Non-Line Blogging

Many marketers work in a multi-channel world because their customers use different channels to engage with them.  One of the biggest challenges is tracking the off-line to on-line marketing experience; getting people to go on-line is not hard as we can shout "visit our website" in our ads and give them the web address.  But how successful are those campaigns, and how do we attribute on-line success to off-line campaigns?

One option is to create "vanity urls" that we expect people to remember and then type correctly, never mind just googling (or Binging?) the company and campaign key words.  The result is that many successful outcomes will end up being attributed to Mr Google simly because people can't be bothered to type things into address bars any more! If you want a comprehensive run-down of all the multi-channel tracking options then Avinash Kaushik has several posts that cover it admirably.

Here are a couple of examples from the world of retail.  

One quick (old and quaint?) way is to simply stick up a poster and ask people to email somebody.  It ticks most of the registration boxes...its quick, uses universally accessed media and has a simple "value exchange".  You could have different email addresses for regions of retailers, or for different incentives and there is no marginal cost of acquiring a new contact. Its easy to measure the success of these tactics and develop better versions over time. Maybe texting in your email address to a short-code number could tap into a medium that people may hold in their pocket/handbags rather than relying on people jotting down an email address on a scrap of paper and finding it when they got home.

However, Facebook has muscled it's way onto my High Street (Reigate, Surrey, England) with an altogether more robust proposition.  A clothes retailer has created a Facebook group (free, takes 10 minutes), has built a simple value proposition (20% off if you join our group), and now has the chance to push people back in store AND develop a longer term relationship.  In these difficult recessionary times I applaud any retailer who is brave and smart enough to look at exploiting a multi-channel relationship. And with the lovely people at Facebook still blasting out emails to your group members for free, its a pretty cost-efficient way to beat the credit-crunch.