Companies with omnichannel (integrated touchpoints) customer engagement strategies retain on average 89% of their customers compared to 33% for companies multi-channel (non-integrated touchpoints) customer engagement. But only 14% of organizations say they are currently running coordinated marketing campaigns across all channels.
What does that mean for blood centers? It means that we have to put more of an emphasis on identifying the channels donors are using and commit to creating an integrated strategy that increases the success of the program as a whole, without getting distracted with individual channel results.
It's like baking the perfect blueberry muffins on Sunday mornings. I use ten different ingredients to craft the most decadent muffins:
- 1⁄2 cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1⁄4 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups gluten free flour
- 1⁄2 cup milk
- 2 1⁄2 cups fresh blueberries
- 1 handful dark chocolate chips
These ingredients work together to create a breakfast treat that I keep making again and again. But, if I miss one ingredient, the baking powder for example, the recipe doesn't work nearly as well.
If I had to judge the success of my blueberry muffins on the taste of baking powder alone, I would turn my head in disgust every time. I might even consider ditching that ingredient altogether because it tastes so bad alone.
This is so similar to the judgement of an integrated omnichannel marketing strategy. Let's pretend that your blood center is using the following channels to recruit blood donors:
- Direct mail
- SMS/Text
- Telerecruitment
- Retargeting
- Website
Let's say that retargeting is the baking powder of this strategy. Alone, retargeting might deliver dismal results - as little as 2 clicks per 1000 impressions. But when you stand back and look at the recipe as a whole, retargeting plays a huge role in the overall success of your recruitment.
Just as the baking powder adds air bubbles to help my blueberry muffins rise, retargeting can help increase the likeliness of a donor to open an email or click on your blood center's Facebook post. If we omit either of those ingredients in our recipes, the whole campaign and breakfast will likely fail.
We need to stop judging our marketing results within isolated segments and instead look at the integrated campaign's performance as a whole.