Posted by As late as the last decade, the term synergy was mostly used in reference to mergers and acquisitions to describe the process when two companies merged to form one in order to receive more revenue. To get a better handle on the idea, take a look at the following illustrative examples:
- A tech giant acquires a smaller IT with poor infrastructure but promising marketing team. The smaller company gets new marketing tools, and the bigger company gets the qualified staff that can help formulate new marketing goals and strategies.
- A celebrity becomes an ambassador of a big brand and helps it build a more personalized brand image, protect the reputation and spread the word in their networks and on social media. In return, they get financial benefits, promotion in different regions and greater public visibility.
- A gym chain openly demonstrates appreciation to certain sportswear companies or gym equipment producers. Both parties get access to a client base of each other, increase traffic to their websites and create positive word of mouth.
This list goes on, but today’s concept of synergy has broadened far beyond and has become a vital part of marketing automation service. However, the idea behind it has remained the same – marketing synergy is a combination of various methods and channels engineered to supplement each other and maximize revenue. The result of such interaction is more impressive than that gained by each individual method separately.
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Cross-Channel Combos to Boost Your Marketing Efforts
With customers using more and more channels for interaction with a brand, a synergetic approach to digital marketing carries more significance. Any company willing to be a major player in their industry has already learned to make full use of email marketing automation and employed different cross-channel techniques. However, regardless of the number of channels and their combinations, it is important to remember that marketing synergy should be teamwork rather than inter-channel competition. For example, if your email marketing and SEO approaches do not work together, one channel can suppress the other and lead to inefficiency. On the contrary, teamed up and working toward the same goal, they will back up each other’s efforts, reaching higher rates and responsiveness.
There is no single recipe that will work for any cross-channel techniques. To achieve and maintain results, you will have to select from a menu of different channel ingredients and mix them based on your customers’ fluid behaviour and preferences. The following combos will show where to get started and generate benign conditions for expanding your cross-channel approach.
SMS Text Messaging + Email Marketing Campaigns
| SMS Messages | Emails | |
| Individual Advantages | – Almost all users have mobile phones and can receive SMS messages.
– Mobile phones are always within hand’s reach, and messages are read within seconds after delivery. – Easy to send and do not require graphic editing or testing. – Rarely left unread. |
– Cheap to send.
– No next limits. Can be provided with dynamic content and links. – Email addresses are changed less often. – Promote brand awareness via a recognizable logo and company colours. – Can be made more personalized. – Enables more comprehensive analysis and integration with Google Analytics. |
How to Combine
Email campaigns are cheaper to send. Use mass email service to launch a series of triggered emails and free push notifications, and send SMS only to those recipients who have not read emails. Elsewise, send a short SMS with minimal text to notify about the sent email with more extensive information and all the necessary interactive content and links.
Push Notifications + New Website Content
| Web Push Notifications | New Content | |
| Individual Advantages | – Easy to subscribe to.
– Can include images and CTA buttons. – Can be personalized. – Supported by almost all browsers, and work even if the browser is closed. – Read right after delivery. – Allows accurate targeting. |
– Generates traffic.
– Not limited in text, images or video. – Influences Google rankings. – Promotes new products and services. – Collects personal data and generates subscribers. |
How to Combine
New exciting content backed up by web push automation is a perfect way to attract customers’ attention to new products or services and enrich the subscription list. What text messages lack in volume, they make up for in engagement. Once you have published the content worth sharing, notify your subscribers with a prompt message briefly outlining why readers might be interested in your new post.
Social Media + Email Campaigns
| Social Media | Email Campaigns | |
| Individual Advantages | – Free to use.
– Generate referral traffic to your site. – Include subscription forms. – Encourage feedback and reviews. – Aid with linkbuilding. – Allow to quickly build communities. – Provoke a discussion around your brand. – Feature hashtags to connect like-minded audience. |
– Can include buttons to social media accounts.
– Promote Facebook giveaways and special offers. – Create brand recognition. – Can be automated based on client segmentation. – Keep customers up-to-date. |
How to Combine
Add social media buttons to your emails, or use them to promote Facebook or Instagram giveaways. Add a subscription form to your Facebook and invite to sign up for your newsletters. Ask users to share your newsletters on their pages, comment on them and discuss in their communities.
The number of combinations is not limited to the above examples. You can test different options to see what channels work together better and create greater engagement. Once you have collected more data from every channel, you will be able to employ more accurate segmentation and create more personalized content.
This is a guest post by Iuliia Nesterenko. Iuliia Nesterenko is a contributing writer at eSputnik. Her focus is on exploring current digital marketing trends and describing new strategies for email marketers.