Activities such as filling out web submission forms, clicking links, "Liking" content on Facebook, sharing media on Twitter and text messaging a phone number are all real-time actions that could be used to trigger a subsequent targeted message.

While they are all channel-specific activities, marketers have the ability to connect these actions to messaging in other channels. The key is responding to the interaction at the right time and through the appropriate channel with relevant content.

For this reason, a flexible cross-channel marketing platform that enables marketers to connect the dots is crucial to success. If the same consumer is triggering responses across multiple channels, marketers need to be able to recognize that all these interactions are coming from one individual and reply in an appropriate fashion.
Consumer interactions can be difficult to track without the right platform in place, especially when the same prospect is active through multiple channels. For example, a potential customer could receive an email and click through to a web form, which he or she fills out using his or her Facebook credentials. Once the form is submitted, they could be driven to a customized website where they could Like or share the featured content, which triggers an email coupon specific to the information they've provided up to that point.

What makes event-triggered messages so effective is that they help marketers engage consumers in a relevant way. They're also a perfect complement to traditional marketing campaigns with messaging designed around specific dates.

Event-triggered messages give marketers the ability to interact with people in real-time when they are specifically looking to be engaged. This generally improves the results of marketing efforts, as businesses are aiming for receptive consumers with laser-targeted messaging based on their interactions. In fact, a survey conducted by EPiServer found that 48 percent of marketers believe personalized campaigns have a better response rate than mass market campaigns.

The greatest marketing campaigns aren't the ones that are created and then analyzed – they are the initiatives that are designed with previous customer interactions in mind first. Consumer actions and reactions need to form the basis of marketing campaigns, as they provide the greatest insight into the minds of the target audience.

While there is no simple solution to anticipating customer actions, it's crucial to note that many Americans follow a schedule – they'll check their emails, log on to Facebook and read their text messages generally around the same time each day.

For example, a Harris Interactive survey found that a number of Americans check their email in bed when the first wake up or before they go to sleep (19 percent) and while they are at work. Conversely, social media browsing habits tend to peak outside of work hours – on the weekends and after 5 p.m. – while email usage may dip.

Using real-time data to find an individual consumer's particular media engagement habits is crucial to the success of campaigns. If companies observe an email sent during the workday isn't getting opened, they need to shift it to an earlier schedule. On the flip side, if social media engagement is dipping during the traditional workday, companies should consider shifting content publication to the weekend.

This real-time data could further be extrapolated into a marketing calendar that helps maximize consumer engagement. Having a certain schedule to time engagements is crucial to success. First, it ensures businesses are engaging at the best possible time and through the most effective marketing channel. Second, a calendar also helps to avoid spam issues, as proper planning would make accidental spam less likely.

It's all about engagement. By using real-time data to discover when consumers are the most open to being reached, businesses will be able to maximize their chances of hitting them at the right time with the most optimal effort. The more channels companies are able to monitor, the better their customer insight and the more relevant their communications can be.

If the recent Super Bowl proved anything, it is that more companies are beginning to realize the importance of integrating hashtags, @ mentions and direct messages into their multichannel marketing campaigns.

Several of the big brands advertising during the football game were complementing their television commercials with memorable hashtags. For example, Audi's 30-second spot featured a man driving up to a vampire party before the powerful headlights of his car disintegrated them. As the commercial came to a close, it urged viewers to check out the #SoLongVampires hashtag on Twitter.

For businesses, hashtags, @ mentions and direct messages provide an effective way of bolstering further engagement and interaction with customers. The @ mention is the most obvious and occurs almost naturally when using Twitter – if customers respond to content published on Twitter, their updates will feature the @ mention of the user they are replying to.

Of course, consumers don't need to be replying to a particular piece of content to @ mention a company. Companies could set up contests or incorporate them in multichannel marketing campaigns as well, which would enable businesses to better monitor interactions – an @ reply would automatically show up in the company's Twitter feed, whereas a reply without the mark would not be visible.

Similarly, hashtags can be tapped to categorize responses and make them easier to track. For example, if companies were using email messages to engage customers, they could make a social feature that encourages consumers to tweet a message with a hashtag. This helps brands expand the reach of their campaigns and can also enable them to build and improve their customer database.

