How to Achieve Cross-Channel Synergy in Digital Marketing

“We often hear synergy expressed in overused cliches such as 2 + 2 = 5. While overused and trite, this is not wrong. A better way to express synergy is that it’s the difference between additive and multiplicative. 3 + 3 is 6, but 3×3 is 9. For the same starting materials, we want greater results.”

— christopherspenn.com

For starters, what is synergy? The dictionary definition of “synergy” is:

“...the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.”

To date, synergies have become an integral part of business marketing. For instance, you may have seen brands getting celebrities to endorse their products, sportswear brands joining forces with gyms — or stores selling sport supplements, and beauty salons openly showing their support and appreciation to a certain cosmetics company. With cooperation projects like these, everyone wins: the brand gets new customers from among the celebrity fans and the said celebrity gets a certain sum of money for promoting the brand.

But wait, no need to frantically search for famous bloggers and companies offering partnerships, at least not right away.

Marketing synergy goes far beyond influencer endorsements. Its key idea is to combine a number of different marketing methods, strategies, and techniques so that they mutually reinforce each other and deliver results greater than any individual marketing activity.

High chances are, you already have a number of communication channels that can be used to leverage a marketing synergy for your business. Let’s take a look at some of the marketing channels available in our platform, consider the benefits they offer, and see how you can combine them into an effective omnichannel marketing system.

Combining Direct Marketing Channels into a System

Digital marketing is continuously developing and new ways of communicating with customers appear frequently. Consequently, questions like “Which one is the best?” pop out every other day.

If we try to visualize the process of adopting a new marketing channel, it would look something like this (a visual presentation of a hype cycle by Gartner):
 

At the very beginning, every marketing communications channel has high expectations placed upon them. However, the results are often less than expected, and marketers get disappointed. It’s only after some trial and error that a channel becomes efficient— this and only this is the moment where the marketers come to really see how to efficiently use the channel, and what revenue to expect from it. What it means is that one shouldn’t underestimate any communication channel. It would take some time and effort to understand which channels and activities drive the best results.

High chances are, you’re already using, or considering using, a number of marketing communication channels. Two or more channels is just enough to start leveraging a marketing synergy for your business.That said, no combination is an answer to everything. Take for example: peanut butter and jelly are a classic combo, so are milk and cookies. And still, there are people who simply don’t like PB&J’s. People allergic to peanuts. Lactose intolerant people. Vegans. One cannot simply shove food down people’s throats and hope they’ll love it.

 

Using synergy means constantly monitoring your customers’ behavior and combining the right communication channels based on that behavior. That said, make sure to engage with your audience on a regular basis. Without regular communication, they will forget about you and all your marketing efforts will be in vain.

SMS Text Messaging + Email Marketing Campaigns

The biggest benefit SMS text marketing can offer you is how soon the messages are read. As our mobile phones are always at hand, we often read SMS messages the moment we get a notification.

Email campaigns, on the other hand, provide the possibility to include as much text as you need, add images and links. This type of message will be full with important information and look nice with all the details.
 

So why divide if you can unite? Think of an omnichannel marketing mix where emails and SMS messages work together. In this way, they will negate each other’s drawbacks and strengthen the benefits. This is the answer to the keesynergy question: the two channels complement each other, mutually, and make each other stronger and more efficient through their interconnections.

In this case, the simplest multichannel marketing approach would be to send an email campaign to users who have opted in to receive your emails, and send SMS messages to those who haven’t yet provided their email addresses but shared their phone numbers with you.

Also, if you have their phone number you have the option to call them as part of your marketing efforts. If you receive a large number of calls or make a lot of outgoing calls you may want to look into investing in some software to help your team. There are different call center software types that you could select from and it's best to find which one matches your needs rather than searching for a universal solution.

Another viable option would be to send short, quick text notifications encouraging users to perform a certain action — such as, subscribe for your email list, install your app, or check their emails for more details on your promotion.

Moreover, as you collect more data from different sources, you’ll be able to get a more detailed view of your audience’s preferences and optimize your campaigns for even better efficiency.

Email Marketing + New Website Content

Here’s a combo that will definitely excite your SEO team. There’s a number of ways you can use email marketing to give a significant boost to your search engine optimization results.
 

