Campaign Planning

One logical first step into social media

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 by Jeff Chamberlain

Everyone is talking about social media tools and their impact on marketing. Marketers are flocking to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at an incredible rate. I get an offer for a new webinar, white paper or article on social media tools at least once a day. I've seen a lot of advice on how to use it, how to meaure it, but not a lot on how to get started. So, here's my thoughts as we have gotten through our initial steps into social media marketing.

Start a blog.

Why blogging?

The new mantra is content. In the old marketing, we pushed our message out to everyone and, in the old days, you could get people to listen. So, content was aligned 1:1 with your campaign plans. In this new world of marketing, you need to have content available that is relevant to the individual AND available where they look for it. This will liikely start with organic search. Your position in organic search is driven by how much fresh, relevant content you have out there. Blogging is the best way there is to drive fresh, relevant content. You aren't strapped by a navigation structure that is built into your website. You can just talk about the latest issues. In addition, you can dedicate different blogs to different terminology so it is relevant to different audiences (e.g. industries or roles).

Your challenge with blogging is to coordinate an effort across your company so you can be sure you are covering all the key search terms and providing relevant content. We, fortunately, have tackled this with our own product, Aprimo Marketing Studio, and are finding it to be a great way to get started. So, while we are blogging to communicate with the world, we are doing it purposefully so the world will actually find us as a result. It doesn't do any good to blog if nobody finds you.

Easy Breezy Lemon Squeezy Marketing - Marketing Operations & Online Marketing

Friday, October 9, 2009 by Donna Holland

I often hear things like, I need help with my (pick one) marketing budget, project managment/workflow, creative reviews, job requests, campaign planning, asset management, etc. As we get into discussions around other processes like online marketing, people are surprised that Aprimo offers one solution that manages all of their marketing processes and it is easy to use.

Aprimo Marketing Studio is new to the marketplace but the demand is not new at all. I'm hearing people talk about their company having lots of different vendors and technologies trying to do what Aprimo Marketing Studio already does. They're still looking for a better solution because....all the different things they have in place right now aren't working for them. They say they don't know how effective their email campaigns are because they have no way to measure them. They have no idea how much they're spending on each campaign, they need visibility into their proejcts, etc. Their stories go on and on.

If you are looking for ONE solution to handle your marketing needs, call me at 317.860.2424. I would love to speak with you about your specific needs and share how Aprimo Marketing Studio can help. You can also reach me via Live Chat at our Web site, aprimo.com.

Disney Channel and Marketing Automation Software

Friday, October 2, 2009 by Kati Dafoe

In a September 23, 2009 post entitled "Working in Marketing for Technology," Kelly Turner of Aprimo writes, "As a marketer – I want the cutting edge technology to simplify my personal life... I now work in the IT industry as a marketer and can use great, interactive technology in my professional life. Best of both worlds." Hannah Montana, is that you?!

I love Hannah Montana. The character, the show, the music. Miley Cyrus is one heck of a talented teenager. To be more accurate, I love all things Disney Channel. I get excited when yet another Disney child star hits it big on network television or the silver screen. I feel like I can say, "I knew them when."

Examples: Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, Shia LaBeouf, Selena Gomez, the Jonas Brothers. Amanda Bines (Hairspray), Michelle Trachtenberg (Gossip Girl) and Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live) got their start on Nickelodeon. Close enough.

My love of the Disney Channel reinforces that my inner child, or teeny-bopper, is alive and well. My inner marketer, which is far more "outer" than "inner" because of my day job, enjoys the Disney Channel, too, because they know exactly how to market and talk to their audience. There are no traditional commercials on the channel, but Disney advertises their shows, movies, environmental campaigns like Friends for Change, and highlights ordinary kids around the world doing extraordinary things.

Now there's a tangent for you. Focus, Kati.

The best of both worlds. That's what we, the marketing department at Aprimo, get. We can easily sympathize with marketers who are struggling with campaign planning and execution, attempting to track marketing finances and measure ROI. But we don't have to struggle with these campaign management issues. As a provider of marketing automation software, we feel a responsibility to lead by example. "You want to buy our software? Great! Good luck figuring it out." No. We want to showcase how global marketing organizations can solve their toughest issues. Understanding our customers' pain points, yet avoiding them ourselves? Definitely the best of both worlds.

