• by Erick Mott , March 16, 2009

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the coordination of a variety of promotional vehicles and tactics and multiple stages in a campaign to ensure that marketing messages are consistently received and acted upon by the greatest number of people in target market segments.

IMC has evolved, given that there are new, interactive channels and technologies, including social networking sites, online services and mobile devices. However, these new channels and related technologies are not under the full control of marketers or their businesses, which creates both challenges and opportunities. The earlier-defined discipline of IMC has evolved into integrated marketing, which includes a wide variety of analytics, business processes, channels, deliverables, teaming practices and technology solutions integrated with software-as-a-service (SaaS) as a platform.

Mobility is a driving force today because end-users have more choices as to when, where and how they engage with brands, products, services and people. Further, online conversations and tones (vs. sales pitches) are becoming more influential. This requires a shift in how marketers think, collaborate and measure performance across channels, teams and disciplines to best engage and respond to target audiences throughout relationship life cycles. Shifts of this nature often require organizational adjustments, education and breaking down issues into intuitive topics and scalable best practices.

All marketing strategies and campaigns include key messages and supporting content that are being distributed and accessed via email, social and mobile channels. Many of your prospects and customers are reading email-marketing campaigns on PCs and mobile phones, then sharing and discussing perspectives and concepts stemming from your content and intent with their communities via social networking sites and media. The exponential sharing continues when these perspectives, comments and conversations resonate with other people, creating and benefitting from the network effect.

Your campaigns and marketing operations may not be currently optimized to manage, measure and monetize this level of information sharing and engagement online, but it is influencing business results. Consider integrated marketing strategies and tactics that apply "tri-messaging" -- a catalyst for conversations and interactions across multiple channels.

Tri-messaging is marketing messages that are written, packaged, orchestrated and unleashed for email, social and mobile channels. An example of tri-messaging is a subject line, Tweet and mobile text. All three have common denominators: They're easy to consume, pique interest and stimulate action. However, tri-messaging is not just about crafting short messages. It is about understanding how audiences today prefer to engage, interact with and discuss issues, brands, products and services.

There are five significant forces that will continue to influence the way marketers strategize and execute awareness, demand generation, commerce and retention campaigns:

• People engage and solve problems with conversations. More people are interacting online with a wider range of devices.

• Email has become a way of life. Millions of people worldwide rely on email as a primary communication channel, because it's a proven and acceptable way to communicate.

• Networks become more valuable with increased user adoption. Positive network effect is influenced by the quality and quantity of end-users, content and connections.

• People demand ubiquity and immediacy with laptops, online services and mobile phones. Modern society has come to rely on anywhere, anytime communications and computing -- an irreversible trend with economies of scale.

• Social media and networking fulfills an innate need to connect with others. This is especially true in a recession as people and businesses strive to create and sustain rewarding relationships through affordable strategies.

Tri-messaging is an integrated marketing best practice for organizations to listen, interact with and serve audiences via email, social and mobile channels. This approach facilitates conversations, commerce and loyalty that can be managed, measured and monetized.