Driving Marketing Efficiency With New Tools

Marketers today are dealing with a very challenging business environment.  Intensifying competition makes sustainable competitive advantage an elusive objective.  With the economy in its current state, marketers are being asked to show ROI for every dollar they spend, while struggling to compile data generated across a growing number of channels.  

In a recent Conference Board report, marketing executives were asked to identify the internal barriers to implementing clear and easily compiled ROI measures.  47% of the respondents cited data availability and integrity, 41% claimed technology and infrastructure were a problem and 39% indicated resource dedication.  And 55% stated that technology and infrastructure deficiencies had a significant effect on their efforts.

A  CMO Council survey (Improving Marketing Yield, Visibility and Process) revealed 61% of CMOs believe marketing operational transformation needs to be an area of focus.  More than half of those surveyed believe marketing operational improvements will have the most impact and value on go-to-market effectiveness and the efficiency of their efforts.  They felt improved tracking performance across the marketing organization would be a primary benefit, along with capturing, cultivating and acting on leads, prospects and opportunities.  The CMO Council strongly suggests that a single platform solution – bringing together all data and resources – is the best direction for marketers to take.  This brings with it the additional benefits of integrating all the operational systems and processes marketers manage today.

How did marketing organizations get to the point of needing a single platform solution to manage and integrate all their activities?  There are several reasons – the rapidly evolving marketing environment now includes: larger amounts of customer data, new marketing  channels with the increasing need for more customized communications, increasingly siloed information within the company all while marketing is typically low on the IT department’s priority list.  The result is a plethora of critical customer information scattered within groups, teams and systems across the organization, making it increasingly difficult to integrate the marketing department’s efforts. This creates an almost impossible task of tracking and measuring ROI.

Most marketers are very familiar with the stages involved in creating the data infrastructure for true multi-channel and customized communications:

• Integrating and cleaning data while creating architecture to support data flows and campaign / response history.
• Establishing Business Intelligence to give marketers timely reporting on campaigns with drill down capabilities to understand the customer.
• Rigorous Analytics and Data Mining using business rules and advanced analytics.

The increasing complexity and sophistication of marketing today has raised the need for rigorous optimization – developing the best combination of offers, channels and messaging with increased speed to market maximizing revenue and profits. Not only is data required from the marketing group, but information from other parts of the company – CRM, Sales, Finance, Manufacturing – is also needed.  And with that comes the need for Marketing Automation to manage this vast wealth of data used by Marketing’s resources – people, budgets and infrastructure - to ensure the best decisions are made.

Automation is relatively new to the marketing industry and just beginning to make inroads in Canada. It moves the marketing department from disconnected ‘point solutions’ for every user to an integrated network with tailored applications for specific marketing functions.  Automation can consolidate programs and activities, saving time and resources.  It can answer the clarion call for marketers today: deliver more with the resources they have – or in most cases – deliver more with less!

Ultimately, senior marketers need desk top control of marketing activity with the information they need available at their fingertips in real time!  By having access to all the relevant information, decisions can be optimized which ultimately leads to a more efficient use of resources (sales and marketing) while driving a higher ROI and stronger customer relationships.

There are few experts who can deliver the full benefits of marketing automation, and many companies struggle in the implementation stage.  Automation needs to be done correctly, avoiding ‘forced-fit’ approaches, to achieve the desired efficiencies.   Senior marketing executives should consider working with an MSP – marketing services provider.  These companies can bring to your organization their skill, experience and tools to fulfill your needs.

To learn about marketing automation and ways in which you can fully leverage the customer and sales data you need to increase the efficiency of your marketing resources, contact Dan Mariani at Transcontinental Database Marketing at (416) 585-2900.