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e-Technology
Where CRM is Going
Campaign management software customizes, analyzes and prospects,but its real value is in its creative capabilities
By Jean Marie Angelo
Last year Carol Bartz, CEO of Autodesk, issued a challenge to the software company's 3,000 employees: Leverage the Internet to innovate the way the $1.5 billion companydo
es business.
Bryan St. Amant took up the gauntlet. As the group manager for channel and industry marketing at Autodesk, which produces AutoCAD and other 3D-modeling products for architects, designers and film f/x artists, his products and markets were ready for e-marketing.
The timing of Bartz's directive on the corporate culture was invigorating. St. Amant bought into the whole Seth Godin, permission-based marketing movement and embraced the idea of establishing ongoing dialogs with customers instead of viewing them only as purchasers of product. Armed with his newly installed campaign management software, St. Amant began launching e-campaigns, one after the other;
from June 2000 to March 2001 he launched more than 100 distinct e-initiatives.
As a result, Autodesk now has numerous automated e-campaigns running, with apps thatdo
everything from telling users about new product upgrades to allowing them to virtually view demonstrations at trade shows. The effort is yielding better campaign-response rates across the board.
In short, St. Amant is executing a depth and breadth of e-marketing campaigns that, prior to the recent development of facile campaign management software — in this case from vendor MarketFirst — was impractical.
The Autodesk story is not unique and, like its e-marketing reach, is spreading. More marketers — many not naturally drawn to the techie side — are researching and lobbying for investments in campaign management technology, despite its six-figure-and-up price tag..
And for good reason. In the world of CRM, the campaign management software piece is sometimes called the brains of the operation. It is the controlling technology or app that marketers use to import the creative, select databases, and launch either email missives, direct-mail campaigns or telemarketing efforts. And it resides conveniently on the PC, often via an ASP connection.
By having the controls at their fingertips, marketers have eliminated the need to beg IT or the database division for mailing lists and then
wait for weeks before the request is fulfilled. Now marketers can data mine from their desktops, sort and slice lists, and schedule campaigns. And there's no more guessing or waiting for campaign results. Campaign management can deliver instant reports on e-campaigns, and can speed up reporting time on direct-mail efforts.
Campaign management software is, in fact, what drives the broader Customer Relationship Management concept. It permits links directly with the customer, without which there is no relationship to manage. It is somewhat ironic to note that campaign management software has lagged behind other CRM applications in both development and implementation. Marketers, it seems, have been the last in line when it comes to CRM spending, lagging behind, for example, IT, sales-force automation and customer-support groups. The idea behind customer relationship management, in fact, grew out of customer- service applications (keeping track of customer incidents and then
using automation to manage — and even anticipate — the solutions). Next came CRM for sales support — automating account management.
Promising results
The CRM wave for marketing began just last year and hasn't yet crested. As with any good technology, there are encouraging reports from early adopters, warnings about costly missteps, and a host of questions from curious onlookers.
"Marketing is a virginal area for technology. The marketers haven't had the money to spend on software, except for Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel," says Frank Ingari, chairman and founder of Wheelhouse, a consulting service that spends most of its efforts on helping companies spec, implement and utilize CRM systems. "We get called in by companies that say theydo
n't know what todo
."
The current generation of campaign management software systems are replacing the earlier versions that mainly focused on direct-mail efforts, with a secondary focus on telemarketing. These first campaign management systems were powerful, but big and unwieldy, notes Kathleen Khirallah, senior research analyst for the Tower Group, a technical consulting firm for financial companies. "They were used by maybe 15 of the biggest banks in the country," she says. These industries rely on huge databases to track users of financial products.
Software developers quickly realized that the huge database keepers were limited in market potential as well as naturally limited in practical deliverables. The next generation of solutions linked to — but didn't manage —other operations: the call center, the Internet or any other touch point.
The current crop of campaign management software is on an altogether different scale, offering touch-point management capability, real-time analytics and so on. These products not only help with outbound marketing efforts — sending the appropriate email message to the intended customer — but they assist and manage inbound marketing. These are reactive systems that execute a personal message on a Web page, or that offer call-center reps marketing suggestions or scripts for when a customer calls in.
Reality bytes
Making this seamless marketing system a reality, though, isn't easy. It requires soul-searching about business needs, which is not something marketers always have time todo
. So often short-term goals — end-of-quarter results and sales forecasts — take up all the energy. But before companies take on campaign marketing software, the marketing department needs to ask serious questions. For instance, is there already a good database in place? That's important because all marketing is going to start with a list of customers, or prospects, and a history of how they have behaved.
