Do you have a centralized customer and prospect database that you access to plan, execute, and measure cross-channel 1to1 marketing campaigns? You're fortunate if your answer is, "Yes."
But... are you done? I think not, as the pace of change in on-line and digital marketing, coupled with the increased splintering of the web, introduces more and more disparate data that need to be harnessed continuously for marketing -i.e., trigger-communications, interactive dialogs, audience segmentations. Face it, the ability to frequently modify a marketing database data model, change its update processes, expand audits, and manage the new data sources to sustain the much needed 360-degree view is unrealistic. Even the best IT staff would be challenged to keep up without making compromises or exchanging long-term strategies for short-term needs.
Don't fret despite my somewhat gloomy intro, as marketers can solve the challenge of data fragmentation -- without IT!
Yes, you heard me correctly! I'll explain, but first I must go backward in time before forward. I was never a big fan and stayed away from the industry kool-aid that many drank when they built a virtual marketing database that used campaign management software to create the "single-view" that a marketer could use for segmentations. (There are many reasons for which I am not a fan, and I can elaborate on those some other time if you should be interested.) I bring it up because marketers have long had the ability to connect to multiple data sources in order to see a whole customer view, but today's dynamic marketplace reveals limitations and perhaps, obsolescence in yesterday's solution. How could this be you ask?
On-line and digital customer information is growing at great speed, and the marketer's need to leverage and innovate with it for a competitive advantage is universally embraced. Marketers need access, and don't have the time to wait for IT and DBAs to load data to the servers to which they have access and map data to the campaign management software, AND to estimate the affect of the additional data on system performance when more data are moved onto the application servers for processing. That simply doesn't work with the pace of marketing change we are experiencing.
Marketers like me need a campaign management solution that allows me to connect to multiple data sources, adding new ones when and where they emerge quickly. We need to do this without IT or DBA intervention and without unnecessarily moving data just to create our expanded or new customer view.
Does anyone know of a marketing automation solution that lets the marketer adjust and expand ever-changing customer view needed for 1:1 marketing communications? Hmm... I do.
This blog may sound like a blatant pitch for investing in enterprise marketing management software, a category that encompasses both multichannel marketing and marketing resource management software. I cannot pretend that this is a completely "fair and balanced" view given my employer (Aprimo). However, the concept for this blog came from my marketing clients and prospective clients. It is not an artificial idea. It was organically grown. Read it and see if it resonates with you.
The New Economy gives way to the NO Economy
Remember the New Economy. It promised that globalization and the rapid movement of ideas, technology, resources, manufacturing, and financing through the power of the Internet was going to fundamentally change the way we live, do business, and market. It was going to improve everyone's lives.
Well, the new economy has been foreclosed on, though its structure is still there. The New Economy is empty, has growing weeds, contains some broken windows, and needs some attention. What we are left with now is a NEW economy that actually resembles the old economy of the frugal and considerate consumer. I will call this the New Old (NO) Economy. The NO Economy is not built on instant financing with no money down, creative investment vehicles, outsourcing everything, and ponzi schemes. It is an economy based on a frugal, responsible, and value conscious consumer - the NO Consumer.
Marketing in the NO Economy to the NO Consumer
This NO Economy and NO Consumer has changed how company's market as well. The days of if you build it, the customers will come are gone. Or, if you offer it, the customers will respond. Even in this recovering economy, the NO Consumers are more skeptical and less impulsive. You can see this consumer behavior effecting most every industry - automobiles, hotels, gaming, software, airlines, media, manufacturing, etc. Economists are seeing this as a fundamental change in the consumer. This consumer behavior makes it much more difficult to get your prospects and customers to respond to your offers, no matter what you spend in marketing. In addition, in order to deliver more value to acquire consumers, companies are compressing prices or delivering more for the same price. This is putting pressure on margins and in turn reducing marketing budgets. The marketing department is under siege both internally (budgets slashed) and externally (customers not responding).
It is time to invest in your marketing department
In periods of growth, when consumers were spending as fast as they could refinance their property, your marketing could be as targeted as a shotgun blast and as inefficient as a giant SUV. It really didn't matter what marketing did, because the consumer was unstoppable.
