For the past few years, marketing has responded to the consumer’s increasing control over how, where, and when companies reach them. New social media channels both ignite and quench the customer’s thirst for connectivity and expression, while allowing them to dictate who may contact them — and how. As the proliferation of channels and devices complicates the marketer’s task to successfully reach target audiences, the need for consistency, relevancy and pinpoint accuracy — in message, timing, and channel — has become paramount.
The response has been an explosion of new technologies to support cross-channel marketing, but in many companies the communication channels are managed separately – sometimes as separate departments. The results are all-too familiar: over- (or off-message) communications to customers, who then opt-out or tune out; and, conversely, under-communication to newer customers who seek information and need to be cultivated.
Today the emergence of cross-channel campaign management solutions, offered as Software as a Service (SaaS), change the game.
Getting There
A campaign management solution needs to offer users a way to identify and select target audiences; assign correct offers/treatments; define attributes for personalization; perform elementary analytics; execute, track and report on each campaign on each channel; manage customer contact history; and finally, develop consistent business rules — without the need for programming.
The competitive marketer’s checklist for a cross-channel campaign management solution includes:
• Better customer insight through consolidation of customer data into a single, multi-dimensional marketing data mart.
• Cross-channel orchestration of direct mail, email, SMS, and social media; enabled via one interface.
• Built-in segmentation tools and up-to-the-minute model scores.
• Customer analysis and data visualization tools powered by a business intelligence engine.
• Multi-wave campaigns that allow the results of the first campaign to automatically guide or select the subsequent marketing treatment(s).
With the emergence of the Cloud, traditional cross-channel marketing tools are now being delivered as Software as a Service. While some big misconceptions exist — that information is not secure, and that platforms require users to conform to pre-defined data schemas — savvy companies are seeing past the myths and finding tremendous advantages from selecting a cloud-based solution. With cross-channel campaign management, these advantages add up fast.
Consider the following benefits of working in the Cloud:
• Significantly less expense and complexity especially when compared to integrating a variety of channel-specific solutions and/or installing an enterprise software suite.
• Faster deployment because cloud software is already production ready. Companies need only complete two key steps: map their data feeds and train their user community.
• Minimal/no reliance on internal IT resources, because a cloud-based system means access and control can finally reside in the marketing department.
• Seamless, automatic upgrades with minimal impact on operations.
• Anywhere, anytime access. Only a browser is required.
• Guaranteed uptime with continuous operations. That means minimal downtime for maintenance and upgrades, planned for off-peak hours.
• Quick time to value because the up-front investment is far lower and the time-to-production is short.
• Lower cost of ownership with a predictable monthly subscription fee.
• Secure data – it’s not where the data is stored, but rather how it’s stored.
• Platforms that scale up — and down. The biggest and fastest-growing B2C companies can enjoy capacity when they need it, while mid-sized companies get access to the same sophisticated marketing tools that once only large organizations could afford.
True cloud-based campaign management offers robust cross-channel functionality –continuously enhanced and seamlessly rolled out to users — typically accompanied by extensive data management and hygiene services; strategy, analytics and creative services; and, on a day-to-day basis, expert guidance to achieve world-class marketing results.
By adopting cross channel campaign management in the cloud, marketers can again focus on acquiring and retaining customers instead of wrestling with data, technology and multi-vendor integrations