Perhaps the most overlooked means of Twitter marketing is direct messages. These aren't simply for private communications between friends – brands can leverage them to leave specific messages to new followers. If the company has their Twitter profile connected to their marketing database, they could use direct messages to greet new followers, send them specific offers or communicate other calls to action to them.

The integration of Twitter into the customer database is crucial to launching impactful marketing campaigns. The more businesses know about Twitter followers, the more relevant – and thereby effective – their efforts will become.

Does social media actually influence how customers perceive brands and their products? The answer is a resounding yes, and this has been proven time and time again through numerous studies. By identifying these social influencers, companies can enhance the way they promote their products and services.

Take, for example, research conducted last year by Chadwick Martin Bailey. The study, which observed the buying habits of nearly 1,500 American consumers, found that people who are following a company on Twitter are more likely to purchase goods and services than non-subscribers.

The same study suggests Facebook connections have a similar impact – 60 percent of Facebook users would advocate a brand they Liked to a friend, while 51 percent said they are more likely to purchase products from these organizations. People put a lot of stock in their social friendships.

Clearly, social media can impact the purchase decisions of consumers and their friends, but that's only if businesses are proactive with their social media marketing campaigns. It isn't enough to simply own a profile on Facebook or Twitter – businesses need to harness the power of these social sites to maximize their success.

Companies can start by identifying who their influential social followers are and then interacting with them. There are a variety of ways to ascertain whether specific individuals are social influencers – for example, an individual who "Likes" Facebook content a certain number of times is likely an enthusiast who could sway others. Or, someone who constantly responds to tweets could be a social influencer that a brand could leverage.

Identification isn't the challenging part, it's being able to take these relationships and use them to promote products and services that's key. It's a two-way street. Businesses need to form connections with influencers to carry out their marketing objectives. However, these enthusiasts aren't going to give free publicity – they need to be enticed and incentivized to do so.

Simply put, this is best accomplished through user engagement. The key is providing relevant and personalized content using the data that businesses have on consumers. These pieces of data can be utilized to form custom communications and offer different promotions that are more relevant to the individual.

While these interactions may start on social media, they can involve broader marketing campaigns as well. For example, businesses could check to see if customers have engaged them through other means, such as email or mobile phones. This data could help further personalize marketing campaigns and will ultimately lead to the most relevant engagement strategy.

Social log-ins are creating a new way for companies to gain more insight about their customers. For example, consumers may not want to take the time to sign up at a brand's website, but they may be willing to log in and engage if they could do so by using a social account they already have. By encouraging them to sign in through their Facebook or Twitter accounts, marketers can learn crucial information about customers, such as their likes and interests, their geographic locations and their friendship networks.

With this in mind, social log-ins can be utilized to further customize marketing campaigns to be more relevant to the explicit needs and preferences of consumers. For example, an electronics retailer could leverage social information to specifically determine which products to recommend to buyers.

The number of consumers creating accounts on these social sites continues to grow, giving companies more reasons to integrate these tools. A recent report from Janrain suggests that Facebook's social log-in is currently the most common sign-in feature, with approximately 42 percent of websites using it. Larry Drebes, founder and CEO of Janrain, suggests these social credential components will become even more important in the future.

"[Social log-in] is going to be definitely an increasing part of the marketing mix. It just makes sense because more online activity is centered around knowing the user, knowing their social network and profile attributes," Drebes explained to MarketingSherpa.

"Social media is a large component of that, and I think it is becoming accepted both with the end users and the marketing audience, and it will be a healthy growing segment," he added.

Moreover, as social networks diversify to fill specific niches, marketers will be better able to offer social sign-in features that correlate with their target audiences.

"I think you will see a little division there where you might use Facebook or Twitter for more entertainment-type sites and a LinkedIn account for something more professional," Drebes explains. "People will identify themselves in various personas depending on the context of how they are interacting with an online property."

Knowing the target audience has always been crucial to success. Now, it's just a matter of using the tools that enable businesses to learn more about their customers. By leveraging the correct tools, businesses will be in a better position to create custom communications that are personalized and relevant to the people being reached.

How do consumers interact with advertisements? It's a question many marketers ask themselves, and unfortunately there is no easy answer – it depends on a variety of different factors.

