Basically, multichannel marketing is using many dfferent marketing channels to reach a customer, each channel is a existing form of selling, like a retail store, a web site or a mail order catalogue. By offering the customer more options, multichannel marketing helps business to meet different types of customers and get more opportunities to interact with customers. Besides, multichannel marketing makes each channel can help to promote the other channels; for example, web site and phone-in mail orders collect information about the customer that a retail sale may not, these channels make it possible to develop mailing lists for future promotions and branding campaigns. Multichannel marketing is suitable for most services and products. The internet and specialty television channels allow businesses to lead their messages to specific target groups at relatively low cost.
Although multichannel marketing is the current trend, it is not an entirely new concept. The most successful marketing programs contained an appropriate mix of media for the targeted audience; the theory was the effective use of multiple media helped a selling organization become top of mid when the buyer was ready to make a purchasing decision. To make the multichannel marketing more effective, a business need to focus more on customers, it is not target consumers as more as possible; actually, find out which consumer is more likely to find your offer compelling. Some research data shows that recipients prefer personalized communications and the more personalized an offer is, the higher likelihood of response. Hence, it needs more invest in personalizing communications. Design the new marketing campaigns that leverage the full spectrum of marketing channels. Personalized direct mail, permission based email and internet technologies can be employed to dramatically increase the returns on the marketing dollar. Personalizing communications and running multichannel