In the first quarter of 2011, Gleanster   conducted the Multi-Channel Marketing Management Survey in which CMO’s were asked to select the two most effective communications channels.

Traditional marketing tools beat out newer tools by a wide margin. Why? The survey report concludes that one of the major reasons is that most companies have not yet invested the time required to develop expertise in best practices, execution and measurement for social media.

In highly regulated industries like financial services, health care, and insurance, the percentages were even higher, with 91% or more of the survey respondents picked “traditional” marketing methods like email, microsites and landing pages, and print collateral or direct mail as their most effective tools.

Nearly every organization with a multi-channel sales strategy faces some common headaches. Corporate marketing needs to control the message and monitor results, and local offices need the ability to quickly customize a range of sales tools for their own prospects. And neither has the time for a complex, difficult to use system.

Technology that makes it easy for field and local agents to find, customize and personalize all kinds of marketing messages while enforcing brand and regulatory standards is needed to streamline multi-channel marketing so that sales teams can deliver the increased revenues companies need.  Ask yourself what channels are working best for your organization — and then ask whether or not things would be easier if you had a distributed marketing platform that streamlined your multi-channel marketing efforts.

Here are six things to consider when looking at the multi-channel marketing process:

• Do you have to pull your tracking reports and results from multiple systems — or wait for field teams to report back? If so, you’re wasting time.
• Do your local sales people spend time creating their own materials because the process for getting corporate materials customized or localized takes too long?  If so, they’re wasting time.
• Do your legal and compliance team spend time reviewing every email campaign before it’s sent, or does your marketing automate compliance?  If you don’t have a system that enforces compliance, then you’re running the risk of serious regulatory problems down the road — or else you’re missing out on the power of customized, personalized messages because you’ve got locked-down process that mandates compliance at the cost of better results.
• Do you have a single portal for all marketing materials with built-in usage and results tracking for real-time reports?  If not, then you’re missing out on powerful analytics that can improve your return on marketing investment (ROMI).
• Do you have a connected system, where local, field, regional, and corporate marketing and sales teams can communicate with each other and with prospects and customers, instantly?  If not, are you engaged in a one-way conversation where marketing constantly exhorts sales to use the latest campaign, sell more, and deliver better analytics?
• If direct mail and print collateral are important in your marketing, can your field and local sales people order just the printed pieces they need — or are you still delivering bales of brochures that may wind up in landfills?  If you offer on-demand printing, how are your co-op and promotional points managed and measured — and is that part of your multi-channel marketing platform, or is it a separate system to buy, maintain, and manage?

The more powerful your distributed marketing platform is, the better your results can be.  And a single system that reduces the number of links in your multi-channel marketing process will save time and money while streamlining the road to better results.