It is time to invest in your marketing department to change with these leaner times and equip it to better manage this consumer behavior. Investing in marketing does not mean giving marketing more money to hire more coordinators to send out more marketing messages, more emails, spend more on advertising. etc. Investing in marketing means putting in the marketing systems, technology, and process improvements that will create a more efficient marketing department. A good place to start would be an Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) system. This investment could be in a complete or even a partial EMM system. Small incremental improvement with a partial system is better than standing still and doing nothing.
An EMM system can help your marketing department produce targeted messages more quickly with fewer review cycles. It can allow marketing to control and track marketing costs for those messages and deliver them to the right customer in the most cost efficient manner (personalized email, mail, web microsite, point of sale, etc.). EMM systems combine marketing planning, financial and production management along with campaign, offer, and emarketing management all in one platform. EMM allows you to reduce costs to improve your bottom line while also improving your top line revenue generation with more effective targeting and automated, personalized communication. An EMM system will allow your marketing to be focused, more efficient, and more persistent to pry the NO Consumer out of his or her anti-spending cocoon.
Why now?
Well before your marketing department was too busy generating revenue to implement a new marketing system. Why not use this downturn in the economy to retool your marketing department. This will allow your organization to survive in this bad NO Economy. Then later, when the economy steams back, which economies always do, your company will be ready to take full advantage of the opportunities the next new economy will bring.
The New Economy gives way to the NO Economy
Remember the New Economy. It promised that globalization and the rapid movement of ideas, technology, resources, manufacturing, and financing through the power of the Internet was going to fundamentally change the way we live, do business, and market. It was going to improve everyone's lives.
Well, the new economy has been foreclosed on, though its structure is still there. The New Economy is empty, has growing weeds, contains some broken windows, and needs some attention. What we are left with now is a NEW economy that actually resembles the old economy of the frugal and considerate consumer. I will call this the New Old (NO) Economy. The NO Economy is not built on instant financing with no money down, creative investment vehicles, outsourcing everything, and ponzi schemes. It is an economy based on a frugal, responsible, and value conscious consumer - the NO Consumer.
Marketing in the NO Economy to the NO Consumer
This NO Economy and NO Consumer has changed how company's market as well. The days of if you build it, the customers will come are gone. Or, if you offer it, the customers will respond. Even in this recovering economy, the NO Consumers are more skeptical and less impulsive. You can see this consumer behavior effecting most every industry - automobiles, hotels, gaming, software, airlines, media, manufacturing, etc. Economists are seeing this as a fundamental change in the consumer. This consumer behavior makes it much more difficult to get your prospects and customers to respond to your offers, no matter what you spend in marketing. In addition, in order to deliver more value to acquire consumers, companies are compressing prices or delivering more for the same price. This is putting pressure on margins and in turn reducing marketing budgets. The marketing department is under siege both internally (budgets slashed) and externally (customers not responding).
It is time to invest in your marketing department
In periods of growth, when consumers were spending as fast as they could refinance their property, your marketing could be as targeted as a shotgun blast and as inefficient as a giant SUV. It really didn't matter what marketing did, because the consumer was unstoppable.
It is time to invest in your marketing department to change with these leaner times and equip it to better manage this consumer behavior. Investing in marketing does not mean giving marketing more money to hire more coordinators to send out more marketing messages, more emails, spend more on advertising. etc. Investing in marketing means putting in the marketing systems, technology, and process improvements that will create a more efficient marketing department. A good place to start would be an Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) system. This investment could be in a complete or even a partial EMM system. Small incremental improvement with a partial system is better than standing still and doing nothing.
An EMM system can help your marketing department produce targeted messages more quickly with fewer review cycles. It can allow marketing to control and track marketing costs for those messages and deliver them to the right customer in the most cost efficient manner (personalized email, mail, web microsite, point of sale, etc.). EMM systems combine marketing planning, financial and production management along with campaign, offer, and emarketing management all in one platform. EMM allows you to reduce costs to improve your bottom line while also improving your top line revenue generation with more effective targeting and automated, personalized communication. An EMM system will allow your marketing to be focused, more efficient, and more persistent to pry the NO Consumer out of his or her anti-spending cocoon.
