It’s no secret that marketing across multiple digital and non-digital channels delivers more conversions and higher ROI—if your campaigns are planned and executed correctly. In other words, multichannel marketing isn’t as simple as blasting your message in as many places as possible.

There are two critical but often overlooked ingredients to a successful multichannel marketing campaign—consistency and integration.

Data Shows Consumers Expect and Value Consistency

In retail, customers expect to be able to seamlessly transition from in-store to online to mobile shopping platforms. When contacting customer service, customers expect to be able to seamlessly transition from phone to email to text to live chat communication channels.

People expect a seamless experience across different touchpoints and interactions with your brand, whether they’re buying, researching or contacting you. The same principle applies to multichannel marketing.

Consider these findings of a survey from Salesforce Research:

  • 75 percent expect consistent experiences across multiple channels.
  • 73 percent will switch brands if they don’t get a consistent experience.
  • Seven in 10 said connected processes and interactions across channels are important to winning their business.
  • 59 percent said personalized engagement based on previous interactions is very important to winning their business.

Takeaway: If you want to maximize brand recall, engagement, conversions and ROI, you have to deliver the kind of consistent, seamless experience your customers expect. If you don’t, be prepared to lose them.

Integration is Critical but Lacking

According to the Heinz/PFL 2018 Multichannel Marketing Effectiveness Report, companies that integrate digital and non-digital channels in their marketing campaigns see better results than those that market exclusively on digital or non-digital channels, as well as those that operate channels in silos.

The study found that more than half of marketers use both digital and non-digital, but only 13 percent have truly integrated those channels. That small percentage is reaping the rewards, as marketers who integrate all channels are more than twice as likely to report higher marketing effectiveness as those who use fewer channels and don’t integrate.

Takeaway: Channel diversity is better than a single channel, but diversity alone is rarely enough. A fully integrated multichannel campaign, however, could potentially give you a competitive advantage over 87 percent of the competition.

Bonus Insight: Data Reinforces the Value of Direct Mail

The Heinz/PFL report found that marketers using direct mail report higher overall effectiveness than any other non-digital channel. In fact, 71.4 percent of multichannel marketers plan to maintain or increase their use of direct mail to build on previous success. Nearly half of respondents expressed a desire to add direct mail to their marketing mix before they even saw the results of the survey.

This just adds to the mountains of research that speak to the effectiveness of direct mail. The data clearly shows that direct mail, as part of a fully integrated multichannel campaign that’s consistent across channels, delivers the kind of ROI you demand from your marketing.

Need help knocking down channel silos and achieving consistency in your marketing? Contact us to find out how we can help you develop and execute a successful multichannel campaign.