Tips for better integrated marketing campaigns

Today Jason Peck, Manager of Social Media with ">eWayDirect is sharing his ideas about better integrating online campaigns. To start, Jason insists that all content - meaning all messages - must have a strategy.

"It should be easy for people to share a company's content with their friends in their preferred manner. Content and activities on a company's community or website (e.g., watching a video or commenting on a blog post) should be able to be easily shared with friends on social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook, to increase the reach of the content and drive traffic. Widgets should be able to be embedded in a variety of blog platforms (Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, etc) to enable people to easily add them and share with their friends." Read more about Jason's content strategy ideas here.

Email is perhaps one area where the benefits of a content strategy, including shareability, can be seen easily. Sharability isn't just the ability of the consumer to forward a message. Email should also include button to post into Twitter, Facebook or other soc-nets easily; and customizing messages, not just to the recipient but giving them a way to customize it and send on to friends is a good way to increase engagement.

"Instead of just letting your subscribers share the email with their friends, try giving them unique creative that they can customize and pass on. Since this is customized for the recipient and comes from friends, it will be more trusted and effective than if it came from the company. Marketers can also offer prizes and incentives to encourage people to share a deal or discount with their friend," said Peck. "Another creative way to use email is to track which pages of a website a company's subscribers visit, and then send people targeted campaigns and offers based on their site activity. This can be a great way to provide relevant and timely information to people who are considering purchasing."

Integrated marketing messages are also a way to reconnect with consumers who have abandoned a shopping cart, clicked but not converted or in another way lost engagement. Email has been shown to be a strong re-engagement factor, but the real key is to create timely messages to re-engage those consumers. For example, an unlimited, infinite offer won't encourage the shopper to return at that moment to make a purchase.

"People should receive [a re-engagement email] no later than 30 minutes after they abandon," said Peck. "While the company/product they were thinking about purchasing is still fresh in their minds. Companies should also include useful information in the email, such as more about the purchase process, shipping, etc. Deals and discounts can work, too, but you want to use this sparingly. You don't want to condition your audience to abandon the cart just so they can get a discount."

Tags: content strategy, email marketing, eWayDirect, integrated campaign, online advertising, online content