Why now?
Well before your marketing department was too busy generating revenue to implement a new marketing system. Why not use this downturn in the economy to retool your marketing department. This will allow your organization to survive in this bad NO Economy. Then later, when the economy steams back, which economies always do, your company will be ready to take full advantage of the opportunities the next new economy will bring.
Maybe you already "got milk," but that's not all you need in life. Experts say we need a balanced diet of dairy, protein, grains, fruits and vegetables. You wouldn't try to survive on only one of these. You'd run into all kinds of problems if you only ate ground beef or blueberries. You know better, so you try to include every food group.I hope you also know better than to think you're set for life if you're using marketing software that addresses one, tiny area of your marketing organization. Yes, it may be improving your outbound marketing and lead distribution efforts, but what about your materials and inventory? You may have a microsite builder, but are you working on search engine optimization or PPC Advertising?
We do software, and if you do collateral we can help. If you and your team realize that much already, half the battle is behind you. Are you looking for collateral customization software? Collateral management software? Marketing collateral software? Marketing collateral management software? Digital asset management software? Brand content management software? (Phew.) No matter what you call it, we do it.
James Gilchrist, a Graphics Designer at Aprimo and one of my coworkers, may be talking about this functionality so check out his posts for more information.
Aprimo's booth will be an oasis in the crowded exhibit hall at DMA09, October 18-20, 2009, at the San Diego Convention Center. We'll be offering a temporary escape from the conference to a virtual resort atmosphere complete with free water, archery and canoeing with Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort game and a gift for stopping by.As the Direct Marketing Association's premiere annual conference and exhibition, the event is first class in keynote speakers, including Martha Stewart; track session offerings, ranging from retention and loyalty to leveraging new media; and exhibiting companies, more than 300 of them!
Aprimo is a bronze sponsor of the event, and at our booth we will highlight our multichannel marketing and campaign management software solutions.
Want to see our industry-leading software first-hand? Come by for a group demo, every hour on the hour, or a more tailored individual demo. Let us know where your marketing team's pain points are, and we'll show you how Aprimo can help.
Impressed by the demo and don't want to leave? Challenge a colleague (or one of us!) to a wakeboarding competition or game of table tennis on the Wii. We'll be ready for you.
Are you attending the DMA09 this month? Sign in with a comment to let me know, and I may have a special gift waiting for you at the booth, while supplies last, of course.
Where are you with budget discussions for the New Year? If you need to talk dollars and "sense" pertaining to marketing automation software, we are here to assist. Since marketing is always being asked to do more with less, it makes perfect "sense" to budget for your marketing needs so that you can wisely and responsibly handle that request. We have the Marketing Financial Management Software to help you.
If you would like to speak with us prior to budget discussions, please visit our website at aprimo.com or call us at 317 803-4300. We would love to speak with you.
Marketing is hard work, and it's getting harder. If you're in marketing, you already know how hard it has been in the past. Today's economic challenges often make our difficult yesterdays look like a piece of cake.
I had a conversation with a marketer who was saying that her boss is on board with finding something to handle what had become the impossible in their marketing efforts. He had been challenged with cutting their marketing personnel by half. She said they had always done a terrific job with their marketing operations on what they felt was a small staff. Now, having been sliced in half, they were paralyzed, and left not knowing what to do next.
Among other things, they specifically needed project management software, a marketing calendar, something for reviews and approvals, and a better/quicker way to handle the leads that were suddenly being neglected.
She was happy to learn there was help on the horizon! We discussed the many areas of Aprimo Marketing Studio that would help them. Before we ended our conversation, she said she was so happy she had called even though she had feared no one could help them.
If you are down so low you have to crawl up to ground level to see daylight, please let us know. I would love to speak with you about your specific needs and discuss how we might help you, too.
Sound familiar? Imagine this....you have an important prospect coming to your headquarters site for a visit to (hopefully) close the deal. Your role is Corporate Marketing and you manage all the central jobs for creation and management of creative content such as graphics, logos, photos, etc. One of your executives is giving a critical presentation and that includes an outdated version of a graphic that misses new, key functionality and important new positioning from Product Marketing.
