32% of UK Companies Consider Their Multi-Channel Marketing Effective

Knowing the path and walking it are two different things, as a popular film hero once said. Placed within a marketing context related to channel integration, this could be taken to mean that UK companies are fully aware of how important an integrated marketing approach is but they are still taking baby steps in that direction.

Given the multitude of channels that need to be brought together into a cohesive whole, the amount of work that has to be done is considerable and the task is being made even more difficult by the lack of a clearly formulated strategy. This is seen as the biggest obstacle to delivering effective multichannel marketing campaigns, as research from Econsultancy and Responsys has found.

The Cross-Channel Marketing Report prepared by the two firms is their first of this kind and uses information from a global survey among 650-plus digital marketers from company marketing departments and agencies.

According to the findings, only 32% of the companies used either “excellent” or “good” to describe their ability to produce and implement coordinated cross-channel marketing campaigns. As mentioned earlier, the lack of a clearly formulated strategy is considered the main hurdle before achieving success in that area, with 25% of companies citing it as such. With a score of 23%, a sub-par organisational structure came next on the list, followed by disparate technologies on 14%.

Meanwhile, the survey results highlighted the benefits of integrating display advertising into different channels. Some 59% stated that conversion rates had improved after integration of display advertising with social media, while 55% said the same for integration with mobile.