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A simple guide to building cross-channel interactions

An Experian Marketing Services White Paper | June 2014

Cracking the cross-channel code

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Introduction .................................................................................................................................................1

The growing importance of cross-channel marketing ............................................................................2

Understanding what cross-channel makrting is (and isn’t) ...................................................................2

Two reasons marketers struggle with cross-channel marketing ...........................................................5

Five steps to building an effective cross-channel strategy .....................................................................6

1. Determine goals and objectives. .........................................................................................................................................7

2. Get to know the audience (and the competition) .............................................................................................................8

3. Identify low-hanging fruit and slowly build a cross-channel program .........................................................................9

4. Analyze and improve tactics ..............................................................................................................................................10

5. Partner with a technology company that can manage your growing needs ............................................................11

Three common cross-channel pitfalls to avoid ......................................................................................13

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................14

CONTENTS

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Cracking the cross-channel code | 1

Introduction

If your business is just getting started with cross-channel marketing, you’ll quickly discover that cross-channel optimization is critical to delivering highly relevant, personalized content to your customers anytime, anywhere. This white paper will provide a simple process for using cross-channel interactions to drive increased revenue, loyalty and cost-saving efficiencies and explain how to avoid the most common pitfalls preventing companies from delivering customer-centric marketing.

In today’s fast-paced business ecosystem, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time (and on the right device) is an enormous challenge. Once restricted to only a handful of marketing mediums, customers now move seamlessly through a variety of channels and platforms, and they use a range of devices to do it. In fact, according to a recent Experian Marketing Services’ report1, U.S. adults spend 27 hours a week consuming digital media on devices such as computers, tablets, game consoles, mobile phones, e-readers and MP3 players.

For modern marketers, keeping up with these dynamic, hyper-connected customers can be overwhelming. Customers today are crystal clear about what they want from interactions with their favorite brands: highly personalized, one-to-one dialogues that are conducted when and how they prefer. They crave authenticity, integration and real-time responsiveness. If a brand can’t deliver on those wishes, they simply will look elsewhere for them.

Not so long ago, customers often were pleasantly surprised by a personalized email, text message or social media interaction. Today, those same customers expect to navigate across a growing array of channels and be met every step of the way with content that’s tailored to their unique relationship with a brand as well as their current and anticipated needs, wants and desires. Simply put, the rules of engagement have changed, and marketers are finding that their once tried-and-true single- or multichannel marketing programs also must evolve to keep pace with the demands of today’s customer.

1Experian Marketing Services, Millenials as Adults report

16%of each week is spent

consuming digital media by adults

Customers today are crystal clear about what they want from interactions with their favorite brands: highly personalized, one-to-one dialogues that are conducted when and how they prefer. They crave authenticity, integration and real-time responsiveness. If a brand can’t deliver on those wishes, they simply will look elsewhere for them.

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The growing importance of cross-channel marketingEnter, cross-channel marketing — an approach that leverages analytics, dynamic customer intelligence and rich behavioral data to help marketers coordinate campaigns across channels and deliver real-time integrated experiences that are relevant to every customer in every context.

It sounds like marketing nirvana, doesn’t it? It can be — if it is managed properly.

In the following pages, we’ll define what cross-channel marketing is (and isn’t), explore why many marketers struggle to execute it and share five easy (and actionable) steps to get a jump-start on creating cross-channel interactions that drive revenue, improve customer loyalty and deliver cost savings. We also will cover three big pitfalls that often undermine marketers’ ability to deliver a truly rich cross-channel customer experience.

Understanding what cross-channel marketing is (and isn’t)Before diving into the finer points of developing a cross-channel marketing program, marketers need to understand what exactly cross-channel marketing is, what it is not and how it can help them to achieve key business objectives. According to a recent report2, consumers who engage with brands today are doing so through multiple marketing channels. The brands that win, Forrester’s research suggests, are the ones that “obsess” over the customer experience and deliver coordinated messaging across channels.

At its core, that’s the essence of cross-channel marketing. It’s a strategy designed to easily and consistently target and customize content at the individual level and intelligently trigger messages that deliver what customers want, when they want it and in the ways they prefer to get it. Executing cross-channel marketing does not require leveraging every channel imaginable. Instead, it simply means that the channels that are used — the ones that are most relevant to the target audience — must be optimized for deeply personal customer experiences.

