Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is "a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time." -- according to The American Marketing Association.
In the past, marketers may have used multi-channels for their campaigns. However, "multi-channel" is absolutely different from "integrated marketing" and many marketers may mix-up this unintentionally. Multi-channel marketing is when marketers use different channels for different promotional campaigns and each channel may have separate objectives and goals. Integrated marketing is about capturing a big picture of the situation, optimizing the use of different channels together to reach ONE clear ultimate goal, and to deliver relevant and consistent messages. As a result, the audience will be reinforced and more impressed by the product and service messages.
Integrated marketing covers three core areas: i) A holistic management and measurement of campaigns concurrently happening across different channels; ii) It reflects a trend of consistent communications spreading seamlessly across various channels and multiple touch points; iii) It depends on how well different channels can work with each other to achieve the same marketing goal.
The growth of digital technology in the past 10 years has helped brands easily spread their messages anytime, anywhere. At the same time, the expectation of "relevancy" and "real-time" increases and customers only want to receive the right thing in the different stages of their life-cycles. Integrated marketing campaigns allow marketers to have a better understanding of their target customers' preference change by keeping track of customer data collected from different channels. This would facilitate a more comprehensive analysis so that marketers can identify which channel will best suit different segments of customers and increase reach. To the end users, they will more easily recognize a brand, product or service after seeing the same message across multiple forms of media.
For example, Canon has performed outstandingly in their overall marketing strategy by integrating different online and offline channels. After you purchase a Canon product, you are requested register online for your product warranty service. Meanwhile, you will automatically become a club Canon member. Then, you will start to receive different product information according to your preference through email across your different life-cycles, which may sometimes drive you to re-visit their offline event or showroom with incentives to buy more. Customer loyalty is boosted and the number of Canon products that members own also increases significantly as a result.
To summarize, there are three major benefits from integrated marketing campaigns which include:
i) Avoiding unnecessary duplication of marketing effort and resources
ii) Achieving higher communication effectiveness with limited marketing budget
iii) Obtaining greater customer experience with personalization and relevancy
IMC always covers various choices of channels in the whole marketing program. However, email is usually the preferred "kick-off channel" by marketers for its characteristics such as supporting personalized content delivery based on customer lifecycle, purchase history and expressed interest. Second, shorter "time-to-market" execution cycles enable a proactive and an almost "immediate" message delivery (vs traditional direct mail). Moreover, email is interactive, allowing for a true "dialogue" with recipients. Lastly, tracking and result measurement capabilities can help marketers translate response data into rich customer behavior insights.
Starting simply is always critical when you try new things! It is time to begin a new era with the proven importance of IMC. To begin with, it may be a good choice to consider combining email with other channels such as SMS, and online ads and then draw people to re-visit your brick-and-mortar outlets as your ultimate business goals.
Francis Kwok is co-founder and CEO of Radica Systems.
