The future of digital marketing is integrated. Learn to embrace it

Quantum physicists maintain that particles tend to stay connected even after vast distances separate them, such that when you do something to the one, it almost instantaneously affects the other to which it was originally attached.

Of course, our world looks and behaves very differently at a macro level. In fact, the holy grail of science is to discover the formula than can unify the laws of nature at particle or quantum level to those that operate at the macro level, the stuff you and I can feel and touch.

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Technological changes

Back in the "real world", we are seeing technological changes that are making our world more connected and systems that are able to talk to each other more. While Steve Jobs believed to some degree that the formula to success in business is ensuring that one builds a moat around one's business, he might have struggled to go against the tide today, where the overwhelming momentum is towards systems integration, ensuring that various systems are able to communicate with one another regardless of their origin or maker.

This is a reality that is beginning to dawn on the world of software developers designing products for marketing and branding purposes. Your customer relationship management tool must be able to pull data from other systems and form an ecosystem of systems that not only talk to one another, but also enhance the quality and value of each other.

So it would be extremely silly, to put it mildly, in this day and age to implement an email media platform, for example, that does not include a CRM system already embedded in it. If your current system does not offer both these services, it is time to look at your IT manager's key performance indicators, or immediately hand her hat and coat to her.

Marketing principles

For these new digital branding and marketing tools (lest we forget they are just tools) to be of any value to you, you still have to take cognisance of the fundamental marketing principles - and they need to talk to each other and complement each other.

It sounds simple enough, doesn't it? The truth is, change is a difficult thing for most people to accept, hence the preponderance of Stone Age tools that have no place in today's fast-paced digital marketing world.

We have new legislation, of course, that is going to try and limit intrusion into people's privacy and ensure that we do not have little "cookies" snooping around without authorisation from the subjects under "investigation".

A wealth of information

However, the integration I speak of can and already does work within the confines of this new legislation. All it takes is a change of mindset for people to realise that communication platforms can also be a source of wealth of marketing information that can be legally employed with existing systems that people already have at their disposal, the operative phrase is "enriched email media".

This is the platform that can offer an integrated digital solution to marketers by combining their email media platforms with branding capabilities as well as their CRM functions. And no one will notice except your shareholders by the substantially increased burden in the hand of fat dividends.