At this point, some companies opt to buy a suite of technology apps and rebuild their e-marketing base from the ground up. Others might choose to buy a few applications and link them to an existing database. The first option requires a steeper up-front cost because many applications are being purchased at once. The second option, while seeming to be less costly at the start, can end up being even more expensive because some of the promises that campaign management software is simply "plug and play" are usually wishful thinking, at best. Link the wrong software to the wrong existing database and a company can spend forever working out the bugs.
But e-marketing technology is necessary for launching both direct-mail and email campaigns, personalizing email messages and Web site greetings, monitoring how customers and prospects respond (both on- and -offline) and prompting and analyzing those results. The weeks — even months — once needed to get campaign results have been reduced to a matter of days, even hours. Campaign management applications deliver real-time results;
marketers can view multiple campaigns 24/7.
Obviously, just buying and installing off-the-shelf technology isn't enough. Companies must be willing to transform the way they aredo
ing business, says Wheelhouse's Ingari. "People say, 慦e are going to automate the process,'" he says, "but that isn't what these systemsdo
. They enable creative behavior."
Campaign management tools also customize, analyze and prospect, he says, adding that transforming campaign management efforts into CRM begin
s with a vision.
Star Tribune turns the page
At Minneapolis' Star Tribune, campaign management software was part of an overall integration of a fledgling Internet effort within traditional newspaper publishing.
Now in business 135 years, no one can deny that Star Tribune is at a mature stage of the product cycle, but as the nation's 12th largest Sunday newspaper, it has a six-year-old Web site (www.startribune.com). Two million unique visitors log on per month, says Michael Baum, director of DM.
The Web has largely re-defined newspaper publishers — the Star Tribune included — from an ink-and-paper publishing operation to an "information provider" to targeted and specific readerships, says Baum. One key consequence: Campaign management software is used to learn more about readers and to leverage that knowledge to deliver more effective advertising and content messages, whether through personal email messages, direct mail or mass marketing in the newspaper's pages. Readers, meanwhile, who access information either online or in print also receive direct-marketing messages from local and national advertisers.
In the world of campaign management technology, the Star Tribune could be called an old pro. The team that Baum leads has been using the technology for three years, which gives it a few years' edge on most other large companies. The complexity of the newspaper's business dictates that the software can accommodate growth and layered areas of responsibility, as well as be simple enough for a marketer to operate, he says.
So far, the current system manages the Star Tribune's internal direct-marketing business, says Baum, which now employs 25 DMers. Two years ago the company signed on 20 advertisers to participate in a program that would include both online and offline direct marketing. The number of advertisers has grown to 165.
The direct-marketing and email-advertising services are sold through the newspaper sales force. In addition to delivering the standard advertising messages, the Star Tribune also manages the customer-loyalty program for a local supermarket chain. The direct-marketing division operates the national direct-marketing programs for Tires Plus, a 600-store chain in 39 states, and for Macy's West. At the heart of the business, Baum says, are campaign management applications.
But it didn't come together easily. The Star Tribune initially purchased the wrong type of system when it started its campaign management effort, admits Baum. The company struggled for six months with the technology before realizing that the effort was a waste of energy and money. "They sort of oversold what they coulddo
," says Baum of the first vendor. "Fortunately, we put together an agreement that allowed us to cut off the relationship with minimal exposure.
"[Still], we were frustrated because we were chomping at the bit," he adds. Investigation began anew on other companies that weredo
ing similar marketing efforts. A new list of potential software vendors emerged. After six months of review, the Star Tribune's direct-marketing business selected Unica for its campaign-management marketing applications.
The first software installation and subsequent replacement search took 18 months, an interim no one anticipated. "Management began to ask, 慦hat kind of yahoos are you guys?'" concedes Baum, who helped persuade management to stay on board.
Good thing. The programs continue to grow as the direct-marketing division markets subscriptions and now offers the options to renew via email and pay invoices online.
Zapdata, a company that provides businesses with sales leads and mailing lists, at first rejected the campaign management software on the market and built a proprietary campaign management program. The company, which puts together custom business-contact lists for direct mail, telemarketing and sales calls, based its system on the traditional triggers of direct marketing: recency, frequency and monetary value, says Tom Gaither, VP of customer marketing.
This first system was built todo
"just-in-time marketing" — reaching a customer before there is time for the account to lapse, says Gaither. "There are also some customers who haven't made a purchase within 90 days. Instead of thinking about that once a quarter, wouldn't it be better to automatically reach out to them?"
Those who visit the Web site and register for information, but whodo
not purchase a list, are given, gratis, 25 sales leads. The software was designed to remind those who hadn't yet taken advantage that they were still entitled to services. When they came online todo
wnload their free lists, another trigger was generated that would reach them at some future point and remind them about Zapdata.