One great example of a business that hit a home run with cross-channel marketing is clothing retailer American Eagle Outfitters. With a goal of acquiring new mobile and email subscribers, increasing engagement and driving sales during the busy 2013 holiday season, the company created and executed a cross-channel marketing program that revolved heavily around customer experience.

The highly successful program encouraged — and enabled — customers to engage with the brand through their own preferred channels. Channel-specific content was created for a variety of mediums — including the Web, mobile, email, SMS, social networking and direct mail — with messages and offers delivered on-demand, in real time, across channels.

2Forrester Research, “The Customer Life Cycle: A Blue Print for Customer-Obsessed Enterprises,” The Customer Life-Cycle Marketing Playbook

Executing cross-channel marketing does not require leveraging every channel imaginable. Instead, it simply means that the channels that are used — the ones that are most relevant to the target audience — must be optimized for deeply personal customer experiences.

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Cross-channel promotion for American Eagle Outfitters’ 2013 holiday sweepstakes

In-storeAmerican Eagle Outfitters used in-store signage with prizes and calls to action.

WebThe American Eagle Outfitters’ desktop Website promoted the program and used a web opt-in form to capture customer data.

Direct mailAmerican Eagle Outfitters distributed millions of direct mail pieces to promote the program.

EmailBased on consumer preference, email and SMS messages were delivered daily.

AppAmerican Eagle Outfitters’ app promoted the program and drove additional program growth.

FacebookFacebook was used to promote the program and each day’s legendary gift to American Eagle Outfitters’ 9.4 millions fans. Users who claimed prizes could also post to their wall and share the program with their friends.

TwitterAmerican Eagle Outfitters tweeted to its 271,000 followers to encourage program opt-in and promote daily prizes.

InstagramInstagram videos were used to promote each day’s legendary gift to American Eagle Outfitters’ 347,000 followers.

The program ultimately helped the brand connect with more than 8 million subscribers in the United States and Canada during the two week program, with its daily SMS alerts yielding an impressive 50 percent to 60 percent click-through rate.

Of course, American Eagle Outfitters is a large, multinational retailer. How does its cross-channel success translate to other businesses?

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There are two core lessons that any company can take away from the retailer’s cross-channel initiative:

Putting the customer first leads to personalized experiences, enhanced relationships and richer customer insight. It’s still important to monitor the return on investment (ROI) and performance of specific activities and channels, but customer-centric marketing will always yield better results as customers’ expectations of relevance and consistency from brands continue to heighten.

A truly integrated cross-channel program enables successful customer-centric marketing. In order to execute such a program, marketers must break down channel-specific silos to enable them to develop programs that align around the customer.

Putting the customer first Breaking down channel-specific silos

It should be apparent by now that the ultimate goal of cross-channel marketing is customer satisfaction. The more marketers are able to please customers through personalized, relevant and consistent messaging, the more likely it is they’ll reward a brand with their continued engagement.

It’s critical, however, for marketers not to bite off more than they can chew initially. Instead, marketers should start by focusing on making their current approach as consistent and targeted as possible. Then, over time, use what they learn about their customers (the engagement cadence they prefer, the channels they frequent most, etc.) to expand into other channels and improve the relevancy and impact of customer interactions.

The more marketers are able to please customers through personalized, relevant and consistent messaging, the more likely it is they’ll reward a brand with their continued engagement.

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Two reasons marketers struggle with cross-channel marketingWhat keeps marketers from fully leveraging the value of cross-channel marketing? According to Experian Marketing Services’ 2014 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report3, the two hurdles that most often impede cross-channel implementation are:

Organizational silos Data management

The reality is that many marketing organizations evolve their marketing strategy the same way. With each new marketing tactic, channel or technology they implement, they subsequently create a new team for it. With that team often comes a new set of strategies, tactics and metrics that aren’t necessarily aligned with other marketing channels. Unfortunately, that not only limits the marketing organization’s ability to interact with customers on their own terms, it also generally results in fractured customer conversations and disjointed marketing messages. After all, without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing, it’s nearly impossible to coordinate efforts and operate efficiently.

