• by Larissa Faw , Staff Writer, June 6, 2016

Today's marketing increasingly requires cross channel synergies with technology, email, digital, and data specialists working together to improve the customer experience, according to panelists at a session during MediaPost’s Email Insider Summit on Monday. 

During the session, “Rise of the Cross Channel Strategist,” Adobe's Bridgette Darling, Visa's Mary Grundy, PGA Tour's Kristie Reeves, and Etsy's Matt Sperling discussed effective tactics to reach today's consumers in complex data environments involving multiple touchpoints, silos, and hundreds of customer data points. The session was moderated by Out of My Gord Consulting’s Gord Hotchkiss. 

"I tell myself daily that the elephant is eaten one bit at a time," jokes Kristie Reeves, senior marketer, database manager, PGA Tour. There may be a lot of information that brands are able to collect from consumers, but that shouldn't scare them from capturing as much as possible. The PGA Tour, for instance, began collecting behavioral marketing information years before it became an obvious source to target consumers.  My team would ask "why would we want to know that?" says Reeves before explaining that you never know what may matter tomorrow.  

Another challenge is reacting to acquired information in real time. Visa, for example, retargets to interested consumers via Facebook, but it doesn't receive this information immediately which hinders its ability to customize content. "I would send a different message if I knew someone made a purchase or was just clicking on information in the email," says Visa’s Grundy.  

Data also becomes stale. Etsy's Sperling jokes that data is like a car's MSRP that loses its value as soon as it leaves the lot. Instead, his platform relies on segmentation that attempts to collect information based on life specific events. For instance, if someone is looking at wedding products, other data points may provide insight that the buyer is buying a gift for an upcoming wedding rather than be someone who is just obsessed with wedding dresses. Therefore, Etsy wouldn't send her emails based on weddings continually afterward. "We are trying to get the fuller story," he says.  

Still, there is a fine line between useful information and data overload. PGA Tour's priority once was to simply collect as many names as possible in order to then bombard them with emails. The tour would send one email every day until recipients bought tickets. Even then, it was hard to collect relevant information on buyers. "We don't have a single point-of-sale," says Reeves. "You could buy one ticket or five and then give four of them away and we wouldn't know their names." However, this strategy resulted in the group being blacklisted. "It was a painful learning curve," says Reeves. Instead, the PGA Tour refined its process to better communicate relevant information to receptive consumers. 

Panelists admit that their challenges are also internal. Although the gap between technology and marketing is narrowing, there are still silos within their organizations that hinder transformation. To address that Visa has shifted strategy related to talent, with specialization now being a priority. "We are coming back to a depth of knowledge," says Grundy.  

The panelists all agree that the amount of information collected from consumers provides new opportunities to reach them on an individual level in contextually relevant ways. "It's a one-to- one profile; not just a list," says Abode's Darling who adds that the data influx if properly segmented may eliminate the need to generalize about broad clusters like millennials or baby boomers. "This is the most exciting cross channel opportunity," says Darling. "The customer landscape is aware we are following them and they are open and want to be targeted [if] interactions match up to consistent [and relevant] communications."