Kenyon Blunt
Campaign management tools will have to evolve quickly, because the marketing landscape is continuing to change. Channels are exploding and consumers are leading the way. It’s a tough environment for today’s marketers
At the end of 2009, Forrester Research conducted lab-based evaluations of more than 80 vendors and users of campaign management systems.* They found that “Changing consumer behavior and the overall ineffectiveness of traditional marketing programs ensure that basic campaign management tools are set to go the way of the dodo.” Instead, marketers want technologies that support multichannel campaigns.
Marketers have been busy shifting away from traditional programs such as mass advertising, direct mail and telemarketing, and this trend is projected to continue in 2010. What doesn’t get a lot of attention is that marketers need new tools to keep up with this transformation. And, according to Suresh Vittal, the Forrester analyst who did the study, there are three areas that need improvement:
- Integration across channels – the campaign management solutions that are currently in the market have not been able to combine disparate data because of channel complexities and customer work-arounds.
- Disconnected marketing programs – Integrating online and offline data is hard to do when there are multiple user interfaces, separate business rules, incomplete customer promotion histories and separate planning functions within organizational silos.
- Marketing analytics that focus on specific channels. Marketers told Forrester that a different set of metrics are needed to help understand the interactions between channels and proper response attribution.
There are three types of companies that are converging to deliver integrated campaign management solutions. Some vendors are marketing specialists like Alterian, Aprimo, and Unica. A second group is data and analytics specialists such as SAS and Teradata. Enterprise application providers (Oracle, SAP) make up the final segment. Forrester’s report said that no single vendor, or segment of vendors, is delivering systems that are comprehensive enough for multichannel marketing and program management.
Resources:
“The Forrester WaveTM: Cross-Channel Campaign Management, Q4 2009. (Forrester Research)
About the Author:
Kenyon Blunt is the CEO at SIGMA Marketing Group. Connect with Kenyon on or follow him on .
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