• Backlinks, a.k.a. inbound links. Understanding how do backlinks work is crucial. Your content will be more attractive to search engines if other quality websites link to it. The more the better, especially if the websites in question themselves have different types of relevant, quality content. In your emails, encourage readers to share links to your content and forward your emails to their friends and colleagues.
• Content promotion. Use your email campaigns to improve the visibility and performance of your content. For example, you can send weekly or monthly newsletters listing the best articles from your blog. This usually leads to the increase of incoming traffic and the number of backlinks.
• Reducing bounce rate. Visitors from email links are generally more engaged and genuinely interested in your content which means that they will stay on your webpage for longer. Which, in its turn, will signal to the search engine that your content is a quality one.

In simple terms, it’s mutually beneficial to share the information you find useful to your subscribers.

Email Marketing + Push Notifications

More often than not, push notifications are used as an additional marketing channel to complement and enhance promo campaigns or as a way to quickly remind customers that an event is closing to an end. Check out the 925.ua jewelry store’s success story for a more detailed example of how to use emails and push notifications to bring back cart abandoners. Yet this is not the only option for leveraging the two channels together.

In the our team’s experience, the combination of email + push notification channels can be a good solution not only for promo campaigns but also for triggered : messages, such as: notifying our clients when their contact lists are successfully exported, or when there are insufficient funds on the account balance. While it is unlikely that a customer will be constantly checking their inbox for messages like that,it is important that they are notified — and here’s where push notifications step in.

Notifications + New Website Content

On the flip side, why have to wait to send out your scheduled email newsletter when you can keep your subscribers updated on new content with prompt notifications? One can’t fit a lot of info in a text message and your customers will hardly wish to listen to a long speech during a phone call. Here, push notifications are a perfect option to quickly get the customer’s attention.

Naturally, the number of customers you have in your database plays a major role here. If only 10% of all subscribers have agreed to receive push notifications from you, this channel won’t be of much use and you’ll need to add alternative means of communication.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

— John Wanamaker, American merchant

Website + Social Media

It’s been a long post, but we’re now getting to a home stretch. Share new posts, updates and other valuable content from your website on your company’s Facebook page, or via other social media networks. Get into the habit of sharing each and every post, regularly and right after it’s been published on the website.
 

This way, your social media pages will get regular updates while blog posts will get loyal readers. And that’s just one of the many ways to marry up your website, news feed, and social media networks — the only limit is your imagination. For instance, you can use “click to share” buttons enabling readers to share or quote your content.

Facebook + Email Campaigns

Speaking of Facebook, there are at least 13 ways you can build a viable synergy between Facebook and email marketing:

1. Add social media buttons to your emails
2. Send a dedicated email inviting customers to follow your social media accounts,
3. Generate email leads through Facebook-based webinar and event forms,
4. Encourage readers to share your emails on Facebook,
5. Run quizzes and surveys,
6. Invite users to sign up to your email newsletter right on your Facebook business page,
7. Create Facebook advertising audiences based on your subscribers’ email addresses,
8. Utilize Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences to expand your audience reach,
9. Gain new leads through Facebook Lead Ads,
10. Direct your Facebook audience to landing pages where they can sign up to access video recordings, slide decks and other valuable content,
11. Add an email subscription form right to your Facebook page,
12. Use emails to promote your Facebook giveaways and vice versa,
13. Reactivate your dormant subscribers using Facebook’s remarketing features.

Bottom Line

Take for example: Publishing links on Facebook brings people to your website where they can opt in for your push notifications or sign up for your email campaigns. Emails, in turn, help generate certain activity on Facebook while push notifications drive the users back to your content and products.Which part is more important? There is no single answer to that., If you skip any one link in this chain, the system will break altogether. This is why marketers need to truly understand the meaning of synergy, and use this understanding to achieve better results without spending any extra resources — in other words, step up their marketing game to a level where they can create a seamless customer experience across all the channels in your marketing mix.

How Can You Use Digital Marketing Synergy to Your Business’ Benefit?

• Expand your brand’s reach by combining different communication channels.
• Create more accurate audience segments. Instead of shooting in the dark, you can engage with people who are predisposed to buy your products or services.
• Save your marketing costs by optimizing your marketing strategy.
• Improve customer satisfaction. You can personalize your content for your customers using the data you have on them.

Stay tuned for more blog posts!