According to a recent report from Mediative, a digital agency based out of Canada, there is at least one way to maximize ad clicks on mobile platforms – use images. The firm recently conducted an eye- and click-tracking study that analyzed how mobile device users viewed and interacted with various advertisements.

"From the participants in the eye tracking part of our study, we recorded each individual session, and then compiled the sessions to create heat maps that represent aggregate gaze data and supplement the qualitative findings," notes Mediative, explaining how the test was conducted.

The most activity was observed with images. Mobile device users tend to look at content on the left-hand side of their phones first and then scan to the right and go from the top of the page to the bottom – very much how traditional computers are used. Consumers' eyes naturally gravitated toward pictures and other rich media and spent the most time looking at these areas. Images placed at the end of the scanning process – on the right side of the page or at the bottom – held viewer's attention for the longest.

"People … look at the images to see if the business looks trustworthy," Search Engine Land notes, citing the report. "We recommend giving the image that accompanies a listing some special consideration, and remember that an image that might work on a desktop might not work so well when reduced to a phone."

There are other signals that may catch the eyes of mobile viewers. For example, advertisements with product reviews also accounted for a significant amount of activity. Highly rated products generate a large amount of attention, especially if the product or business had a lot of positive reviews.

Considering that upward of 90 million Americans own smartphones, it's crucial that brands begin contemplating the best ways of transitioning their marketing campaigns to mobile devices. The process isn't as easy as it may seem – what works on traditional desktop computers will not be as effective on smartphones and tablets. Going even further, both tablet computers and smartphones are radically different platforms and marketers need to design unique campaigns for both channels.

Merely producing content won't generate any exposure. Nowadays, the web is all about interaction and content needs to facilitate that. Marketers should leverage strategies that makes their content more shareable if they want to make the biggest impact with their multi channel marketing efforts.

Perhaps the easiest way of doing this is by integrating the Retweet or Like functions on all published content and encouraging readers to do so. These social features are used on more than 10,000 of the largest websites and the modern consumer has grown accustomed to sharing content through these functions.

As Ann Handley notes in an Entrepreneur magazine article, content that features "share" links is mentioned an average of 27 times, compared to the four times content not using these features is talked about. Despite the importance of these social sharing buttons, however, a surprising number of marketers don't use them.

"It seems like a no-brainer to add social sharing icons for the top social media to any content you publish online," Handley writes. "Only half of the largest 10,000 websites (or 53.6 percent) have at least one social link or plug-in installed."

Social buttons may facilitate the sharing of content, but they only work if this media is worth interacting with in the first place. Handley also suggests marketers create engaging content from the outset – they need to take a stand and say something that is worth repeating and sharing with others.

If marketers have a different opinion than the prevailing notion, they shouldn't be afraid to buck the trend. This makes for some truly engaging content, as it's something that makes consumers think and respond.

"Part of the reason people share content is that it offers validation to those who share it: In another study the Times conducted with Latitude Research on the psychology of sharing, researchers found that 68 percent of respondents who share do so to give others a better sense of who the sharer is and what she or he cares about," she adds.

It's also worth noting that different types of content may be more successful for engaging specific audiences. Young consumers tend to prefer online videos and interactive games, whereas older Americans may prefer reading blogs or web articles.

By now, a Facebook account is practically a required part of any business' marketing strategy. However, as those owners and entrepreneurs who have and operate one already know, maintaining relevancy and connection on the networking site can be a full-time job.

It seems like every year, month or week Facebook produces some new tool, app or metric that will help businesses reach consumers and eventually monetize these interactions, and 2012 will be no different.

A recent article on Mashable introduces three metrics that it claims will "change the way you market on Facebook." These metrics include "People Talking About This," "Engaged Users" and "External Referrers."

With "People Talking About This," companies will be able to measure the number of people who have "liked," commented, shared or posted, answered a question, responded to an event or engaged with their page in some manner during the week, the source explains.

The tool will help businesses see where they are winning with content and where they need to work a bit harder to engage consumers. The source suggests that companies that fall in the latter category speak up and ask their followers for help.

"Don't post, 'I'm excited about the Superbowl this year!' Instead, write, 'Click Like if you're excited about the Superbowl this year!'," the article suggests. "I might write, 'If you found this tip useful, make sure to share it with your friends.' Inserting mini calls-to-action reminds your audiences to act, not just read."

