I recently blogged that the mobile technology and marketing arena was expanding beyond its core of best of breed providers to include members of larger but related segments like email. This appears to be a broader trend within the overall interactive marketing space, based on this October 29, 2009 article on DMNews.com titled, “Vendor lines are blurring as cross channel marketing dominates.”
The article reports on happenings at a marketing technology platform vendor event. Based on the following observations by the author, I would suggest we are seeing a living example of the convergence I wrote about here:
“It seems that many vendors today are getting into more integrated technology offerings, as well as services, blurring the lines between an e-mail marketing company, a search company, a mobile company, and even an ad agency.”
“As technology vendors become more services focused, they compete with the traditional agencies and interactive ad folks. The rules are no longer set.”
“We are going to see more of these blurring of the lines as brand marketers are focused on driving ROI across channels wherever a customer is.”
“I think this approach to data driven marketing is what we will be seeing more of, as well as this attention to a cross channel approach.”
As marketers orient themselves around targeting increasingly active, on the go customers, they best align themselves with firms focused from their inception on the mobile customer experience. Retrofitting advanced mobile interaction techniques to products created without a focus on active customer engagement will not likely serve a marketer’s objectives very well.
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