A recent wave of acquisitions of social media start ups by prominent email marketing firms is a clear sign that companies are seeing the benefits of integrating social media with other forms of digital marketing. Social media can catalyze deeper business relationships and move people closer to a purchasing decision, and these email firms have capitalized on the opportunity.
This week, leading email marketing vendor Constant Contact acquired Nutshell Mail, a company that allows small businesses and organizations to interact with customers on social media platforms directly from their inboxes. Competitor ExactTarget purchased CoTweet, a provider of enterprise solutions for Twitter and said the acquisition will allow it to complete an “interactive marketing hub” for a single source of client contact.
The move away from companies merely offering one form of digital marketing ability to a model where they offer integrated digital marketing strategy is encouraging, because consumers and businesses do not view their interactions and purchasing behavior in silos. Understanding someone’s activity and preferences across several channels provides much more comprehensive insight into the behaviors that eventually culminate in a purchase.
Also, increasing the amount and variety of data a company can gather about the way its messages are being perceived across channels increases the company’s ability to demonstrate the ROI of its interactions. Social media campaigns have always suffered from a low level of insight into how the community interaction that takes place on social networks affects actual purchases. Integration with email lists and other systems allows for more detailed tracking of the value of prospects encountered through social media.
I fully expect the trend of integration of online marketing services to continue as businesses look to connect and streamline how they connect with customers across multiple online media. Continuing to refine the process for determining ROI of digital marketing is crucial in the evolution of the industry.
