How Marketing Integration Boosts Cross-Channel Success

 In 2019, marketers who used three or more channels in any one campaign earned a 287% higher purchase rate than those who opted for a single-channel campaign.

However, in my experience, the true champions lean into an integrated marketing strategy.

Going beyond multichannel and omnichannel marketing, marketing integration allows for cohesive branding and messaging across all channels, helping you achieve clarity and consistency to ultimately power conversions.

So, how does marketing integration contribute to a seamless customer experience? Better yet, how does marketing integration benefit businesses? From personalized content to an abundance of real-time data, discover how marketing integration boosts cross-channel success.

Key Components Of Marketing Integration

Gone are the days of two-, three- or four-channel marketing campaigns. Today’s marketers can and often do leverage a dozen or more traditional and digital channels to coax consumers down the path to purchase, though each touchpoint tends to have a different message or call to action.

Enter marketing integration, a strategy for unifying marketing across channels. The critical components of an integrated marketing strategy are similar to an omnichannel approach; however, there is an explicit emphasis on maintaining consistency beyond the user experience.

For today’s marketers, that consistency often takes the shape of uniform messaging or materials that are grounded in the brand’s core values and shaped around its personality, voice and tone. Consistent messaging helps to enhance brand identity and recognition and boost consumer trust.

Similarly, marketing integration hinges on seamless data sharing across all channels. Seamless data sharing refers to uninterrupted insights from multiple platforms, whether they’re social media networks, owned assets like websites or even email marketing. This comprehensive approach allows you to create personalized campaigns with real-time consumer behavior.

For instance, a consumer may interact with a brand on social media because of shared values, such as sustainability. The brand can then retarget this consumer via email with tailored sustainability content. Hence, coordinated campaign execution is another key feature of marketing integration.

Benefits Of Cross-Channel Integration

Cross-channel integration offers several benefits, especially when it’s said to take seven to eight touchpoints to generate a conversion with a new customer.

For one, cross-channel marketing typically reaches a larger audience across traditional physical and digital platforms. With uniform messaging and coordinated campaign execution across an array of platforms, you have a higher chance of consumers interacting with at least one touchpoint.

Second, by creating myriad touchpoints with seamless data sharing across each, cross-channel marketing enables you to deliver content in multiple formats.

Some consumers prefer social media, whereas others may engage more with email or traditional mail. With consistent branding across digital and physical channels, marketing integration accommodates diverse preferences to enhance the customer experience.

To this point, you can also deliver more timely and relevant messages by integrating data and communication channels. For instance, a customer who browses a product online might receive a personalized email with additional information, creating a continuously helpful experience.

Combined, the benefits of a unified marketing strategy can contribute to improved customer retention. And because it’s far more cost-effective to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones—and because returning customers spend 67% more than new customers—marketing integration can increase your overall marketing ROI and boost your brand’s bottom line.

Strategies For Successful Marketing Integration

Marketing integration merges a traditional omnichannel marketing approach with the value of consistent branding, meaning that a cross-channel integration strategy will have several moving pieces. For this reason, marketing automation and data integration are essential.

Marketing automation simplifies complex workflows. Automated systems not only streamline repetitive manual tasks across different channels, but they also can leverage integrated data to tailor marketing messages, offers and content based on customer behaviors and preferences.

With the number of manual tasks that automated systems can complete, you also can gain considerably more time to focus on strategy. This time allows you to explore real-time insights and instantly create campaigns in response to current customer behavior.

The agility made possible by data integration is crucial in responding to evolving market conditions and consumer behaviors. It also allows for team collaboration, aligning strategies across social media, email marketing and content creation to ensure coordinated marketing.

Marketing Integration Challenges And Solutions

What are the key challenges of implementing marketing integration? Across the board, integrated marketing encounters hurdles with data silos, organizational resistance and skill gaps. Fortunately, the right cross-channel integration solutions can help with these issues:

• Data silos are the result of various departments—like marketing, sales, and research and development teams—each storing data independently, making it near impossible for the brand as a whole to access a unified view of customer behavior and preferences. To solve this challenge, invest in companywide integrated data management software that supports data sharing and synchronization across multiple teams and departments.

• Organizational resistance can occur when teams may be accustomed to working in silos and resist the collaborative approach. To solve this challenge, foster a culture of collaboration through effective communication, training programs and showcasing the benefits of marketing technology integration to key stakeholders.

• Skill gaps are an often unavoidable challenge that can manifest when marketing teams lack the skill sets to navigate and effectively leverage integrated systems. To solve this challenge, provide training and upskilling programs to equip various teams with the skills to manage, use and capitalize on integrated marketing technologies.

