Multi-channel = multi-frequency
Frequency is a key element, often overlooked, in the construction of multi-channel communications.
It is a crucial consideration in what you are saying, and where you are saying it.
A frequency needs to be something an audience understands instinctively if they are to anticipate publication. Few communications, for example, go out every six weeks, just as few things in our lives happen every six weeks. By coinciding with a cycle in the audience's life, communications combine expectation with desire, and are positively received.
In print, there are established publishing frequencies for customer communications. At one end of the spectrum are weekly, often ‘newspaper' formats, which can coincide with weekly activities like supermarket shopping. Monthly magazines are well established, and echo many customers' familiarity with the schedule of upmarket newsstand magazines, as well as with their own regular financial cycle. Three times a year can be appropriate for publications in the educational arena, coinciding with academic terms. And annual publications have an authority, an overview status and potential for retention which makes them both popular and cost-effective.
But most clients print quarterly; research shows it is the most popular of the regular publishing frequencies for clients. It's regular enough to maintain a relationship; it often coincides conveniently with quarterly budgets and marketing strategies; and a ‘seasonal' frequency chimes with audience lifecycles. Whether it's food, fashion, DIY or the great outdoors, we all have an almost instinctive association, reinforced by retail marketing, with the seasons of the year.
So what of digital communications, where a client's opportunity to communicate is relatively unconstrained by production and distribution costs?
Audience anticipation is key; no-one would anticipate a branded ezine every day, any more than they would anticipate one Tweet every quarter. If the nature of the communication does not meet audience anticipation, then whether too rare or too frequent, they can become interruptions.
Frequency has to be considered along with the time one expects the recipient to spend with that communication, from the glance of a Tweet to the leisurely browsing of an ezine. Does the nature of the content merit communication several times a day? We can craft content which does; but we can also create content for platforms which suit any particular frequencies in a customer's lifecycle.
Getting the frequency right must be seen as one of the factors in creating successful communications. Information, entertainment, immediacy, reading time, length of engagement and intended response all help to determine appropriate content for a platform - and, indeed, the appropriate platform for particular content. But frequency is another key factor; and a truly multi-channel approach should mean that a client has appropriate, diverse frequencies to hand; and always has the right medium, for the right message, at the right time.
Paul Keers, Founding Director, Axon Publishing www.axonpublish.com
