The terms Cross-channel and Multi-channel marketing are confused by many professional marketers. For many they are two different ways to say the same thing, but for more and more savvy marketers they are two very distinct things.

Multi-channel marketing is the traditional use of various marketing channels but still inside their own private silo. You will see email marketers trying to claim more clicks, conversions, or sales revenue and you will hear the same chant from your direct mail vendor, your SEO vendor, SM vendor, mobile vendor, and any other channel you might deploy. These channels run independently of the others. Furthermore you will most often see actual competition where one channel is trying to claim victory over the other channels. Instead of working together, they independently chase a client’s marketing dollar.

Cross-channel marketing, on the other hand, is all about the synergy of working together to come out with a better result than any one channel could independently. More marketers understand that there is truly a mix and if done correctly a synergy that should be striven for. It is far less about final attribution and more about the path. Some are now calling it the
“customer journey.” We’re not smart enough to come up with those kinds of precious terms, but we do see the value of understanding how things should and need to work better together. Again that is why you now see the USPS actively working with other channels because they have seen this as well.

It is our humble opinion that marketers need to find partners who are not one-dimensional and if they can’t offer various channel services then they at least are open to working closely with them. Social media, email, mobile marketing and more need to be added to this mix as they become available. Big Data is allowing marketers to track these interactions and unequivocally show why these various channels need to get off their isolated islands and start working together. Marketers should look for partners who understand this cross-channel methodology and bring more than one tactic to the table!