I recently visited a retail industry customer who felt as though they did very well with cross-channel marketing execution. They perceived their marketing plan to be firing on all cylinders. There was, however, one exception: their email marketing. Although it was generally in tune with their overall marketing plan—giving the impression that it was a part of a true cross-channel marketing experience—it was, in fact, completely separate from everything else. This was because their email marketing campaign was trapped in a silo that had been created over a decade ago when the use of email as a marketing tool initially took off.
Email Marketing in a Silo
Email service providers (ESPs) with limited segmentation capabilities have not made this easier. ESPs have helped reinforce the functional silo, making it progressively harder to integrate email with other channels and deliver a relevant and consistent cross-channel customer experience. As a result, the process of getting communications out of the door and back often takes 24–48 hours, and by the time messages make it to their recipients, they run the risk of not being relevant anymore. In an era when customers can make buying decisions within seconds from the comfort of their own homes, a business cannot afford any customer experience disruption because the purchase of a competitor’s products or services could be made long before an email communication is received.
What Can Be Done to Fix This?
In order to communicate with customers in real time, my retail client knew that it needed to find a way to address this problem and send emails based on real-time events. Executing a plan like this requires a company to fully integrate email with all of their automated solutions, especially the ones that collect real-time data. The result is a true cross-channel customer experience, wherein the business is giving customers what they need, when they need it.
A Seamless Customer Experience
Email is just one marketing channel that can give off the impression of providing a cross-channel marketing experience while actually being sequestered into its own silo. History has taught us that all marketing channels are born in their own silos, and it is our job as marketers to free them from this highly restrictive environment. Social media, mobile, and future marketing technologies are all subject to this. Do not accept them as is. You need an automated system to deliver the data to your marketing resources so that they are all operating in perfect harmony.
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