In this case it's a fairly isolated issue as only one prospect has been exposed. But, if the Execs at your headquarters site don't have the latest and greatest, imagine what your sales team is using. If your sales team isn't up-to-date, what's the chance that your partner channel has your current creative?
This scenario can be taken further by considering the possibility of using licensed content after an expiration date or, even worse, improper use of licensed photography. This can end up costing additional licensing fees or penalty fees. Just about any of these situations can justify the purchase of a Digital Asset Management software product as part of your Marketing Automation solution. In addition to keeping everyone on the current version, you can also save a bunch of time by allowing your channels and outsourced agencies to self-serve in accessing your creative materials and sales tools. Have you ever had any of these issues? Let me hear from you!
In this case it's a fairly isolated issue as only one prospect has been exposed. But, if the Execs at your headquarters site don't have the latest and greatest, imagine what your sales team is using. If your sales team isn't up-to-date, what's the chance that your partner channel has your current creative?
This scenario can be taken further by considering the possibility of using licensed content after an expiration date or, even worse, improper use of licensed photography. This can end up costing additional licensing fees or penalty fees. Just about any of these situations can justify the purchase of a Digital Asset Management software product as part of your Marketing Automation solution. In addition to keeping everyone on the current version, you can also save a bunch of time by allowing your channels and outsourced agencies to self-serve in accessing your creative materials and sales tools. Have you ever had any of these issues? Let me hear from you!
September 30. Month end and quarter end. How is 2009 already 75% behind us? A second ago I was ringing in the new year on the ski slopes. Summer is officially over, too. Soon it will be dark when I wake up and dark when I get home. Minimal sunlight, as if I need another reason to be depressed while I endure a cold midwest winter.
Today, finance and marketing finance professionals everywhere will be busier than busy. It's time to close the books. How much did we spend this month? How much did we make? Are you sure? What about the quarter as a whole? And don't think tomorrow they'll wake up to a stress-free day. It's not all wrapped up by the time the clock strikes October.
Hopefully, marketing finance operations are a piece of cake for those marketing finance folks because they are using a marketing financial management software like Aprimo's to manage their budgets all month long. When forecasts are laid out, commitments entered and invoices approved against those commitments, you know exactly where your dinero went, when and why. Done and done.
Personally, there's nothing hitting me over the head when another month or quarter comes to an end. Most of the time, I don't even think about it, unless a sales manager is explaining that they didn't call me back right away because contracts this and signatures that. It doesn't bother me that Q3 is over. But summer... I'll be pouting about that until Easter.
This week I spoke with a company CMO looking for a magic button to solve the chaos going on with his marketing budget. He was exasperated with the many attempts they've made to manage it themselves and was looking for something to help him not only manage his marketing finances, forecasts, and expenses, but also their reviews and approval processes - all marketing operations wrapped into one simple package.
We discussed how Aprimo's marketing management software can do just that. It enables marketing management to view and control their budget based on their own marketing structure and incorporate their business rules. Within just a few minutes, he determined he wanted to learn more about our software and its other functions and said he would like to see a demonstration with additional team members present.
Where are your marketing dollars going? If you don't really know, let Aprimo help! Visit us at Aprimo.com and let me know how we can help.
We discussed how Aprimo's marketing management software can do just that. It enables marketing management to view and control their budget based on their own marketing structure and incorporate their business rules. Within just a few minutes, he determined he wanted to learn more about our software and its other functions and said he would like to see a demonstration with additional team members present.
Where are your marketing dollars going? If you don't really know, let Aprimo help! Visit us at Aprimo.com and let me know how we can help.
How are you handling your leads currently? Is your lead managment process working well for you? Are your leads winning the battle or are you winning the leads?
Marketing professionals reach out to us asking to hear more about our Lead Automation Management functionality, saying they are swamped and overwhelmed with leads and are trying to find a best practice to address them.