"Engaged Users" shows businesses the number of unique users – no recurring clickers – to have interacted with a post within 28 days. Since this allows companies to track which posts are getting the most attention, it will eventually help them to better target future posts by what has been successful – or not so successful – in the past.

Lastly, "External Referrers" provides companies with information on the number of people who have been directed to their Facebook page via an outside website.

"All business owners should know where and how people are finding them online," Mashable explains. "While it's important to direct traffic from social media to your main 'hub,' whether it's a blog or a static business site, bringing traffic onto your Facebook Page is also important."

Facebook's new metrics all demonstrate a tenet of marketing and being successful on the social networking site: engagement. For these tools to be useful, companies need to continue talking, posting and, perhaps most important of all, listening to their followers.

For the past two or three years, mobile devices have been presented to marketers as yet another channel they can leverage to engage prospective buyers. However, the platform was still relatively young and many brands have yet to make strong investments in marketing to on-the-go consumers.

Recent research from Walker Sands Communications suggests the time may be now for at least considering the optimization of websites for mobile users. According to the public relations firm, approximately 13 percent of total web traffic during the fourth quarter of 2011 originated from smartphones and tablets. To put that in perspective, that's more than one in 10 prospects.

The number of mobile web users has jumped considerably over the past 12 months – during the same time last year, only approximately 6 percent of total internet traffic was derived from mobile devices. Looking even further back, the disparity is much larger.

"When we began this study in Q3 2010, traffic originating from mobile devices accounted for a relatively modest portion (4 percent) of total web traffic," said John Fairley, director of digital services at Walker Sands. "More than a year later, we have seen a significant uptick in mobile browsing, which has increased more than three-fold."

It's crucial, however, the advertisers not make the mistake of assuming all platforms are equal when integrating mobile devices into their multichannel marketing efforts. Consumers using Android devices, such as the HTC Evo, are the most likely to browse the web. The Android operating system accounted for 46 percent of mobile visitors, whereas Apple made up 31 percent and 4 percent used BlackBerry phones.

When it comes to tablets, Apple is still king. Despite the launch of competing products, such as the Samsung Galaxy, 16 percent of mobile web surfers use the iPad.

"Android's expansive portfolio of mobile products makes it more accessible to a broad base of consumers than Apple's iPhone, which is why we see tremendous growth in the Android marketshare at the expense of Apple's iPhone," said Daniel Laloggia, digital marketing manager at Walker Sands.

Separate data from Nielsen suggests that Android device owners are the most likely to click on displays and mobile ads, so Google's growing marketshare should add further incentive for brands to at least consider integrating mobile devices into their campaigns.

Email can be a long and drawn out process if advertisers are carefully crafting and sending each message to specific segments of consumers. This is why many brands make use of trigger email in their marketing campaigns – it simplifies the whole process.

However, when marketers automate any part of their initiatives, they run the risk of alienating their customers. No one wants to receive messages that were blatantly automated as they generally seem to be less relevant. Unfortunately, this issue is all too common when it comes to triggered emails.

The key is to put systems in place to avoid annoying customers in the first place. Eventful, a company that helps customers find local concerts, shows and other entertainment, employed an automated system that helped lift engagement rates without losing subscribers.

When prospects subscribe, they fill out a profile that details where they live and the types of events they are interested in. When Eventful finds a match, the person is emailed automatically. However, the organization has systems in place to prevent customers from being spammed if they have broad tastes or live in a major city with events all the time.

"Subscribers scheduled to receive more than one alert on a given day will instead receive an email with the alerts consolidated into one message," MarketingSherpa notes.

"Eventful uses a distribution engine that monitors the number of Eventful emails subscribers receive through this program and others. Send times can be adjusted based on the number of emails a subscriber recently received, the company's marketing objectives or subscribers' behavioral patterns," the news source adds.

The results of Eventful's trigger email campaign speak for themselves. Of the 7.5 million automated alerts sent last year, the open rate was in the 40 percent range, while click-through hit 60 percent – significantly above the single-digit open and click rates observed in typical campaigns.

Marketers need to think from the perspective of a customer when creating promotional efforts. Whether it's an automated email campaign or a direct mail initiative, it's crucial advertisers don't pester or annoy prospects. There is a difference between staying in touch or encouraging readers to take action and spamming them.