Does Channel Even Matter Anymore? Prove It With an ECHO!

I've heard it said, and I believe it, that the consumer has gone "omnichannel" on us. As customers have taken all the power in which brands they choose to interact with, we've awakened to find ourselves in a world where we—the brands and the marketers behind them—need to be everywhere the customer is. We need to be ready on demand, easily accessed, relevant but not intrusive, poised with an offer, with an ability to listen and interact accordingly, all on top of a product or service that demonstrates value to the customer. The shift to customer centrism—the growth of customer power—probably began before the digital age, but certainly digital was the game-changer. Digital created a real-time, on-demand environment where communities could easily tap and share knowledge. There is a collective intelligence there that, in tandem, empowers individual customers who use it. The result has affected all channels. It's been said that the sole purpose of a business is to create a customer and grow the value of that customer over time. (Using this same reasoning, I doubt that the sole purpose of a charity is to create a donor, but it is to show a need to create a donor, and to make that donor relationship happen and grow.) So in this brave new world, does channel even matter? Former Direct Marketing Association Chief Executive Officer Larry Kimmel (now with hawkeye) once told direct marketers we need to be "channel-agnostic." That is, we need to be willing to understand and accept that our prospects and customers could be anywhere, with wants and needs, so we need to be able to recognize these individuals and communicate with them with relevance and permission—and deliver value to them when and where they are ready to engage. (By the way, relevance—always interpreted from a consumer's perspective—trumps permission. Discuss.) I've always preferred the descriptor "channel fluent" to communicate this same message. Be channel agnostic, yes, but also have the best practices know-how to deploy any channel in an all-channel mix. So BAM! Now we have all these channels, and all this channel data to deal with, and the customer wanting brand interaction and engagement in real time, her wants and needs met, and to move on until she's ready to interact again. How does a chief marketing officer navigate all this ... with success? How should channels be deployed in concert with each other—around the customer? What unique attributes, if any, does any single channel bring to the brand engagement mix? What successful results have been achieved? How can we learn from each other? I believe it's time we take a page from the consumer to establish and share collective intelligence, this time among advertisers and marketers. Enter, the DMA 2013 International ECHO Awards Competition. Does Your Marketing Have What it Takes? Prove It With an ECHO EntrySince its debut in 1929, the ECHOs have evolved with direct-response advertising—in all its channels and all of direct marketing's manifestations. Today, the ECHOs are about the world's best data-driven marketing campaigns—with data informing both strategy and creative, and producing results. Winning campaigns in 2012 came from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The winners represent today's direct marketing—and the winners truly showcase the best in channel-fluency performance. For 2013, Winners will be selected in 15 business categories, including three new categories in consumer products, education, and professional services, as well as automotive; business and consumer services; communications and utilities; financial products and services; information technologies; insurance; nonprofit; pharmaceutical and healthcare; product manufacturing and distribution; publishing and entertainment; retail and direct sales; and travel and hospitality/transportation. Channels represented among the winning campaigns will cover the media landscape: alternative media, catalog, direct mail, email, mobile, print, search engine marketing, social media, telemarketing, television/video/radio, Web advertising and Web development. Entries may represent single channel success—but increasingly entries reflect integrated marketing deployments, not necessarily "omnichannel," but moving toward this customer expectation. This year's call for entries is now open, under the theme "The Ultimate Team Award" (campaign credits to Quinn Fable Advertising, New York, NY). Information on the ECHOs is posted at http://dma-echo.org/index.jsp. The deadline is May 3, so let's get started on building 2013's version of marketing excellence collective intelligence—to share how and when channels matter. I'll have more to share on the ECHOs in future posts here at "Marketing Sustainably," but get started today on proving how direct marketing matters, and matters most, in creating and engaging customers everywhere.

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Does Channel Even Matter Anymore? Prove It With an ECHO!

Chet Dalzell

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Chet Dalzell