Miley, let's do lunch.

Marketing and the Web

Monday, September 28, 2009 by Jeff Baker

Not that we needed any more data points, but Adobe's planned purchase of Omniture is further validation of the alignment of web analytics in the marketing process. Interactive marketers already know that web analytics is a key technology to understand prospect and customer behavior and ultimately tie conversion events (lead quality, sales) back to the underlying acquisition and engagement strategies that drove the results. Yes, the holy grail of closed-loop ROI reporting...

Aprimo Marketing Studio leverages the power of best-of-breed web analytics tools to fully integrate web analytics into the campaign planning and execution process. Aprimo Marketing Studio can integrate into all web analytics tool but has a deep, API level integration with Omniture.

Omniture's web analytics system (Site Catalyst) and search marketing software (Search Center) are accessible directly from the Marketing Studio interface giving users access to the full functionality of these industry-leading online optimization technologies.

Autopilot for Marketing

Friday, September 25, 2009 by Jeff Baker

As I cruise along at 24,000 feet on my way to the Gartner CRM event I can’t help but appreciate the complexity of air travel. Cram 130 people into a metal cylinder and fling them from Indianapolis to Phoenix. Repeat thousands and thousands of time around the world every day. How do they make this a successful and repeatable process? One key is automation.

For example, autopilot allows the intelligence of the airplane systems to automatically perform operations so the pilot doesn't have to. Autopilot lets systems and software take care of the ‘normal’ activities a pilot would go through to fly along at cruising altitude. I’m sure autopilot was complicated to program and test but the result of that effort is hugely beneficial.

Many companies have no autopilot equivalent for any facet of marketing. “Marketing needs to be high touch” or “Outbound Marketing is too complex to automate” they might say. My guess is that if we found a way to automate the intricacies of keeping a plane aloft at 30,000 feet we can probably automate some of the processes marketing is doing manually today.

One significant autopilot capability for Marketing is triggered dialogs. Triggered dialogs give marketing the ability to pre-define a series to steps to take for a given person that matches a certain criteria. Here are some real-world customer examples of utilizing triggered dialogs:

Automatically respond to a website whitepaper request with the selected content.
Automatically follow-up with a prospect two-weeks after a sales call.
Automatically send reminders to attendees of an upcoming webinar.
Automatically route leads against lead score thresholds to the appropriate team

The real power of triggered dialogs comes in the ability to chain steps together into a full customer communication workflow. Do this, then do this, then check this and if this...do this, or else do this. Marketing can pre-determine responses, time intervals, and actions but it’s the customer or the prospect then driving the process based on their actions, their timeline, and their data.

Triggered dialogs help marketing automate regular, recurring, standard processes which improves efficiency AND improves the customer experience. Now the system can respond as soon as a event is identified. These ‘dialogs’ can be simple one step automated responses or sophisticated lead nurturing campaigns that walk a prospect through dozens of steps over a period of months.

Just as a plane autopilot hasn't (yet?) replaced the human pilots, triggered dialogs don’t eliminate the need for marketers to truly understand and adjust to their prospect and customer interactions. But software, like the triggered dialog functionality of Aprimo Marketing Studio, can help marketers automate many of those interactions. Marketers can focus on the important campaign planning take-offs and landings and let the system automate the work at cruising altitude.

What is it, and Where can I find it?

Thursday, September 17, 2009 by J. Dreesen

You know the drill.
You're in the middle of a product launch. You've completed all the creative for the online ads. The electronic and print collateral is done......

Sell sheets- check!
RFP templates- check!
Press release- check!
Press kit- check!
Email templates- check!
Campaign planning - check!

So, it's 11:00 p.m., you're still at the office, and you can't find the two-pager that you promised to send to your West-Coast rep for a client meeting in the morning.
You've looked in every folder, every file directory, and the piece has vanished!!!!!
So, what do you do?
Call the agency? (receptionist is long gone)
Check with your print vendor, to see if he kept the electronic file?

This is the time to look for solutions, as this problem is going to get bigger as time goes on.....
We're back to the brand asset management story. It's here now, and it works.
Have you tried it?
Got any feedback on how to make it work better?
Let's talk.....

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