There is also the enormous challenge of data collection and synthesis. According to Experian’s report4, nearly two-thirds of marketers cite their top marketing challenge as collecting and managing the various flows of data available. Interestingly, that might sound like an odd problem to have in an age when data is more accessible than ever and new marketing analytics technology seems to sprout up every day. The challenge has everything to do with the increasingly complex dynamics of online consumer interactions. With consumers seamlessly moving in and out of a wide variety of marketing channels, it has become extraordinarily difficult for marketers to quickly collect — and make sense of — the digital fingerprints they leave behind.

Unfortunately, cross-channel marketing success is largely dependent on doing exactly that. Without deep insight into how, when and why customers want to engage with a brand across various channels, it can be very difficult to pinpoint the right campaign content for the right person at the right time. The good news is that a new breed of technology has emerged that’s designed to address this challenge. Thanks to agnostic cross-channel marketing platforms, marketers now can quickly sew together first- and third-party data, digest consumer insights and integrate campaign response analytics to acquire a true 360-degree view of customers.

Of course, in order to leverage any of that data, a business must first assemble a fundamental framework that helps get its cross-channel marketing strategy airborne. Not sure where to start? In the following section, we’ll provide five simple — and very actionable — steps to build out an effective cross-channel marketing program.

3-4Experian Marketing Services, The 2014 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report

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Five steps to building an effective cross-channel strategy

Determine goals and objectives

Partner with a technology company that can manage your growth needs

Identify low-hanging fruit and slowly build a cross-channel program

Get to know the audience (and the competition)

Continuously analyze and improve cross-channel tactics

Getting started with cross-channel marketing is a relatively straightforward process, and it can deliver enormous ROI. However, it’s important to note that there’s nothing easy about implementing a robust, fully functioning cross-channel marketing strategy.

In fact, converting an organization from a single-channel focus to a true, integrated cross-channel program often requires foundation-rattling change across the entire organization. Traditional marketing practices, processes and principles will be affected. Rigid organizational silos must be torn down. Individual teams will need to broaden their focus to put the customer — rather than their own channel-specific goals — at the center of everything they do. The good news is that all of that organizational change doesn’t have to happen overnight.

The next sections will cover the following five, simple steps marketers can take to jump-start cross-channel marketing implementation:

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1. Determine goals and objectives

To build a marketing program that aligns all channels and supports a company’s strategic objectives, marketers must first identify their company’s strategic themes. Whether marketers know them explicitly or not, most companies have a handful of complementary themes that fall into one of several buckets:

Increasing revenue Amplifying campaign reach and results

Growing customer base Creating customer intimacy

Building the company’s brand Improving campaign personalization

Generating cost-efficiencies

Whether a company’s cross-channel marketing goals fall neatly into one of those categories or not, it’s critical that the business understands what it’s trying to accomplish before it begins executing against a cross-channel strategy. Each goal could require a unique portfolio of channels and programs to support it. In order to generate the greatest impact, the focus of an organization’s forces needs to align with those things.

Take the next step: As a company begins to establish cross-channel goals and objectives, it’s important to involve the right team members and stakeholders in the discussion. To truly improve the impact of customer interactions, marketers must keep those lines of communication open and, if possible, centrally managed through one, easy-to-access platform. In fact, based on findings from a recent survey5, Gartner recommends identifying individuals in a company responsible for customer experience and adding the equivalent of a chief marketing technologist to address technology requirements and establish a strong relationship and formal collaboration regime with digital marketing. Doing this will improve the visibility of campaign goals and metrics and allow teams to deliver the most consistent brand experiences to customers seamlessly and collaboratively.

Gartner recommends identifying individuals in a company responsible for customer experience and adding the equivalent of a chief marketing technologist to address technology requirements and establish a strong relationship and formal collaboration regime with digital marketing6.

5Gartner, Inc., Digital Marketing Spending Survey6 Gartner, Inc., Digital Marketing Spending Survey

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2. Get to know the audience (and the competition)

Regardless of a marketing organization’s complexity or sophistication, no cross-channel marketing program will be effective unless there is a clear understanding of who the customers are, what they care about and how they prefer to be engaged. While a marketer might be able to grasp those characteristics at a very high level, it’s important to run through this checklist to ensure the understanding is deep enough to execute a successful cross-channel program.

