Powered by ExactTarget's Interactive Marketing HubTM, the national financial services firm launched the effort in April and boosted engagement by identifying the most frequent conversations on social media to select the most relevant financial content to feature across email, social media and its website.

"The key to our marketing is evaluating and monitoring all marketing channels in real-time, whether that's Twitter, our blog or email," said Kevin Kestler, director of communications of Virginia-based Kestler Financial Group. "We then shape our marketing campaigns to deliver highly relevant and timely financial content on email, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn."

Using the Interactive Marketing Hub, Kestler Financial Group creates interactive marketing campaigns and monitors social network traffic, client-level engagement from email marketing campaigns and Web traffic from the technology's single real-time dashboard. Those insights are then used to anticipate and respond in real-time to financial trends, issues and topics important to the firm's key audiences.

The result, he said, is improved customer service, more relevant financial advice and a seamless brand experience across Kestler Group's interactive marketing channels.

The Interactive Marketing Hub is a cross-channel interactive marketing platform that enables marketers to engage in real-time marketing, consolidate all data to create a common view of the consumer and deliver targeted, permission-based interactions across email, mobile, social media and the Web.

"As the industry's most advanced cross-channel marketing solution, the Interactive Marketing Hub provides organizations an integrated solution to plan, manage and engage in real-time across all online channels," said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget's chief marketing officer. "Kestler Financial Group is a great example of a brand that is harnessing the power of technology to create relevant and effective customer experiences across all interactive channels to drive efficiency and improve business results."

The news of Kestler Financial's cross-channel marketing success follows the launch of a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by ExactTarget that found 48 percent of interactive marketing executives rank understanding customers' cross-channel interactions as one of the top challenges facing marketing today. Entitled "The New Campaign Management Mandate," the June 2011 study found marketers' lack of cross-channel insights result in brands interacting through disconnected channels that fail to deliver seamless brand experiences and the real-time, relevant dialog consumers expect.