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This days im interested in EcommerceThe most-simple way to cross channel is that it’s the inverse of a multi-channel, siloed approach where plans and actions occur in relative isolation. This is happening today in many businesses, where separate teams aligned to mobile, social media and email collaborate little, if at all.

Recognizing the Problem

Explained to any digital marketer, the logic of cross channel resonates yet it’s also acknowledged that the current state was unavoidable. The pace of innovation in digital marketing has been such that adding abilities trumped more time consuming integration considerations.

If you are a digital marketer, you know first-hand how this played out. A lot of brand marketers jumped to the conclusion they required an iPhone app or marketing leaders prioritized building a following on Twitter or Facebook because the competition had done so first. Another marketer may have tacked a text message call to action to the end of a promotional project as an afterthought. Services companies and point products for digital marketing have done admirable jobs creating urgency to move on nearly anything “mobile” lest you permanently fall behind the curve.

Before disconnected efforts become too entrenched however, marketing leaders should recognize some challenging byproducts of marketing silos. First, separate people, products, databases and processes all pointed at driving desirous consumer behavior effectively compete with one another. The inefficiencies of such an environment should be also apparent.

Second, consumers are exposed to some 3,000 marketing messages every day from various sources and different channels (per Symphony/IRI research). A “message quagmire” drags down the performance of everyone’s marketing efforts.

Thirdly, consumer adoption of smartphones increases daily and the devices are used for all manner of activities, at any time or place. In fact, you could say the mobile device is becoming the primary digital interface between consumers and business on a mass scale.

Inefficiencies in digital marketing efforts beget real redundancies in consumer touches, which in turn fight for attention with marketing messages from other sources. Response rates and campaign ROI suffer over time. Given expertise in how consumers use mobile devices, mobile marketers are uniquely positioned to steer their companies to better outcomes.

Mobile Marketers Take the Lead

With expertise in how consumers use mobile devices, mobile marketers have a chance to lead their companies in the right direction. Soon every business will need a “conductor” to orchestrate customer relationship strategies targeting the mobilized consumer. The mobile marketer could be that person.
Cross channel marketing is neither an abstract business school concept nor a rip and replace technology solution. It simply makes sense, but getting started requires a step-wise approach that begins to unwind siloed digital marketing efforts. Fortunately, there are a number of ways mobile marketers can demonstrate the value of cross channel marketing as a step toward broader adoption.

Start and end with customer Experience: Cross channel marketing creates better experiences for consumers by recognizing everyone has channel preferences and that different channels bring strengths and weaknesses to the task. Two examples of easy-to-implement cross channel approaches include leveraging the email subscription list to build the mobile subscriber base, and taking advantage of the reach of text messaging combined with the viral qualities of social media. Although to execute conceptually, these efforts require specialized software optimized for mobile interactions and that have value added ties to other channels.

Leverage the email list: Most companies have long established and lists of opted in email subscribers. These customers deserve an opportunity to opt into mobile communications, offers and other calls to action. Adding a link in an email update that takes consumers to an opt in form is often all that is necessary, along with an incentive such as registering for mobile alerts, offers or finding the nearest location to make a purchase. This form should be tied directly to the mobile marketer’s system to automatically build up the mobile opt-in list.

What’s in it for the email team? Email communications are challenged by competition with other messages in jammed-up email in boxes, and a tie to mobile can alert subscribers to look out for a message. Later, the email and mobile teams can work together to develop higher response marketing campaigns that take advantage of the best attributes of each channel (email as visual/explanatory, mobile and text as timely, portable and universal).

Create a mobile/social campaign: Cross channel campaign management systems optimized for mobile interactions take advantage of the large reach afforded by text message communications and the viral qualities of social media. Sweepstakes are a popular text message campaign-type that can be deployed to Twitter followers in such a way that contest posts may be forwarded or retweeted. In the process, followers broadcast the promotion to many consumers outside the marketer’s social network, who may be influenced to follow the marketer’s brand and also participate in the promotion. The mobile marketer creates a higher performing promotion while the social media team grows its base of followers.