The cross-channel marketer’s checklist:

•What channels are the best customers most active in?

• When are those customers most likely to engage with those channels, and what’s the average duration of their engagement?

•How do individual customers prefer to interact via those channels?

•What types of content or messaging do they interact with most frequently?

Scoping out top competitors and deconstructing their marketing programs to see what is and isn’t working for them also can give marketers an idea of how their strategy stacks up in the market. For example, competitors might be using fewer channels to acquire the same number of customers or leveraging channels that another organization hadn’t yet considered. To elaborate, if a brand is using geolocated offers, Facebook ads and direct mail to interact with customers but its biggest competitors use none of those tactics; it might be worth looking into whether those channels are really worth investing in.

Take the next step: If marketers already possess a good understanding of where their customers are and how they prefer to engage with their brand, they should test new ways of bringing in activity data that enriches their understanding of, and relationship with, those customers. This is another key benefit of investing in a cross-channel marketing platform, which can capture customer activity, responses and sentiment, in real time, and immediately make that information actionable in order to create more relevant cross-channel interactions.

The bottom line is that having the ability to interact with customers across channels is valuable, but those interactions become priceless when a brand is able to marry deep customer insight with real-time intelligence to deliver the right message at the right time to the right customer.

The cross-channel marketer’s checklist

What channels are the best customers most active in?

When are those customers most likely to engage with those channels, and what’s the average duration of their engagement?

How do individual customers prefer to interact via those channels?

What types of content or messaging do they interact with most frequently?

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3. Identify low-hanging fruit and slowly build a cross-channel program

Though it might be tempting to fully implement an entire cross-channel program in one fell swoop, the last thing marketers should do is get in over their heads. Too often, marketers make the mistake of thinking that executing a cross-channel marketing program means leveraging every marketing channel imaginable, all at once. In reality, it’s far better to start with easy-to-implement programs that drive incremental lift in conversion and engagement rates. As marketers gain a more panoramic view of their customers and begin to see improved engagement, they can use that insight to then ramp up the sophistication of their cross-channel activities.

To get started, here are some simple tips to build cross-channel momentum slowly and establish a foundation for full-scale cross-channel implementation:

• Start with one channel, and get it right before moving on to another one. The goal here is to acquire a clear grasp of each channel before trying to weave a broader portfolio of channels together. This will help determine how each channel can, and should, work together to amplify or reinforce interactions. As additional channels are introduced to the mix, make sure to coordinate programs and themes in order to ensure consistency.

• Design an initial journey that allows customers to self-qualify. While analytics and metrics can be incredibly helpful tools for better understanding customer preferences and behavior, there’s no replacement for customers volunteering exactly what they’re interested in. When engaging customers for the first time, consider using a welcome series to start the conversation. This presents an opportunity for a brand to make a great, and immediate, first impression while also empowering the customer to personalize their experience with a variety of actions that qualify or reveal their interest, needs, pain points and/or preferences.

• Analyze customer activity and setup triggers to deliver more personalized experiences. As channel performance is tracked, specific buyer patterns may emerge. For instance, maybe customers in a specific age group or location buy a specific product at a certain point in the year. With cross-channel marketing, customers can be grouped by criteria, such as age, location or past purchases. Marketers then immediately can trigger a response via one channel when customers perform a certain action on another channel.

The important thing to remember in the early stages of building a cross-channel program is that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. That doesn’t mean marketers shouldn’t try to develop creative content or explore innovative ways to interact with customers. Instead, the point is to take baby steps — by prioritizing efforts and gradually scaling the sophistication of the cross-channel program, richer customer insight is acquired.

Consider an agile sprint-style approach to setting up activity-triggered campaigns over the course of 30/60/90 days prioritized by level of effort, ROI and key performance indicator (KPI) goals.

Take the next step: Building and growing a cross-channel marketing program doesn’t have to be a lonely journey. If a business lacks the expertise in-house to execute a cross-channel initiative, employing a strategic cross-channel consulting service can aid in the discovery, planning and development of effective program-enhancing strategies. If paired with the right consulting partner, a strategic cross-channel consulting service can result in significant ROI.