We have prospects - who are now our customers - that have come to us with just that one business concern. They didn't need anything huge......they simply needed to solve their problem....What to do with all those leads? They might have leads from events, leads from their websites, leads from lists, and more. I've heard questions like: How do I determine which ones to handle first? How do I keep from having duplicates? How do I know if I'm passing out duplicates to my sales team? How do I best organize them so they are manageable? How do I track them? How do I score them?
Aprimo has marketing management software to make you the unquestionable winner in the Lead Management arena. Let us know if you are overwhelmed in your current processes of trying to manage your leads and lead scoring. We would love to help.
Marketing professionals reach out to us asking to hear more about our Lead Automation Management functionality, saying they are swamped and overwhelmed with leads and are trying to find a best practice to address them.
We have prospects - who are now our customers - that have come to us with just that one business concern. They didn't need anything huge......they simply needed to solve their problem....What to do with all those leads? They might have leads from events, leads from their websites, leads from lists, and more. I've heard questions like: How do I determine which ones to handle first? How do I keep from having duplicates? How do I know if I'm passing out duplicates to my sales team? How do I best organize them so they are manageable? How do I track them? How do I score them?
Aprimo has marketing management software to make you the unquestionable winner in the Lead Management arena. Let us know if you are overwhelmed in your current processes of trying to manage your leads and lead scoring. We would love to help.
Let's face it, a lot of us feel we are pretty smart and that we can pick up new tools on our own. That search engine managment tool cannot be that different from Excel right? Just point us in the right direction and we will figure it out. I will admit to falling into this trap more than once. Have you?
Need a hint? Do you never read the manuals on our home appliances/electronics because you can figure it out by yourself.
But then a friend comes over one day and picks up the remote for your DVR, pushes a couple buttons and makes something happen you did not know was possible. You are amazed and ask "How did you do that !?!" and your friend replies "I read about it in the manual."
Beware! I have seen how this bit of "ego" can cause real harm when it comes to using demand generation or marketing resource management software applications. Especially in the more functionally rich features like email and microsite builders, web analytics tools, collateral customization, or marketing project management.
We all want to assume that once we are taught the basics, we can figure out the rest on our own. So, rather than attend real training or read the help manual, we poke around on our own and see what we can figure out. The real risk with this is that you probably will "figure out" how to make that content block in an email be a "rules based" dynamic content block. You feel pretty good and give yourself a pat on the back. What you do not realize is that there were four other ways to have approached that same problem and three of them were much simpler or better than the way you "figured out" how to do it.
Even worse, you are proud of what you learned so you share it with others in your company. Over time, these bad practices get passed on from one user to another and pretty soon your whole team is doing things inefficiently or even just plain wrong without realizing it. Everyone thinks that is just the way you have to do it.
Over the years, I have had many instances where a customer complained to me about how difficult it was do something in our software only to find out they doing it completely wrong and were unaware of the other much simpler options.
Enthusiam and a positive attitude are wonderful when working with software applications but you must be open to asking questions and getting help from the experts when its needed.
Need a hint? Do you never read the manuals on our home appliances/electronics because you can figure it out by yourself.
But then a friend comes over one day and picks up the remote for your DVR, pushes a couple buttons and makes something happen you did not know was possible. You are amazed and ask "How did you do that !?!" and your friend replies "I read about it in the manual."
Beware! I have seen how this bit of "ego" can cause real harm when it comes to using demand generation or marketing resource management software applications. Especially in the more functionally rich features like email and microsite builders, web analytics tools, collateral customization, or marketing project management.
We all want to assume that once we are taught the basics, we can figure out the rest on our own. So, rather than attend real training or read the help manual, we poke around on our own and see what we can figure out. The real risk with this is that you probably will "figure out" how to make that content block in an email be a "rules based" dynamic content block. You feel pretty good and give yourself a pat on the back. What you do not realize is that there were four other ways to have approached that same problem and three of them were much simpler or better than the way you "figured out" how to do it.
Even worse, you are proud of what you learned so you share it with others in your company. Over time, these bad practices get passed on from one user to another and pretty soon your whole team is doing things inefficiently or even just plain wrong without realizing it. Everyone thinks that is just the way you have to do it.
Over the years, I have had many instances where a customer complained to me about how difficult it was do something in our software only to find out they doing it completely wrong and were unaware of the other much simpler options.