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(Editor’s note: Byron Deeter is a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

The modern chief marketing officer is as much a scientist as he or she is an artist.

The role is one that’s rapidly evolving these days thanks to advanced new technologies that grant marketing professionals to track, target and measure their company’s spend. At Bessemer, we see many of the CMOs as “quant jocks” – not creative types ordinarily concerned with creating attractive print ads or snappy videos. Top CMOs get the creative, but also comprehend how to use the latest high-tech tools to maximize marketing programs and convert potential customers into buyers.

Those tools make CMOs more powerful because they can directly attribute actions to results. It’s now possible to track the vast majority of customer-influence points, rather than just the final keyword or e-mail that triggered an online purchase.

To wit: What if a prospective customer types “Diapers.com” into Google and unknowingly clicks on a paid link, instead of the SEO-optimized link? This would be an inaccurate attribution of value in the final sale, thanks to Google’s smart SEM technology. The customer already knew the company’s name, so another marketing touch point, like a branded display ad or an e-mail marketing campaign, must have initiated the consumer’s interest in the company, and deserves partial credit for the purchase. Technology providers like Convertro enable advertisers to precisely the value of each interaction with its customers.

CMOs often find that targeted display ads, not Google AdWords, drive actual purchases. An emerging trend that takes advantage of this is called retargeting. This practice e-commerce websites to selectively target shoppers who have previously visited their website and viewed products, but left without completing a purchase. Here’s a real world example:

Noodling around Zappos.com one day, you find a pair of shoes you like. You add them to your shopping cart, but get distracted before purchasing and click away from the site. Two days later, you might be reading an article on Yahoo! News and see a display ad touting those exact shoes (or a similar, pair), possibly including a promotion.

This is personalized retargeting. And these ads are far more relevant and effective than non-targeted ones. Today’s Web users are starting to see relevant ads, click the links and conveniently make a purchase, rather than wasting time revisiting multiple sites.

One of the largest personalized retargeting companies is Criteo, which actually grants its customers to re-acquire these uncommitted shoppers on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, rather than the traditional cost-per-thousand (CPM) model of display advertising. This lets marketing executives pay only for results – like they do on Google.

For marketing departments, this is the combination of the pay-for-performance model of SEM and the branding impact of traditional display advertising (since even free impressions that don’t result in a click generates brand awareness!).

Given the strong ROI of re-targeting, we strongly believe the vast majority of medium and big e-commerce companies globally will be using this relatively new form of on the web marketing within the next 18 months. (For a more thorough argument, see a white paper we put together called “Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws of E-Commerce”.)

Targeted display ads are just the beginning, though. There is far greater monetization potential, for example, when someone books a first-class ticket to Hawaii through an online-travel site. The consumer’s individual cookie data associated with the flight purchase may subsequently be used to identify the purchaser as affluent, and help hotel chains show the shopper display ads for luxury Hawaiian accommodations, or to offer high-end auto rentals in Maui.

We’re also seeing the emergence of advertising exchanges like Google’s AdX, Microsoft’s AdECN, or Yahoo’s Right Media taking advantage of this “renaissance of display.” On these exchanges, display inventory can be purchased on a per-impression basis. Separate data exchanges such as BlueKai and eXelate allow buyers to purchase segment data independent of impressions, and manage their own, targeted buys.

Although the consumer market is leading the charge, we’ve seen exciting companies like Bizo and Eloqua emerge to allow data-driven, display targeting and marketing automation for B2B customers as well. Even though B2B buys typically have much longer sales cycles than consumer purchases, the buy value is much larger. Thus, the value of influencing a buying process also is quite high.

B2B sales and marketers can segment and target prospects on any site they visit, whether the Wall Street Journal or a local community sports site, and track their entire digital signature through every stage of the buying process.

That’s good news. The cost of traditional, offline media remains exorbitant for many companies. A one-time quarter-page ad in the print Wall Street Journal, for instance, runs $55,000. Those costs aren’t going down – and, in the long run, may further prod the adoption of innovative, performance-based online-marketing tools from the next generation of marketing-technology providers.

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