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Keep in mind that while real-time customer insight is critical to on-demand program management, it’s just one piece of a larger puzzle. To perform truly intelligent analysis and implement relevant changes to a program, it is necessary to combine that real-time insight with broader customer segmentation intelligence and historical behavioral data (see step 2).

Take the next step: Consider leveraging cross-channel analytics tools that enable frequent testing of content, offers, placements, landing pages and other channel messaging. Also, be cautious about placing old tactics in the “lost” column. As marketers optimize each channel, they might discover that the tactics, activities and messaging that didn’t work in a single-channel environment actually deliver value in a cross-channel program.

After a specific campaign is initiated, it can be easy to forget about it and move on to the next channel. To avoid that, get into a regular rhythm of evaluating channel-specific metrics and analyzing their contextual impact on the marketing program as a whole.

In today’s dynamic online world, marketers can’t afford to wait around to make changes to fledgling campaigns, which is why it’s critical to test channel performance constantly and make adjustments as necessary. If analysis shows that a particular channel or activity is underperforming, marketers should be able to respond in real time. For instance, testing offers may bring to light that a target consumer responds better to a “dollars off” than a “percentage off” offer. Those results can be used to determine where similar improvements can be made to other channels.

With customers navigating through many marketing touch points before making a purchase, knowing the value of each touch enables marketers to make the right investments by channel. This insight is critical to marketers that are orchestrating cross-channel campaigns. By starting with the measurement of two or three channels and understanding the true effectiveness of each, marketers will be able to adjust spend accordingly. Of course, in this example, campaign performance is still measured within individual channels, but the combined insight (similar to media mix modeling in the mass advertising world) demystifies budgeting.

Avoid “implementing and forgetting”

Make tweaks on demand

Measure channel contribution for smarter budgeting

4. Analyze and improve tactics

Unfortunately, most marketers adhere to the long-held practice of tracking marketing performance in a vacuum, i.e., each channel is measured using different metrics. Online search is often measured via KPIs such as clicks and impressions, while email performance typically is gauged on metrics like open, response or click-through rates. Even marketers who have fully embraced cross-channel marketing sometimes measure their organization’s performance in segmented silos, in part because they’ve never been exposed to a better way.

Cross-channel measurement requires marketers to move from focusing on single channel campaign metrics to embracing data-driven response attribution that spans across all channels, activities and marketing campaigns. By then applying comprehensive response data to a cross-channel marketing program as a whole, marketers are able to make more informed budget decisions and gradually boost the effectiveness of their campaigns.

The switch can seem daunting, but here are some straightforward ways to begin the transition:

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5. Partner with a technology company that can manage your growing needs

As the complexity of a cross-channel marketing program grows, it will become increasingly important to create a single point of integration that organizes all marketing activities, intelligence and measurement in one place. Fortunately, this is precisely what cross-channel marketing platforms are designed to do.

The right integration technology can allow an organization to manage every customer interaction within a single system — eliminating the need for multiple, disparate platforms — and digest deep customer data easily to create more intelligent customer interactions across all channels.

DATA INTEGRATIONTARGETING AND

MESSAGE OPTIMIZATION MESSAGE EXECUTION

CRM

Systems

3rd party

Systems

Data

Warehouses

Social

Customer insightsDemographics

Psychographics

Lifestyles

Attitudes

Preferences

Transactions

OpinionsBeliefs

Activities

Responses

INTEGRATEENGAGEMENT SCORING ACTIVITY AND RESPONSE DATA CAPTURE

YOUR BRANDHello

YOUR BRANDHello,Joe

YOUR BRANDHello,Sue

Customers

Joe Dana Sue

Preferences Demographics Transactions

YOUR BRANDHello,Dana

OPENS • READS • LIKES • FORM SUBMISSIONS • RETWEETS • BOUNCES REPLIES • COMMENTS • OPT-OUTS • CLICKS • HASHTAGS • BROWSING

YOURBRAND

Diagram: One platform to integrate data, optimize messaging and interact across channels

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Of course, numerous cross-channel technology vendors exist today. How can marketers be sure they are partnering with the vendor that meets their immediate needs and possesses the ability to scale as their business grows?

