Although Responsys email marketing is the most renowned feature of Oracle Responsys, it’s only an element of a complex puzzle. This puzzle comprises multiple online and offline channels tied to a single customer base. Since all the marketing touchpoints are synchronized, the customer service and content personalization become flawless.

With a proper approach and a suitable marketing automation platform like Oracle Responsys, the investment into cross-channel marketing is sure to pay off. According to statistics, by integrating 4 or more digital channels, you can outperform single-channel campaigns by 300%. And in case you manage to power your digital cross-channel marketing strategy with offline channels,  including direct mail, the effectiveness will be even higher. Such a holistic strategy lets you step outside of the online world and speak to the audience tired of web banners, push notifications, and ads. People still love postcards, especially if they are relevant, personal, and well-designed.

Thanks to the latest mail automation innovations introduced by Inkit, mail-based cross-channel marketing campaigns are easier than ever. Just connect Inkit with the cloud environment provided by Oracle Responsys to launch trigger-based mailing. Want to learn how it’s done? Continue reading to find out:

• What is Oracle Responsys: Responsys email marketing, Program Orchestration, and more
• Oracle Responsys Direct Mail: Integration with Inkit
• Why Inkit + Responsys direct mail is better than traditional mail

What Is Oracle Responsys: Responsys Email Marketing, Program Orchestration, and Other Features

Oracle Responsys is a marketing cloud-based platform used for B2C cross-channel marketing, conversion growth, and building customer relationships. It can unite email, mobile, web, social, display, and direct mail channels to provide sustainable customer experience across every interaction.

In addition, you can derive customer data from different sources to store, segment, and analyze it within one dashboard. This gives you better control over your cross-channel marketing and allows marketers to see the areas for improvement. Use this functionality to tailor your offer based on relevant customer data and let your customers dictate what type of messages and when they’d like to receive next with Responsys trigger-based campaigns.

Now when you understand the main idea behind Oracle Responsys marketing platform, it’s time to discover its key features. Although our article focuses on Responsys direct mail based on the integration with Inkit, this tool can enhance your cross-channel marketing in many other ways. Here are some of its key features that are particularly effective for building multi-faceted marketing workflows.

Oracle Responsys Benefit #1: Responsys Email Marketing

If you want to personalize emails and create unique designs, Responsys email marketing tool can save you from the need to learn coding. With its Message Designer feature, you can directly edit the necessary fields and customize templates. Responsys email marketing also supports multivariate testing. This allows you to check the impact of any modifications on customer conversion before making the final changes.

Oracle Responsys Benefit #2: Program Orchestration

Responsys email marketing service includes Program Canvas for building marketing workflows. Make every following stage depend on the customer’s previous actions. Such flexibility is crucial in cross-channel marketing when the options of interactions are almost countless. One user may go directly to the order page after viewing your products, whereas another will return to purchase in a month. Using the program orchestration functionality provided by Oracle Responsys, you can rely on real actions and triggers instead of guesswork.

Oracle Responsys Benefit #3: Marketing Analytics and Insights

Oracle Responsys includes reporting and analytics features you can use to optimize your marketing efforts. Measure KPIs, adjust everything in real-time, obtain granular data, and benefit from the integrated testing analytics. You will get information on every stage of cross-channel marketing campaigns, user behavior, and conversions across multiple channels.

Apart from that, Oracle Responsys also supports mobile and commerce marketing. These capabilities can help to broaden your target audience and engage additional cross-marketing channels.

Mobile marketing functionality helps to quickly set up push notifications and transactional communications. No coding or advanced technical skills required. As to Responsys commerce marketing, it allows you to integrate e-commerce and marketing platforms for automated cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Oracle Responsys Direct Mail: Integration with Inkit

Introducing multi-channel marketing, many businesses are so focused on successful digital campaigns that they totally neglect offline channels. They willingly reject a bunch of opportunities because cross-channel direct mail seems quite complex to them. Even the fact that mailing has almost 10 times higher response rate than social media and other online channels doesn’t always convince them.

Frankly speaking, the synchronization of direct mail with real-time user behavior has always been a challenge.

Luckily, not anymore. When Inkit came into play with its direct mail automation and numerous integrations, mail became a full-fledged member of cross-channel marketing.

Oracle Responsys direct mail is one of the possible Inkit’s integrations. Using Inkit’s webhook, you can connect these tools through the cloud to synchronize their operations and customer data. Once the quick integration is completed, the services will exchange information in real-time for analytics and trigger-based mailing.

How does it happen? When Responsys recognizes a specific event in one channel, it triggers the necessary response from Inkit. A customer just upgraded a plan? You can send them a greeting postcard with bonuses. Another customer wants to unsubscribe from your email newsletter? Deliver a convincing mail to make them stay. You can use any type of direct mail and triggers.

After you set the workflow, the integration will perform all the processes automatically and record the results. And your only task is to monitor the progress and adapt the marketing campaign if necessary.

Why Inkit + Responsys Direct Mail Is Better Than Traditional Mail

Traditional snail mail is slow. You will need to hire designers, find a print house, and manually bring mailing to the post office. It may take months to launch a mailing campaign. As a result, such mail pieces simply cannot be relevant or tied to recent customer behavior. Even if a customer was likely to return to an abandoned cart, in a few months, they won’t remember your brand name.

Responsys direct mail works differently. Thanks to the integration with Inkit, the time of mail production is minimized. After setting up Inkit, you can deliver the first mail pieces into your customers’ mailboxes within several days. For example, NatureBox managed to start sending personalized postcards in a week (Click here to read the case study). In addition, Inkit + Responsys direct mail is trigger-based and automated.

This means that such mailing is much more personalized than traditional mail. First of all, you can use real-time customer information and analytics to immediately customize the content when a specific person changes their preferences. Secondly, the use of marketing software like Oracle Responsys ensures advanced audience segmentation based on events and actions. Thus, you will contact those people who are open to communication and ready to convert. It’s time to stop bothering random individuals that aren’t really interested in what you offer.

Inkit also supports customer postcard builder, A/B testing, and many other features you just have to check out. Start testing this tool right now. And don’t forget to connect it with a Responsys email marketing platform to launch a cross-channel marketing strategy.