There's little doubt among marketers today, that in order to be heard by today's "always-on", over-messaged, and in-control buyers, one must develop a customer-centric model. Akin Arikan's book "Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success" addresses the opportunities, as well as the challenges ahead. And we've arranged to bring you a special preview of Chapter One.
Arikan believes that online and offline marketers need to work together. The online marketers possess a wealth of data, while the offline marketers, by virtue of having been at it longer, have more refined methods, analytics, and targeting. "If the two can work together," he says, "then we'll come a long way towards providing more relevant marketing and reducing spam."
Go ahead, drink the direct marketing Kool-Aid
But
accurately integrating data from multiple channels presents a challenge. As
media converges and consumers demand more control, advertising needs to provide
more personalized and relevant messaging. The good news? Technology promises to
keep rolling out helpful tools.
Arikan says of TruEffect's DirectServe™ technology, "Unlike other ad serving solutions, DirectServe can measure an advertisers' interactive marketing channels using their own business metrics, rather than the standard impression, click and conversion data that's been used in the past. This technology will help advertisers solve the hurdle of integrating interactive marketing across channels, and help them better assess media performance based on such direct marketing dimensions such as lifetime value, shopping cart contents, and product preferences."
While its true that technology provides valuable tools, it takes resources of the human variety to implement these tools. So for online advertisers to succeed, it's important to cultivate an understanding of the methods and analytics used in direct response advertising.
Akin Arikan is a segment
manager for Internet marketing at Unica Corporation, and has worked with web analytics practitioners over
the last seven years. Check out his blog, and his book is
available for purchase online at Amazon.
– Layne Salter
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