Cross-Media Campaigns: Are They Worth the Effort?

Are cross-media campaigns complicated? Sometimes. But they also offer confident managers a great opportunity to boost returns on their marketing investment.

Cross-media campaigns have three attributes: they reach an audience via online and traditional media channels, including direct mail, e-mail, personalized URLs (PURLs), microsites and auto-generated responses; they feature one-to-one, customized marketing messages; and, finally, all responses, or lack thereof, are treated as “triggers” for cause-and-effect relationship marketing.

It's easy to confuse cross-media marketing with multichannel marketing, but their objectives differ.

Multichannel campaigns deliver thematic messages through electronic, print and broadcast media. Multichannel marketing works well for new product exposure, branding or name recognition. Cross-media campaigns also employ various channels but use a response mechanism to deliver measurable results for each media.

THE RULES

A full-blown cross-media campaign's details will fill your flow chart. You'll do a great deal of thinking, imagining and “what-ifing.”

Here are some musts as you move ahead:

• Define your goal

  Having a clear objective keeps the project on track.

• Start small

  The old adage that you have to crawl before you walk is sound advice for anyone attempting a cross-media effort. But small doesn't mean unambitious. Make your objective broad enough that all parties understand it, yet narrow enough to prevent things from becoming unwieldy.

• Involve your direct marketing production vendor early

  The campaign's success depends on your ability to plan every detail. After setting the goal, you'll need to choose the audience, make the message concise and determine the best way to deliver it. Next, work out a budget and timeline. Hopefully you'll also take this opportunity to collect new data about your recipients. And as always, devise ways to measure response.

  Consider enlisting the help of a direct marketing production vendor who's walked this road before. Such an individual or organization can help you navigate roadblocks, avoid potholes and find the surest path to success.

• Allow two to three months for planning

  You'll need several weeks of preparation. Start by identifying the audience because your strategy will hinge on your target — say monthly donors, weekend golfers, or households that have taken a cruise in the last year. Get the creative juices flowing by generating profiles that represent your ideal customer.

  Review current data to decide how to segment your list into smaller groups. If there's not enough detailed data available, consider modeling, which identifies current customers' significant attributes and then appends that data with names of other people who have similar qualities.

  Then develop a strategy to get your message across. Use the profiles you've developed to establish the most compelling offers; decide what the first, second and third pieces of communication will be; and how your message will vary from one media to the next.

• Ask other departments to assist

  Once the strategy is in place, you'll understand how important it is to get help from others. For example, if you want to collect new data, the information technology department will have to insert the necessary fields in your database.

  Consider other necessary tasks and figure out which staff members would be best suited to tackle them. Who will handle the copywriting and design of mail pieces? If you use PURLs, who will design the landing pages or gather content? Who will write your respondent survey? Ask your production partners how they can help.

• Develop a work-flow chart and display it prominently

  As you assign tasks, set up a time line for their completion and create a work-flow chart.

  To determine various deadlines, schedule backward from the delivery date. Start with the first marketing communication (mail or e-mail) and map out what happens if the recipient does or doesn't reply. Continue with every communication as you move closer to the campaign's conclusion. Work-flow charts should specify each trigger point in the campaign. Add these deadlines to your flow chart.

• Measure results

  The ability to gauge response is essential for evaluating success. Cross-media metrics are similar to those of traditional direct mail. You'll be looking for results in the following areas:

  E-mail — Open, clickthrough, click-to-open and conversion rates.

  Direct mail — Measure responses from postal mailings as they compare with e-mail, PURL, phone and overall sales.

  PURLs — Measure total visits, conversions, length of time spent at given PURLs, repeat visits, links visited and exit points.

CRYSTAL UPPERCUE (cuppercue@euservices.com) is marketing manager at EU Services, a direct marketing production facility in Rockville, MD.