Enthusiam and a positive attitude are wonderful when working with software applications but you must be open to asking questions and getting help from the experts when its needed.
AAA0 stands for 'anytime, anywhere, anyhow, bar nothing.' My high school swim coach used this motto to rally our team to a state championship. Lots of good memories!
I sometimes feel like companies take this same mindset and approach when marketing to me as a customer. It happens to all of us. AAA0 marketing is a bit bothersome, but what's getting all the attention these days is the pervasiveness of behavioral profiling in the digital age. Many perfectly normal people are saying "don't trespass on my digital real estate unless I've invited you to do so."
As interactive marketers, we face this challenge every day! The problem is we haven't had the interactive marketing software we need to manage the holistic experience of every interaction with our customers, starting with understanding their anonymous digital profile all the way through the point(s) of conversion, and most importantly - respecting their preferences along the way.
Fortunately, this is changing. Today's available marketing management software, such as Aprimo's Marketing Studio, allows us to perform AAAP marketing - anytime, anywhere, anyhow, but with an understanding of one's preferences and with their permission.
As we all know, some things in life are more difficult than others. I was reading a news article the other day and started thinking about how some tasks seem so difficult or unachievable, before even starting them. Difficulty, however, can be relative. Depending on whether you have the correct planning or tools, some things can be hard or relatively easy to manage.
In my world (Enterprise Marketing Management), I deal with a lot of customers that need to plan and manage marketing campaigns. There are potentially thousands of campaigns, totaling tens of millions of dollars per year. At this scale, offline tools such as Excel, don't fulfill the requirements and make managing or planning difficult. Hundreds of file versions, no central visibility or security - this task very quickly becomes unmanageable and time consuming.
Using a good Marketing Financial Software package, such as Aprimo, this task suddenly becomes a lot easier. Managing thousands of campaigns and budgets, consisting of millions of dollars, is now centrally managed and controlled using Aprimo's marketing finanacial management software. Not only do you have the control and visibility to plan and manage campaigns, but you have security controls to manage the data and enforce compliance. This along with all the other benefits (built in Reporting and Analysis tools, Digital Asset Management, Dashboards and more), suddenly a task that used to be difficult becomes a lot easier and efficient.
It is truly amazing how many of our clients start trying to manage their campaigns and budgets using simple tools such as Excel. It's not uncommon to hear of hundreds of versions of the same file, with duplicates scattered around a company on people's desktops. It is really rewarding being able to take a customers pain points and frustrations and turn them around using Aprimo.
So is Marketing Financial Management difficult? Not if you are using our marketing management software!
In my world (Enterprise Marketing Management), I deal with a lot of customers that need to plan and manage marketing campaigns. There are potentially thousands of campaigns, totaling tens of millions of dollars per year. At this scale, offline tools such as Excel, don't fulfill the requirements and make managing or planning difficult. Hundreds of file versions, no central visibility or security - this task very quickly becomes unmanageable and time consuming.
Using a good Marketing Financial Software package, such as Aprimo, this task suddenly becomes a lot easier. Managing thousands of campaigns and budgets, consisting of millions of dollars, is now centrally managed and controlled using Aprimo's marketing finanacial management software. Not only do you have the control and visibility to plan and manage campaigns, but you have security controls to manage the data and enforce compliance. This along with all the other benefits (built in Reporting and Analysis tools, Digital Asset Management, Dashboards and more), suddenly a task that used to be difficult becomes a lot easier and efficient.
It is truly amazing how many of our clients start trying to manage their campaigns and budgets using simple tools such as Excel. It's not uncommon to hear of hundreds of versions of the same file, with duplicates scattered around a company on people's desktops. It is really rewarding being able to take a customers pain points and frustrations and turn them around using Aprimo.
So is Marketing Financial Management difficult? Not if you are using our marketing management software!
Have you ever noticed that we speak our own language in the corporate world? My colleague and I keep a mental list of these words and phrases. Sometimes we can't make sense of them, and sometimes they're just hysterical.
