Immediacy is what differentiates mobile marketing from its email counterpart, according to an ExactTarget executive.

While the two channels are complementary ones that should tie together in multichannel campaigns, the campaign that simply mimics an email strategy in mobile will fail. Marketers should adjust their tactics accordingly, said R.J. Talyor, director of product marketing at ExactTarget, Indianapolis.

ExactTarget is a multichannel marketing firm that specializes in email.

In the fourth installment of a series focused on the integration of mobile and email marketing, Mobile Marketer?s Peter Finocchiaro interviewed Mr. Talyor about ExactTarget?s views on the two mediums. Here is what he said:

What is ExactTarget doing in the mobile space? How is the company tying in mobile and email?
Since customers interact with brands ? no matter their location ? through multiple channels, ExactTarget offers a suite of marketing solutions that allow marketers to create, deploy and track their ?portability? marketing strategy across email, mobile, social and sites.

ExactTarget provides an interactive marketing hub based on data and real-time interactions where marketers trigger mobile messages off of any data or event ? whether that?s an email click, website visit, date-based program, such as a birthday, or a mobile-originated message.

Is the emphasis on SMS, or beyond?
ExactTarget has offered SMS integrated within our solution for the past three-and-a-half years, but we?re expanding our mobile offering to a full suite of options that can help a marketer plan, create, deploy and track their ?portability? marketing strategy across email, SMS, social channels and websites.

We?re currently working on expanding our mobile web offering and exploring/testing location-based messaging and applications.

Both mobile and email are targeted, permission-based and highly personal channels of communication and marketing. Are these two channels a natural fit?
Email and mobile are similar in terms of putting the end-consumer first through opt-in and permission policies, as well as monitoring frequency, value and content for them.

However, the types of messages and experiences consumers are hoping for through mobile are much different than those through email.

For example, a marketer looking to mimic their email program?s frequency, content, offer and experience on a smaller screen for mobile won?t see the same success as their email program.

In fact, this approach might fail outright.

Instead, marketers approaching mobile need to be aware of a consumer?s need for urgent and portable information and experiences, their expectations about privacy and permission and lead to a call-to-action that can be completed via a mobile experience.

Which client categories are ideal for the email/mobile integration?
All of them. ExactTarget serves all marketers from small businesses to global enterprises across all segments.

Years ago, we saw immediate mobile adoption by the retail, travel and hospitality industries, but we also saw some initially surprising categories turn to mobile ? including B2B marketers, manufacturing companies, software/technology companies, arts organizations, and government agencies.

I say ?initially? because it?s now not surprising when any organization wants to adopt mobile, or to put our interactive marketing hub to work and integrate email, mobile, social and sites.

Since all audiences seem to be on the go, marketers need to adopt the ?portability? mindset to ensure using the mobile channel to interact with individuals wherever they are.

How will ExactTarget sell its mobile services to clients? What advantage does it have over purely mobile service providers?
The advantage of ExactTarget is that our solution is built on data.

With a ?stand-alone? mobile provider, organizations have their marketing data in a single system.

Likely, they have another data set living in an email provider?and another in a social CRM tool, web analytics solution and CRM.

With ExactTarget, marketers can tie data across all interactive channels with any other data source to create highly targeted and relevant messages across all channels.

For example, mobile-originated text messages can result in real-time look-ups into ExactTarget-hosted relational data tables to reply automatically with a targeted, personal response based on past browsing history, email engagement, social engagement or influencer status and any other data housed in ExactTarget.

The power of our data model and multi-channel interaction platform is unmatched.

Yes, organizations can purchase industry-leading mobile products and services directly from ExactTarget, but the real value for marketers?and their customers?is to use couple our mobile offering alongisde ExactTarget?s broader suite of interactive marketing solutions.

Marketers using can plan, create, deploy and track mobile campaigns alongside all other interactive marketing efforts to craft and hone their portability strategy with ExactTarget?stand-alone mobile providers can?t match the data model, interactivity between channels and other capabilities.

How are you working to resolve image rendering issues plaguing emails on phones such as the BlackBerry and Nokia models?
ExactTarget partners with the leading deliverability and rendering providers in the space to attack mobile rendering challenges for email.

Right now, customers can test the rendering of their emails across multiple desktop, web-based, and mobile email clients to ensure that messages render appropriately across all environments.

As more and more email is read on mobile devices, we?ll be expanding this offering to ensure our customers can create the optimal portable experience for customers viewing messages on a mobile device or their laptop or desktop computer.