The digital marketing budgets allotted are exponentially growing year over year & many marketers are on the lookout for better integrated omnichannel promotional opportunities.

The promotional spending is widely scattered in many organizations across many of the digital channels. Moreover, the data insights remain in silos which further aggravates the challenges before the marketer.

To build a holistic digital marketing plan, the processes for customer acquisition, engagement, and retention have to be nurtured in a single thread rather thinking about each step as it evolves through.

The marketer should set realistic goals. For example, what exactly I am planning to do with the 100 new members who registered with my website today. Otherwise, it includes what are my communication strategies for the 10 customers who transacted today.

Before selecting any technology partner who will support you to accomplish your digital communication goals, you need to follow few steps.

And, the first step is that you need a well-charted out organizational digital marketing plan which is percolated across all internal stakeholders.

Setting the “Digital Goals” in line with your Organisational Goal

Before going the digital way, the business houses need to ask some basic questions. For example, Which are the online activities befitting your business model? Which communication channel best suits your business goals? What will be my ROI definition for each channel?

A precise understanding of each channel and its benefits is the heart of your digital media planning. For example, let’s have a quick review of two major channels – email marketing and social media marketing.

In spite of being the forerunner to many of the new-gen digital formats, email is still considered as the trusted communication channel globally. People still spend a significant amount of time reading their emails.

Email accounts outnumber social media accounts. It is due to the fact that an email account is mandatory for getting registered to any social media. Therefore, email as a promotional as well as a communicational tool is an inevitable part of the media mix for many corporates.

The measurement of social media footprints is different from that of email footprints. The former measures engagement of the customers in terms of reach, followers, likes, tweets, or shares. And the latter measures the subscribers, open rates, and clicks.

 If you fail to have a social strategy in place, there is no doubt – you are missing a major pie of your digital media plan. Social promotions play a major role not only in brand recollection. Moreover, it also enhances brand affinity and helps to build customer engagement.

Now as the marketer decides on the role of each channel, we need to face some hurdles. It is to identify a partner who best fits your requirement and budget. There are many technology solutions available and each solution provider will have its own core competencies.

The best recommendation will be to go with a Growth Marketing Suite where you should get the flexibility to choose the channels of your choice. This is the case if you are a start-up or someone new to digital marketing or even a medium-level enterprise.

Most importantly the platform should support in-depth macro level and granular data analytics. Because these are considered as the heart of your digital marketing activities.

The platform should be agile in terms of channels. It should preferably have predictive capabilities as AI-based customer targeting is the future of digital marketing.

Omni-channel promotions help the marketer to create a more holistic and contextual user experience. This leads to multi-fold customer engagement and revenue opportunities.