Knotice Integrates Digital Channels: Too Much, Too Little, or Just Right?

My research into mobile marketing systems generated a conversation last week with Brian Deagan, CEO of Knotice. As I wrote on April 3, Knotice stands out because it promises to integrate mobile marketing with email, Web and interactive TV campaigns. Brian confirmed that this is their specialty.

According to Brian, Knotice bases its claim on three capabilities:

- users can create interactive campaigns in all four media from the same system
- campaigns in all media access a shared customer profile
- medium-specific message templates can draw on “medium-agnostic” components in a shared content repository

This certainly gives Knotice greater breadth than products aimed at just one channel. On the other hand, there is a whole non-digital world out there including direct mail, telephones, print media, retail, and so on. There are broader-scope enterprise marketing systems and CRM systems that encompass those, although their mobile capabilities may be limited. And Knotice itself seems to lack some of the functions of mobile specialists like Enpocket, particularly for ad serving.

In other words, this is yet another example of that familiar tension between integrated suites and best-of-breed specialists. Knotice falls somewhere in between: from the enterprise perspective, it’s a digital media specialist; from the mobile perspective, it’s a suite. Maybe that’s a sweet spot (pun adamantly denied), and maybe it’s a dead zone (clever wireless reference definitely intended). Time will tell.