A widely published study conducted this year indicates that 46% of marketers intend to integrate social media with email marketing this year.

For many marketers the concept of multi channel communication is evolving. This definition no longer includes just print, email, and personalized URLs. With the expanded adoption of social media, many marketing professionals are looking for ways to include social media like blogs, Facebook, and Twitter in their marketing efforts. By leveraging a well executed cross media campaign, MindFireInc Solution Partners can easily help marketers build online communities.

As with any cross media campaign, you can easily engage prospects and gather information by using print, email, and personalized URLs. But how can you help a marketer build a community? Here are a few simple tips on how the LookWho’sClicking® system can address this emerging request.

Link to a blog or cause page- When a respondent hits the thank you page, you have already gathered all the critical information. From the thank you page you now have the opportunity to link them to any number of external sites. It is easy to create a button that links to some form of social media like a blog or Facebook cause page.

Leverage a guest login- When you configure a landing page, it is best to always develop a guest log in. Often these guest pages see little activity. Leverage the guest login by integrating the strategy with social media. If your client has a blog they can easily create a post that drives readers to the guest login. This process can be started by the marketer, but can easily become viral as others start to "chat" about it online.

Send to a friend- Finally, you can easily create a send to a friend button on the thank page. This allows respondents to easily forward the personalized URL experience to someone that they think would appreciate it. By capturing the name and email address of the new referral, you have the opportunity to cost effectively expand the database with qualified prospects.

Marketing service providers using the LookWho’sClicking system can easily build incremental value by helping customers analyze demographic information. As a service provider, you are likely asked to acquire lists that are used for direct one to one marketing. Often when these lists are purchased, you have the opportunity to include additional "selects" to the data. For example, when purchasing a list of recent home buyers you may also have the ability to add other demographic information such as the gender or age of the home owner. In most cases you can add this information for little or no additional cost.

Once you receive the database with the demographic information, you have the ability to upload the file into the LookWho’sClicking system. When this process takes place, be sure to upload those demographic fields that you want to measure. While you may not utilize this information in the personalized URL itself, the data will still be in the system for future reporting.

At the conclusion of the campaign you will download a database of all of the responders. This information can also contain all of the demographic data that is connected with that person. You will then be able to analyze the type of responder in even greater detail. There is significant power in having the ability to go back to that client and tell them that their most common responders are those individuals that are between 35-50 years old with a high economic stability indicator and are female.

When working with clients, it is often a good idea to leverage a "house list" for your direct marketing campaign. While this house list can often provide outstanding results, it can be a challenge to gather the internal information from the client. Data can be collected from multiple sources within a client’s database. Here are a few areas to explore when looking for client supplied data:

Transactional Data- Companies of all sizes will have information about who has purchased from them in the past; this is the easiest source of data to collect. Depending on the size of the client you are working with, the information may come from different sources. In a large company a high end POS (point of sale) system may be used. These systems are like those provided by companies like SAP. In a small to medium sized company, simple accounting software may house the data. This may be something like QuickBooks. To find this kind of information, talk with people in marketing, accounting and accounts receivable.

Marketing Data- Companies of all sizes will have existing databases of their past marketing efforts. This may be simple Excel spreadsheets or complex relational databases. To identify this kind of information, talk with your client about who manages trade show leads or leads from past campaigns. Much of this data may be organically held by multiple people. To find this information, talk to staff members in both marketing communications and sales. If they do not manage the information themselves they will be able to direct you to those who do.

Service and Support Data- Companies in certain industries will have a deep database of service and support information. If you are dealing with a client in a service industry, software, or manufacturing they will likely have a database of clients that have requested service, called in for technical support or asked for repair information. These can be wonderful prospect to market to. To find this type of information talk to staff members that are management level employees in service or support.

In all cases if you are dealing with a client that is large enough to have a department dedicated to database management, you should be talking to them. Large organizations often have a fulltime staff that manages their "data warehouse." These people are fantastic contacts because they have visibility to data from multiple internal sources. By leveraging multiple contacts with your client, you will have the ability to deliver better results than your competition.

Girl Scouts of America see the benefits of cross media marketing in their fundraising efforts. While many people assume that cookie sales financially support the Girl Scouts of America, that is just not the case anymore. Recently the Girl Scouts approached a MindFireInc Solution Partner to help engage former Alumni and generate donations.

The MindFireInc Solution Partner was challenged with the idea of creating a campaign that emotionally resonated with Girl Scout Alumni that ranged in age from 30 - 70 years old. The goal of the campaign was simply stated: generate revenue and improve engagement. The Solution Partner created a campaign that included direct mail, email, personalized URLs, and social media. The theme of the campaign was "Support the Sash." Prospects were segmented by age. Each post card and landing page was versioned to the recipient. All graphics used in the camping had photos of alumni from the same era as the recipient. Each version had messaging that would emotionally resonate with the women that received the email and direct mail piece.

Respondents to the "personalized involvement site" were told of the critical needs of the organization and asked to donate. Those that agreed to donate would immediately be given the opportunity to do so online. Those respondents that said they were unable to donate at this time were redirected to a specially versioned thank you page. On this page respondents were asked if they wanted to refer a friend that may be able to help or join a Facebook cause page. The results were impressive.

The organization had never seen more than a 1% response rate from this group of individuals. By adding cross media, the response rate was almost 4%. Of those that responded, over 20% immediately took advantage of donating online. Also, more than 28% of the respondents that completed the survey but did not donate, referred a friend to the campaign. In addition, the online cause page grew exponentially. In fact 83% of all respondents joined the online community. This level of engagement will clearly help the success of future campaigns.