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I recently had the chance to interview a well known analyst in our industry and the author of "Multichannel Marketing," Akin Arikan. Multichannel Marketing was released this past April, and Akin's focus was to help marketers understand how to fully leverage/measure the various forms of marketing.

Below is a recap of my interview with Akin Arikan. You can purchase your own copy of the book here.


[Manoj]: Can you start by providing some insight into your motivations for writing the book: "Multichannel Marketing" and how you came across the concept?

[Akin Arikan]: This book hit me over the head and said: “Write me, dummy!” In my day to day work at Unica, I come in touch with marketers from both online and offline disciplines. This led to a couple of “doh” moments:

• I would ask online vs. offline marketers how many are talking with their counterparts in the other world. But I would get only very few hand raisers.
   


• Sometimes, I would hear web analysts get excited about newer methods (such as A/B testing) while learning from offline marketers that they have been doing the same thing for a very long time already but using different jargon (e.g. Champion-Challenger).


• At other times, I would hear marketers from each camp use the same jargon (e.g. Life Time Value), but mean very different things.

So, a voice in the dark said to me: Hmmm…what if these guys shared the sophisticated methods that each has developed in their own confines? Some things that we think are difficult in one marketing discipline can be solved more easily (or better) by borrowing from another marketing discipline where the question has already been solved.

[Manoj]: How important is it for an organization (or an Analyst) to understand the different channels of marketing when making business decisions?

[Akin Arikan]: It is this key to unlocking the most anticipated marketing strategies today.

Marketing Accountability, for instance! How could you be accountable for your marketing results if you don’t measure conversions across all channels? Or, how can you be accountable if you claim credit for conversions online/offline that should really be credited to someone else’s work?

Dialog marketing is another case. How can marketers engage in a meaningful dialog with their customers when they keep missing parts of the conversation, namely the parts that happen on another channel?

[Manoj]: Please elaborate on the paradigm changes for Multichannel Analytics between Brand Marketers vs. Direct Marketers vs. Web Analysts.

[Akin Arikan]: Ah, a very fun question!

Let’s imagine what our online world would be like if it was more similar to the world that traditional brand marketers have to grapple with. Imagine that the banner ads that you can buy on the Internet a.) did not allow you to create any hyperlink from the banner to a web site, and b.) also didn’t allow setting cookies to track view-throughs later on. And, now, you are supposed to figure out whether these ad banners are paying off, and even whether they are more effective on the NY Times web site or on AOL. How would you go about it? You don’t know which buyers were exposed to your ads, how often, nor where.

Brand advertising analysts have found ways to do their job despite this uncertainty. Some of the methods they have invented are Marketing Mix Modeling, surveys, and panels.

Now, let’s imagine the Internet was more like direct marketing in the offline world. Say you have been put in charge of your company’s email program. But in this parallel world, you get charged $3 per email that you send out. Wow! Immediately you would start analyzing which customers/prospects are worth the $3 and which are not. That could lead you to sort your customers by things like their life time value, or their recency of interaction with you, etc. Immediately, you would think twice of blasting the same email to everyone. But you would carefully ponder what offer is most likely to resonate with each recipient.

This is why in direct marketing, and especially the variant that is called relationship marketing, there is something called “customer decisioning”. This is at the heart of the analytics here and all marketing is triggered from it. Unlike common practice in web analytics today, direct marketers analyze their customers even more than they analyze campaigns, creative, etc.

There is much more to say. But let me close by pointing out that email really is not “free” today. That is to say, every irrelevant marketing email that we get makes us yell “spam” and ignore future messages by the same marketer.

[Manoj]: Chapters 6 and 7 are heavily focused on the measurement and relationships of Offline/Online marketing - do organizations still have a difficult time understanding how to leverage these 2 mediums in parallel?

[Akin Arikan]: Very much so and at all levels. For example, how many web analysts are tracking offline conversions from online activity or vice versa?

But it isn’t just analysts who are still figuring this out. For instance, an insurance company launched a new product recently by concentrating 90% of their marketing spend on TV and displaying a phone number in their commercials for the audience to respond through. The marketers were unprepared however when they found that 40% of viewers instead responded by going online. Next time they will make sure to get the web site consistent with the TV commercials ahead of a launch.

[Manoj]: Is there any processes or best practices marketers can create to handle the new channels that show up in the future?

[Akin Arikan]: Most important process is to realize that customers don’t think of channels but only care about getting their task completed regardless through which channel.

Second most important is to make sure that marketers that are responsible for different channels coordinate with each other and ideally of course integrate their metrics as soon as feasible.

In my book I found it helpful to categorize channels into various types so that you can derive back whether techniques from online, direct, or brand marketing will be most helpful for integrating a new channel into the mix.

[Manoj]: What are the most important things that readers will understand after reading "Multichannel Marketing"

[Akin Arikan]: Haven’t we online and offline marketers often criticized each others metrics and felt a lot of mistrust? Well, after reading this book we will hopefully understand each others jargon and points of view better. This should be the beginning of a new partnership within the marketing team. Reunite what belongs together! Break down artificial separations between the online and offline.

Of course, the heart of the book is a reference for metrics and measurement across channels + how to use them for integrated marketing. But even if readers don’t implement cross-channel metrics right away, hopefully the book will leave them hungry to got get some pizza with their counterparts in the other marketing teams.

You know, if I was a smarter guy I would have asked the book publisher to attach some Pizza Hut coupons to the back cover.

Akin is the author of Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success. He is also an evangelist at Unica Corporation, responsible for Unica's web analytics and Internet marketing solutions. Akin has been working in the web analytics space over the last eight years now. Read Akin's blog at http://multichannelmetrics.com/ or on CustomerThink where he is a member of the advisory board. Contact Info: AAriksan@Unica.com

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