Why use one channel when six will do?

By SIMON HENDERY marketing writer

In jargon the concept is multi-channel marketing.

In layman's terms it is the art of using new technologies to better target customers.

For the world's biggest fastfood chain, it is about selling more burger combos, something it managed to do earlier this year through a local "McText" campaign.

Customers who bought a McDonald's combo were given a code to type into their mobiles and a promise that one in five who sent off a text message would win an instant prize.

Did the campaign work? As McDonald's marketing manager, Jason Paris, told a multi-channel marketing seminar in Auckland this week: "Twenty-five per cent of people who own a mobile phone in New Zealand had a go."

The campaign increased customers' average spend by encouraging them to splash out on a combo to get their text code ticket, and "now we have a database of tens of thousands of McDonald's customers to re-market to", Paris said.

The campaign lesson was, "go over the top with attention to detail".

Half way through the campaign, it emerged that the wrong end-date for the promotion had been entered into the system - erroneous text messages told customers they were too late for the promotion even though it was still in full swing.

Fraud was an issue - 900 winning tickets were cashed in from one particular mobile.

"No matter how smart you think you are, the customer is always smarter and we learned that," says Paris.

His advice to corporates and marketers wanting to test the security of their system: demonstrate the technology you're planning to implement to your teenage daughter's "ratbag boyfriend" and ask him how he'd get around it.

Despite the pitfalls, Paris is enthusiastic about multi-channel marketing, saying it is a step towards the holy grail of marketing - being able to give customers what they want before they know they want it.

Tuesday's conference, called Hello6 - that's Hello to the power of six - attracted an audience of more than 100. It was touted as an early example of multi-channel marketers coming out of the closet.

"These [multi-channel] campaigns result from the application and integration of relatively new technologies which marketers are now coming to grips with," said Steve Shearman, a director of multi-channel marketing technology company Touchpoint, one of the seminar's sponsors.

"The technology has moved out of the IT department and onto the desks of people who want to put it to work."

Trevor Moodie, a director of Robbins Brandt Richter, told the seminar his agency's campaign for Propecia hair restorer used television, print, point-of-sale, a website, email, direct mail, and a call centre to reach customers.

A major challenge was to keep customers interested for six months, the time it took to see the benefits of the product.

Through the website customers could customise how the company communicated with them and set daily text message reminders to take their pills and texted or emailed reminders to organise their next GP visit to renew prescriptions.

Telecom Directories senior product manager Lynne Le Gros said a call-centre sales drive to promote enhanced Yellow Pages listings on the internet, followed up by emails to prospective customers, had yielded a 175 per cent return on investment.

The combination of telemarketing and email worked well, she said, because most businesses had email access and preferred it as a convenient way to do business.

Brave New World general manager Marcus Hawkins-Adams said an email and internet component on the annual Weet-Bix Kids Tryathlon helped generate record entries for the event last year.

Congratulatory emails sent out after the event generated a high rate of return to the website.

WOW Rapp Collins managing director Richard Bleasdale said the company's award-winning campaign for the Smirnoff Half Day Off had demonstrated that text messaging and email "are the new word of mouth".

WRC's campaign used "viral activity" emails and texts to spread word of the event through the target group.

Quirky "web-mercials" featuring office workers' unusual behaviour to get out of half a day's work captured the imagination of those who received them, and they in turn forwarded them to friends.

Bleasdale said while the new technology behind multi-channel marketing allowed return on investment to be measured much faster, it was important to remember that the technology was simply the enabler of a good idea.

It could not replace the idea itself.