Over the first few months of this year a lot of attention has been paid to quality– the auto industry is a perfect example of this top-of mind awareness. This led me to reflect on the steps one of our clients is taking in the arena of campaign quality. We’ve recently helped them insert a quality assurance process into their campaign management operation. The early results are looking good. Here’s a bit of background on the evolution of quality control in campaign management.
One of the best starting points – as well as a good best practice – is to periodically review the overall operations of your campaign management environment. In many cases, once your campaign environment is rolled out and word gets out, usage growth will start to occur almost exponentially. One of our clients experienced just such rapid growth over the course of their first year. They found that they were experiencing an increase in the number of issues and requests for campaign changes. In turn, this newly added volume increased their need to add quality assurance checks into their process. They implemented Unica a year or so ago as their campaign management system. Currently, they are managing 48 campaigns and 105 flowcharts in their Unica environment. Here are some of the steps they’ve taken to add the structure necessary to effectively insert quality into their process:
1. Review the marketing campaign development process – Development of new campaigns usually starts out slow. You’ll find that one “volunteer” marketer who is ready to be the first out of the gate with your new campaign management tool. And there is another not far behind; before you know it, you’ve gotten a substantial management need for your campaign development. The question to ask is, “Do I have the appropriate documents to support campaign development?” If the answer is no, have the marketing group complete a campaign specification document to outline their requirements. This becomes more useful during requirement signoff and for any future issues or change requests. Both a campaign request form and a campaign design template are good examples of highly beneficial standard artifacts.
2. Document the procedures – How does your group handle issues or challenges with campaigns when they come up? What about change requests? Do you have a process in place to handle these? If not, another good practice is to review your current procedures and update them accordingly. This should be a living document within your group. It’s also a great training tool for new developers as they come on board.
3. Implement a QA process – Do you remember when your English or Math teacher would say to you “check your work before handing it in?” Funny as it sounds, they were usually right and checking the development of a campaign is no exception. If your group does not have a quality assurance function, create one. Have your campaign developer review with a peer. The creation of a campaign checklist is definitely a best practice to assess whether something may have been missed from the spec. This process works, and works well!
Hopefully one of more of these quality barometers will be useful in your organization.
