers’ choice (mobile phone, laptop), and their preferences for when they check messages all play a key role in sending the right message at the right time.

Recalibrate Based on What Customers Do, or Don’t Do
The impulse toward trigger-based messaging comes with cautions. Marketers need to consider the accuracy of interpretation of the action in order to avoid false signals. Observing current online activity is a great indicator as to whether a customer has bought or is thinking about buying something. Marketers who are not doing that should be. And, this online information should be linked with a customer’s offline behavior, whenever possible.

Consider customers who prefer to buy in a store location instead of online, and who receive messages based on their Web activity saying “come back and buy it,” instead of one that offers something complimentary. That risks raising the customer’s puzzlement and anger for breaching the trust between consumer and brand.

Generating a triggered message strategy requires talking with website, email, mobile and social media managers, each of whom should demonstrate understanding of the trigger-activities. Where are their customers spending their time? How do they know if marketing is delivering a relevant message after they’ve made the purchase? Are they leveraging other customer touch points such as calls to customer service, catalogs and social media?

Understanding the big picture will significantly improve an organization’s customer engagement accuracy, and connect and bind the right triggers to customer behavior across multiple channels. Identifying catalyst behavior and linking that behavior to automated decisioning technology helps link timeliness to certain activities that can be leveraged to deliver the right message at the right time.

Tim Suther is CMO of Acxiom.