Marketing Integration Drives Cross-Channel Success

In 2024, it’s no longer enough to market your brand across channels. Instead, marketing integration is necessary for a cohesive strategy to connect multiple touchpoints on consumers’ purchase paths and create long-lasting bonds with customers.

Cross-channel integration and integrated campaigns are the next phase of the ever-evolving consumer journey. With proper channel integration and a collaborative approach, you can create a consistent brand image that powers continuous conversions.

Everything You Need To Know About Marketing Integrations

What are marketing integrations?

Marketing integrations are an inseparable part of integrated marketing. This type of business promotion consists of standardizing all aspects of marketing communication, i.e. advertising, PR, social media channels, website, etc. The idea is to create such a combination of promotional activities that will be implemented not on one platform, but on many to ensure the smooth development of the company and a steady stream of returning and new customers. In short, marketing integration allows you to develop all your advertising channels in a cohesive, purposeful and consistent tone.

Differences between integrated and omnichannel marketing

Many people confuse these two types of marketing. Both of them involve the use of multiple platforms to promote a product or service, but have a slightly different purpose. Omnichannel marketing was created to make the interaction at the client-company level easier with the use of communication channels located in various places – which makes it focused mainly on the customer experience.

Integrated marketing, on the other hand, prioritizes making the message uniform and coherent. For example, all ads in social media should have the same tone as TV ads, they should reach the same type of client and be easy to recognize from a distance. Of course, incorporating both types of marketing, if possible, can be highly beneficial – it would not be logical to lose any of the opportunity to reach new customers.

Marketing integration benefits

The introduction of marketing integration has many advantages. First of all, you will get better results for your promotional activities as you combine different tools and messages.

Remember, that consistent marketing is always more effective. The more purposeful and focused on a specific issue the customer’s journey is, the more likely they are to follow your path and make a purchase. Such refined and consistent shopping paths make current customers more loyal and likely to come back or recommend the brand to others. Learn more from our article on brand consistency.

The second very big advantage when it comes to marketing integration is building a strong brand awareness, which in the eyes of potential clients seems consistent and trustworthy. In addition, repetitive messages – but not versed in the same way – are great means to perpetuate your brand in the minds of the buyers, who will remember your services or products when they need them. That’s why it’s also worth finding time to generate such consumer needs. Well-integrated marketing channels can help you save a lot of money. By focusing on a consistent marketing message, marketing teams don’t waste their budgets on ill-considered campaigns or test marketing efforts.

How to create a marketing integration strategy?

Would you like to integrate all communication channels? You need to plan this process well. Creating a strategy that will guide your marketing department and sales teams step by step through the meanders of the marketing world is not an easy task.

You need to understand that integrated marketing is not only about displaying the same or similar advertisements on different websites and using the available tools to track consumer behavior. It’s constant monitoring of all platforms you operate on, regular contact with your audience, well structured message and making sure that all your actions are based on a story that’s easy to embrace and evokes emotions in your clients.

Analyze customer data and unravel users’ expectations

Combining customer data with your marketing strategies can lead to a tailored customer experiences. Customized marketing campaigns can strengthen customer loyalty and drive revenue. Think about what your customers expect before you start building specific messages. Analyze their needs, expectations, frustrations, potential, everyday problems and then use that knowledge to plan your marketing efforts.

Create action scenarios and choose the best one

Create different scenarios of the story you want to present to your customers. Think about what distinguishes you on the market, how your activities in the industry started, how the company’s development has looked over the years. Use the 6 hats method, and then choose the communication scenario that will not only convince you, but most of all will convince potential buyers.

Define company’s values and mission

A convincing idea is not enough. You have to define your brand’s values and its ultimate mission. The company’s goals and values may be different, e.g. attractive prices, filling a market gap, niche design, etc. Once you have chosen your brand’s mission, confront your storytelling idea with it and see if it’s consistent with the previously specified values. This step is very important to help your business grow.

Make use of marketing tools and platforms

Use different platforms and tools to your advantage. Currently, marketers have a much simpler task than a dozen or so years ago. There are platforms for data analytics, designing marketing strategies and market monitoring available to anyone who wants to buy them. Use every opportunity to further develop your brand!

If you operate an online store, ecommerce integrations can be an effective method to get more sales from existing customers and attract new leads. Integrating an ecommerce platform with marketing automation software can help you automate your email marketing campaigns and track the performance of different marketing campaigns. Among the most popular ecommerce integrations is connecting an online store to an email marketing platform by creating automated emails for abandoned shopping carts.