Lisa Arthur, the CMO of Aprimo, which offers marketing software to measure and implement campaigns, discusses integration and the best ways to track costs down to the individual lead. Arthur has a long resume in the marketing technology field, including with Oracle, Conviva and Exact Software.
Direct Marketing News (DMN): Why is it important for marketers to use a multichannel approach to reach consumers?
Lisa Arthur (Aprimo): You’ve got to integrate your channels. It’s vital to look at your audience member and understand what channel or combination works best for him. Customers don’t draw a line between offers they receive in their mailbox, their e-mail inbox or on a website banner ad. To them, they are simply receiving offers. Integrating channels is about providing a better experience for the end target audience to receive that content.
DMN: With so many different digital channels emerging, will marketers continue to view direct mail as an important channel?
Arthur: Direct mail is still a vibrant channel but it needs to integrate to email, to mobile, and to microsites. Direct mail isn’t dead, because marketers can still use it to leverage digital channels to improve response rates and better track spending to the business.
DMN: Is it possible for marketers to accurately measure the ROI of multichannel campaigns?
Arthur: Variable marketing spend is one of the largest investment areas for many companies. At Aprimo, we know how many touches it takes for us to make a target interested. The next step is tracking every dollar of all of our marketing spend. We can then look at that spend by audience member, channel, program, and compare it against the overall budget. We can track our cost per lead and see if we’re bringing that down. Marketing spend [worldwide] continues to struggle because of constrained resources. Integrating marketing enables marketers to drive growth and be transparent and it’s a much simpler way to prove value.
DMN: How can marketers make sure their campaigns are coordinated so that customers don’t receive erroneous communications?
Arthur: The world of spray and pray marketing has ended. It’s one of the reasons companies like Aprimo are enjoying amazing growth in this economy. One of the ways to get rid of stagnant information is by applying integration. For example: Why look at social as a separate channel? It needs to be ingrained in all channels. We allow our clients to embed links to social networks in their emails. So if I’m tracking you and you opt in via email or social network I should have every record of what I sent you and going forward I will send you only what is relevant.