Children have their own language, as do high school and college students. Texting and tweeting requires an abbreviated language. When I transitioned from college Kati to corporate Kati, I knew I'd be changing the way I spoke, putting on my professional voice for phone calls and meetings.
I naturally assumed I'd drop certain words and phrases ("like" and "ya know?"). But I also learned a new language. I was surrounded by "let's take that offline" and "this content should be evergreen."
"Do you have bandwidth this week?"
"I'll ping John about that."
"Let's flesh it out."
"Give me the 30,000 foot view."
"We're not trying to boil the ocean."
"If you could wave your magic wand..."
Computer programmers speak "geek," and architects chat "math." Marketers have a language, too.
We all know language can be a barrier. Aprimo's marketing management software refers to an event, campaign or project as an activity. And activities roll up to programs. But we don't want to add another barrier to the lives of our users. Because we recognize that all marketing departments are not created equally, we allow users to configure the terminology in our marketing management software to match their language. So if you want to call it a tradeshow or a project, hop in and change it. Instead of rolling up to a program, you can roll up to a strategy or quarterly objective. The choice is yours.
Does your current marketing management software give you this freedom?
For me, the mark of fall transcends cooler weather and shorter days to include a return to school for my kids and the switch to other sports, including travel basketball for my older son. This year I did the unthinkable (at least in my book). I organized a new travel team and secured a place for it in a local league. This was no small task, and I had many parents commenting on my ability to do it without dropping any one of the proverbial balls in the air. (Is that a pun? I'd like to think so.) I owe my ability to "get in the weeds" while attending to the "big picture" to both my career and my hobby, database marketing (i.e., 1:1 or CRM) and drawing, respectively.
If you've ever been responsible for managing a multichannel marketing campaign then you know, first hand, the need to focus on the littlest of details, or they, independently or in combination, could be your campaign's un-doing. Today, Marketers use an array of marketing automation platforms that include specific tools for specific needs like campaign management for data query and selection or campaign workflow to help sequence, assign and manage tasks and resources, or reporting and analysis to measure campaign performance. So...unlike those days when I wrote detailed specs for programmers, analysts, printers, and online creatives, today's marketers can use software to "sweat the details."
In addition, today's marketers have greater control over campaign measurement, which goes beyond simply having access to campaign data via reporting tools. Today's marketer can actually set the rules for what is and what is not a campaign response -- i.e., response attribution. This is a huge plus for us, as we no longer have to rely on hard-coded promotion code capture with an inferred response code rule as a back-up. Marketers use campaign management software to set the parameters "in their data" to define and track responses. What's great about it is we can easily isolate intended behavior from those that are more incidental or ancillary, which leads to actionable insights. Nothin' but net, baby!
Back to basketball... I may have the natural tendency or skill to successfully manage all the "moving parts" for a boys travel basketball team like I used to do for marketing campaigns, but not everyone can blend tactical and strategic tasks well. But more importantly, no one can do it efficiently without the right tools. (Even me!) I am certain that I could have been faster, better, and more productive if I had the marketing automation solutions that make our lives so much easier today. And, this means less tactical work and more strategic contributions for everyone! I LOVE that!
If you've ever been responsible for managing a multichannel marketing campaign then you know, first hand, the need to focus on the littlest of details, or they, independently or in combination, could be your campaign's un-doing. Today, Marketers use an array of marketing automation platforms that include specific tools for specific needs like campaign management for data query and selection or campaign workflow to help sequence, assign and manage tasks and resources, or reporting and analysis to measure campaign performance. So...unlike those days when I wrote detailed specs for programmers, analysts, printers, and online creatives, today's marketers can use software to "sweat the details."
In addition, today's marketers have greater control over campaign measurement, which goes beyond simply having access to campaign data via reporting tools. Today's marketer can actually set the rules for what is and what is not a campaign response -- i.e., response attribution. This is a huge plus for us, as we no longer have to rely on hard-coded promotion code capture with an inferred response code rule as a back-up. Marketers use campaign management software to set the parameters "in their data" to define and track responses. What's great about it is we can easily isolate intended behavior from those that are more incidental or ancillary, which leads to actionable insights. Nothin' but net, baby!
