What’s your second channel?

So at long last your shiny new MarTech system has gone live with your first channel. Congratulations, it’s quite the achievement..

Without wishing to put words in your mouth or show any bias, barring a few geographical and vertical specialisations where SMS or App Push can sometimes be first to deploy, it’s normally the email channel that goes live first. No doubt you took your time to select an enterprise level technology (maybe it was Adobe Campaign Standard, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Acoustic Campaign, HCL Unica Deliver, or something else from the top right Gartner quadrant), looking for one with all the integrations you need and scaled marketing interaction volumes at a price you could afford.

So let us continue with the assumption that it’s the email channel you’ve gone with and you now have a few interesting customer journeys mapped out and live. Perhaps they are based around nurture and growth, or retention and lapsed customers. In any case, deliverability is looking good, return data indicates a healthy rate of open and click engagement with minimal unsubscribes. Incidentally, in our experience email tends to be first to the finish line because of its enduring favour, especially amongst more mature customers – and it is significantly cheaper than direct mail or other digital channels, so you can get more bang for your buck.

Now it’s time to look to the future and think – which channel comes next? Which is right for your business?

SMS is often a popular choice for channel number two. It follows on nicely from email, complementing it as a follow up communication mechanism in customer journeys, especially if a customer proves unresponsive  to email. It’s also a valuable service message channel in its own right, especially if you have fast moving customer interactions, for example in the online gaming industry.

Or how about App Push? This can be an extremely useful follow-up channel, however it relies on your organisation having a well-conceived app that customers are motivated to regularly use. It can suffer with issues stemming from being unable to identify if a customer has blocked your notifications on their phone. Nonetheless, App Push has a well earned place in multi-channel customer journeys and when used well, is incredibly effective.

Or perhaps you need to prioritise paid advertising channels or Social Media to get your brand awareness levels up with a concerted positive sentiment campaign. The list goes on and on. Whichever channel you choose, it’s addition to your marketing activities must be carefully planned and measured out. Some vendors come with costly overage rates should send volumes be exceeded, and no single channel is the magic bullet to ensure you interact with the right customer, with the right message.

To find out more about which channel might be the right one for your business to implement next, why not get in touch with Purple Square today for a chat with one of our solution consultants?