Faced with cautious marketing and communications budgets in 2009, organizations must enact creative marketing strategies. Marketers need to continue customer outreach and loyalty building efforts to maintain a competitive advantage, but it must be accomplished without incurring significant cost.
While direct mail remains the most common method of customer solicitation, it may be hard to justify as a standalone marketing effort in 2009. An array of campaign management (CM) solutions support marketing collateral as well as TransPromo applications, providing a compelling opportunity to consolidate marketing efforts and generate highly effective promotions.
With the latest advancements in TransPromo print production technologies, organizations benefit from a seemingly new touch point in their CM strategies. By utilizing CM within TransPromo documents, organizations personalize existing communications with relevant and timely promotional content—as opposed to additional, standalone promotions and respective costs. Unlike other document types, customers open over 90 percent of the transactional documents and bills they receive.
The staying power of transactional documents combined with the effectiveness of targeted, personalized marketing is a powerful combination. Retail is one industry that understands this concept, leading others with the use of personalized, promotional campaigns within existing communications to retain existing customers.
Financial service organizations utilize similar strategies and tools to retain customers. Firms spend several hundreds of dollars to acquire a new customer. TransPromo applications enable these organizations to cross-sell additional services to customers and recoup money spent in the acquisition. CM solutions provide tools to better match customers with products and generate personalized messages embedded within a TransPromo document.
A number of organizations communicate with customers via TransPromo-oriented email or direct them to Web sites that allow bill viewing and payment. These organizations leverage CM software to track customer preference and then create campaigns specifically for these customers. Email delivery enables inexpensive customer communication and often combines email and postal mail to re-enforce promotion messaging.
Campaign Management as a TransPromo Enabler
The promotional aspects of TransPromo require relevant information delivered to the recipient in a timely manner. Organizations need access to underlying customer data and an intelligent tool to sort out the relevant data. CM software provides these capabilities, placing relevant data into paper or digital documents and tracking the response.
For organizations using print production as a primary communication channel, a CM solution fits between the repository of customer data and a document composition engine. A CM engine helps marketers select targeted populations for a promotion and then develop a personalized message. Based on responses, marketers can create or modify campaigns.
Core Functionality
Key areas of functionality are required to ensure success with a CM solution. An easy-to-use graphical interface represents one important component of a CM solution. Recent technological advances in browser-based interfaces enable marketers to manage their own data analytics, messaging, and reporting. These functions were previously limited to IT or highly-trained technical staff. Marketers could not respond to changes in market conditions or customer responses fast enough to be effective. The majority of CM vendors now offer easily navigable dashboards and self-service tools for non-technical users.
Data analytics provide a front-end to a CM solution. Whether the analytics engine is embedded or integrated with the solution, marketers rely on data output by the analytics engine to make the most successful targeted promotions.
Core components of a CM solution include target selection, offer development, and campaign generation. With target selection, marketers select from the totality of existing customers and prospects, using business rules to set conditions that define the target market. Marketers may use purchase history, perceived interest level, and geographic or demographic criteria to identify the best candidates for each promotion. To develop an offer, marketers import or create content defining the promotion, including text, graphics, variable data elements, and timeframes. Marketers then identify the parameters and channel for delivering one or more offers to each customer. While some solutions include electronic delivery options, others output data files to Web servers, email engines, or document composition engines for final delivery.
Once a campaign is generated, marketers use flexible reporting tool to determine the overall success of the campaign. Reports present customer responses in the form of increased sales activity, Web site hits, coupon redemption, and call center volumes. CM solutions need to offer integration or have the native ability to receive data from Web servers, customer relationship management solutions, business systems, and call center software systems in order for marketers receive the full range of results. Reporting tools must be easy to use and allow marketers to develop new reports or configure existing reports without programming.
Interfacing with the Enterprise
Vendors design CM tools for marketers and other non-technical lines of business staff. Interfaces shield users from complex IT environments. However, CM solutions must link to or integrate with multiple core business systems to be effective. Marketing personnel must work with IT during implementation to ensure all requirements are fulfilled by the CM solution.
For example, CM solutions need timely and accurate data to execute effective campaigns. Whether the solution utilizes its own database or draws data from a corporate datamart, the data source must be refreshed with updates from customer information systems, financial systems, and customer service solutions. Success also depends on the accuracy of the data. Marketers develop target groups based on internal and external lists supplying demographic information, buying habits, and communications preferences. Inaccurate data results in awkward and embarrassing messaging. In addition, the data that CM tools use for reporting must also be accurate to properly reflect market reactions and the progress of the campaign.
Where to Go from Here?
Many indicate that new technology is not in the budget for the first half of 2009. Fortunately, some organizations already have CM solutions in house for direct mail applications. There is work to be done in assessing the enterprise requirements for integrated multi-channel, multi-touch campaigns that include TransPromo. There are also integration requirements to consider. However, the business case is an easy one: highly effective campaigns with a high return on investment, especially when the initial investment utilizes existing assets and resources.
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