One of the keys to succeeding in cross media marketing is “relevance.” If you religiously follow marketing blogs and news sites, you have probably read more than enough articles and posting about “relevance.” If not, here are some postings/articles you should consider reading:

Relevance in Marketing - Rohit Bhargava @ WebProNews
The Importance of Marketing Relevance - William King @ Content Caboodle
B2B Marketing in 2010: Focus on Three Key Issues - Mark Eardley @ The Long Hello
Email marketing content ‘to become more relevant’ - @ DirectNews
This is Getting Personal… - Michael Fleischner @ The Marketing Blog

The thing is, most of them only review the importance of relevance, and very few actually explore the logistics of implementation. I recently came across an article on DM News that focuses on the three biggest hurdles to achieving relevance in marketing:

1. Companies don’t fully understand the value in enhancing message relevance
2. Data is not organized to generate better insights on customers
3. Lack of knowledge and experience to analyze data and yield optimal results on customer insight.

The articles offers insightful advice on clearing each hurdle.

Working for a technology provider, I would like to elaborate a little on the advice on the clearing of the second hurdle. The articles suggest that investing in the right technology is critical. The options are to invest in building an IT infrastructure and manage it internally or to fully outsource all efforts to a marketing service provider (MSP) that already has a solution.

No matter if the plan is to implement and manage a solution internally or to outsource to a MSP that uses a reputable solution, there are several things you should consider before making the final decision.

Aside from the obvious cost and efficiency, here are a few others:

• Does the solution/technology offer cross channel integration? If yes, what are and how many channels?
• What are the limitations to personalized content?
• How is data managed? Does the solution provide a data template?
• Can the solution be integrated with an existing CRM or other applications?
• Is there ‘around the clock’ support available for the solution?

For more details on these points, check out this post.

I hope you find the posts and articles useful.

-Willv

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