Back to basketball... I may have the natural tendency or skill to successfully manage all the "moving parts" for a boys travel basketball team like I used to do for marketing campaigns, but not everyone can blend tactical and strategic tasks well. But more importantly, no one can do it efficiently without the right tools. (Even me!) I am certain that I could have been faster, better, and more productive if I had the marketing automation solutions that make our lives so much easier today. And, this means less tactical work and more strategic contributions for everyone! I LOVE that!
Well...that is a popular question these days now that trade show season is starting again. Trade show attendance is clearly down and event managers are quick to tell us "it's gotten rid of the tire kickers." If someone is coming to a trade show today, they are really interested in what you have. That's an interesting premise but not one you can answer at the show (where they would like you to renew for next year, by the way). Marketing operation management is important for answering this question. To truly track the Marketing ROI of an event, you'll need to track the results and the cost. It seems so simple, but keeping an accurate accounting of both is a challenge. A strong Marketing Operations Management component will track the cost of the activity in one place. This aspect of Marketing Financial Management software should not be taken lightly. The ability to show a view of financial status the way that marketing wants to track cost is the elegant benefit of MRM software. The marketing software application will provide you a foundation for tracking the results of an event. How many names did you collect? How many move to the next stage in the marketing funnel (downloaded a white paper or attended a webinar)? How many became an appointment? How many did sales pursue as an opportunity? How many closed as new deals? Depending on your business, your metrics and expectations will be different, but these metrics need to be tracked to express your marketing ROI.
I have a confession: Back in my early days in marketing, I was doing a national tour for sales training with a large multi-national high tech company. It was one of those "If this is Tuesday, it must be Raleigh" tours with a different city and the same presentation each day. To say the least, it got a little old delivering the same presentation. To stave off the boredom, we challenged each other to weave in some nonsense phrases in our presentations (purple aardvarks for example).
What's my point, you may ask? Marketers don't become marketers to do the same thing over and over again. They join marketing to tap into a desire to be creative. However, much of marketing is about doing the same or similar tasks very well. Just like robotics in a manufacturing facility, marketing operations management software can address the repetitive side and enable the creative side for a marketer. Automating the marketing workflow takes some of the marketing project management load off of the marketing team. If you're not sitting here worrying about who has to review this item next and whether you have the most recent version of the creative, you have more time to be creative.
So, why should you look at marketing operations management software? It will give you time to find your purple aardvarks!
It's the same old story we have been telling every week:
Your resources are shrinking every day, yet Sales is asking for more and better prospects in the sales funnel. You're trying to stretch your collateral out to last through the end of the year, and you're trying desperately to show ROI in marketing post campaign.
You have one more event this year, and are getting a lot of pressure to cancel, since ROI is so difficult to measure.
So, do you go to the event, deplete your tiny budget even more, taking the chance that nothing good will come of it but the stories from Sales about late night escapades???
Turn to Aprimo Marketing Studio, silly!!
Stick a banner ad on the conference website, and watch the click-throughs to your landing page. Push out those emails to the pre-conference attendee list, and watch them show up in real time to your site. And, manage your conference activities and expenditures down to the penny by utilizing online management software.
Go ahead, go to the event. Just be sure to manage your activities, your collateral, your campaigns and your demand generation efforts online, then go Twitter about it!!!
Your resources are shrinking every day, yet Sales is asking for more and better prospects in the sales funnel. You're trying to stretch your collateral out to last through the end of the year, and you're trying desperately to show ROI in marketing post campaign.
You have one more event this year, and are getting a lot of pressure to cancel, since ROI is so difficult to measure.
So, do you go to the event, deplete your tiny budget even more, taking the chance that nothing good will come of it but the stories from Sales about late night escapades???
Turn to Aprimo Marketing Studio, silly!!
Stick a banner ad on the conference website, and watch the click-throughs to your landing page. Push out those emails to the pre-conference attendee list, and watch them show up in real time to your site. And, manage your conference activities and expenditures down to the penny by utilizing online management software.
Go ahead, go to the event. Just be sure to manage your activities, your collateral, your campaigns and your demand generation efforts online, then go Twitter about it!!!
Powered by Compendium Blogware