Here’s a checklist of features to look for when evaluating cross-channel technology vendors:

Crystal-clear focus on the holistic customer experience, instead of single-channel optimization

Ability to create and maintain a single view of the customer

Capability to respond to complex intelligence with real-time responses

Functionality that groups customers together and deploys trigger-based outreach

Flexibility to integrate new channels and strategies as the online marketing universe grows

Remember, while gathering customer analytics and insight is valuable on its own, the real impact of cross-channel technology is felt when marketers are able to leverage a single platform to acquire a panoramic view of a customer’s interaction history and quickly turn that insight into action.

Take the next step: Increasingly, marketers are adapting to changing customer behavior by sculpting cross-channel marketing tool kits that fit their needs. While that assemblage of technology can improve cross-channel effectiveness, some technologies are easily overwhelmed by complex data and many others fail to incorporate offline marketing channels. To take cross-channel programs to the next level, businesses should seek out a comprehensive solution to grow into, rather than simply leveraging channel-specific tools that meet short-term needs but fail to scale long-term.

Early warning signs that the technology isn’t truly cross-channel:

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System compiled from previously disparate single channel systems

Multiple logins, user interfaces and support teams required

Flat or list-based data management

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Three common cross-channel pitfalls to avoid

According to Experian’s 2014 Digital Marketer report7, 80 percent of marketers worldwide plan to deploy cross-channel marketing campaigns in 2014. That number is only likely to increase as more businesses begin to recognize the importance of seamlessly delivering coordinated brand messages across an ever-expanding network of online and offline marketing channels. As marketers begin to experiment, there will be some failures, but those failures will likely be the result of some common — and easily avoidable — mistakes. To avoid that fate, it’s as important for marketers to understand what not to do as much as what they should be doing to create strong, customer-focused interactions.

With that said, here are three common pitfalls marketers need to steer clear of as they build out and execute a cross-channel marketing program:

7Experian Marketing Services, The 2014 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report

Continuing to market the same products to the same customer after a purchase has been made. For example, if a customer buys a pair of Nike basketball shoes from a shoe retailer, why would that retailer continue to push that same product on that customer? Instead, the goal should be to market complementary products — socks, shorts, etc. — that might appeal to that customer’s preferences.

Seeking only to build new relationships with new customers. Cross-channel marketing isn’t just about generating better leads and executing improved nurturing campaigns. It’s about delivering the right message at the right time to the right customer, whether that customer is a new prospect or a loyal brand evangelist. Both groups matter and cross-channel marketing only will be effective when messages are positioned for all stages of the customer life cycle.

Asking for more information than you need and delivering messaging on a time delay. If SMS or telephone marketing isn’t part of a brand’s strategy, why would the call to action in an email ask for a customer’s phone number? If the goal is to deliver the right messages to the right customers at the right time (every time), why would a message ever intentionally be delivered on a time delay? For cross-channel marketing to be effective, the entire organization needs to be laser-focused on nurturing relationships in real time through the channels that the customers, not the sales or marketing reps, prefer.

Continue to market the same products

Seeking only to build new relationships

Over-asking and under-delivering

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Conclusion

The marketer’s world revolves around investing the right amount of time, energy and dollars into getting the attention of a specific target audience. Marketers launch campaigns and measure results, craft messaging and position offerings for strategic advantage, and do their best to coordinate all of those activities across an increasingly transient landscape of offline and online marketing channels.

Why then, despite those efforts, do customers still not respond to messaging?

As discussed throughout this white paper, modern consumers no longer gather in a handful of predictable locations, nor are they willing to wait for brands to deliver the right messaging to them. Simply put, they have little patience for marketing that isn’t specifically tailored to their needs, interests and pain points. If messaging isn’t highly relevant and personalized, and it’s not integrated across all channels, then it’s likely customers will tune it out.

Cross-channel marketing can go a long way toward helping an organization unlock the power of the “customer in control” paradigm shift. Every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to enchant and delight them. Marketers just need to ensure their current strategy and programs are doing this, every single time.

If you are looking for strategic or tactical guidance to create more intelligent interactions with your customers through integrated cross-channel marketing tactics, contact your Experian Marketing Services account team, call 1 866 626 6479 or visit us online at www.experian.com/marketingservices.

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Intelligent interactions.Every time.

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Experian and the Experian marks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Experian Information Solutions, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

June 2014