"The person who built the system was one of those rare, 憈wo-position players' — someone with both marketing savvy and technical expertise, notes Gaither. Eventually, however, Zapdata realized that it would be too costly to maintain the homegrown solution. It's even riskier relying on staffers who can leave at anytime. Eventually the company chose Revenio to handle the ongoing online communications.
Zapdata has also added layers to its online communication. As clients and prospects reply to the email messages, they are asked questions that drilldo
wn to their real needs. "If someone comes butdo
esn't make a purchase, we ask, 慦hy not?'" says Gaither.
Zapdata gets a 15- to -20-percent response rate to the questionnaire, he says. The responses create a separate lead list. These respondents are asked to attend seminars and trade-show demonstrations. The responses also help Zapdata modify its products or offers, if necessary.
Using a third-party tool has made the system more efficient, says Gaither. "We'redo
ing more marketing programs and we'redo
ing them faster with the same number of people," he notes.
Look for new solutions to enhance the relationship of inbound and outbound touch points, adds Vince Bowey, VP of solutions marketing for E.piphany. Wedo
n't yet have an ATM machine serves up a loan application based on personalization data and the Web click-stream history, but that day may be coming, he says.
拜托各位兄弟啦！！！
Where CRM is Going
Campaign management software customizes, analyzes and prospects,but its real value is in its creative capabilities
By Jean Marie Angelo
Last year Carol Bartz, CEO of Autodesk, issued a challenge to the software company's 3,000 employees: Leverage the Internet to innovate the way the $1.5 billion companydo
es business.
Bryan St. Amant took up the gauntlet. As the group manager for channel and industry marketing at Autodesk, which produces AutoCAD and other 3D-modeling products for architects, designers and film f/x artists, his products and markets were ready for e-marketing.
The timing of Bartz's directive on the corporate culture was invigorating. St. Amant bought into the whole Seth Godin, permission-based marketing movement and embraced the idea of establishing ongoing dialogs with customers instead of viewing them only as purchasers of product. Armed with his newly installed campaign management software, St. Amant began launching e-campaigns, one after the other;
from June 2000 to March 2001 he launched more than 100 distinct e-initiatives.
As a result, Autodesk now has numerous automated e-campaigns running, with apps thatdo
everything from telling users about new product upgrades to allowing them to virtually view demonstrations at trade shows. The effort is yielding better campaign-response rates across the board.
In short, St. Amant is executing a depth and breadth of e-marketing campaigns that, prior to the recent development of facile campaign management software — in this case from vendor MarketFirst — was impractical.
The Autodesk story is not unique and, like its e-marketing reach, is spreading. More marketers — many not naturally drawn to the techie side — are researching and lobbying for investments in campaign management technology, despite its six-figure-and-up price tag..
And for good reason. In the world of CRM, the campaign management software piece is sometimes called the brains of the operation. It is the controlling technology or app that marketers use to import the creative, select databases, and launch either email missives, direct-mail campaigns or telemarketing efforts. And it resides conveniently on the PC, often via an ASP connection.
By having the controls at their fingertips, marketers have eliminated the need to beg IT or the database division for mailing lists and then
wait for weeks before the request is fulfilled. Now marketers can data mine from their desktops, sort and slice lists, and schedule campaigns. And there's no more guessing or waiting for campaign results. Campaign management can deliver instant reports on e-campaigns, and can speed up reporting time on direct-mail efforts.
Campaign management software is, in fact, what drives the broader Customer Relationship Management concept. It permits links directly with the customer, without which there is no relationship to manage. It is somewhat ironic to note that campaign management software has lagged behind other CRM applications in both development and implementation. Marketers, it seems, have been the last in line when it comes to CRM spending, lagging behind, for example, IT, sales-force automation and customer-support groups. The idea behind customer relationship management, in fact, grew out of customer- service applications (keeping track of customer incidents and then
using automation to manage — and even anticipate — the solutions). Next came CRM for sales support — automating account management.
Promising results
The CRM wave for marketing began just last year and hasn't yet crested. As with any good technology, there are encouraging reports from early adopters, warnings about costly missteps, and a host of questions from curious onlookers.
"Marketing is a virginal area for technology. The marketers haven't had the money to spend on software, except for Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel," says Frank Ingari, chairman and founder of Wheelhouse, a consulting service that spends most of its efforts on helping companies spec, implement and utilize CRM systems. "We get called in by companies that say theydo
n't know what todo
."
The current generation of campaign management software systems are replacing the earlier versions that mainly focused on direct-mail efforts, with a secondary focus on telemarketing. These first campaign management systems were powerful, but big and unwieldy, notes Kathleen Khirallah, senior research analyst for the Tower Group, a technical consulting firm for financial companies. "They were used by maybe 15 of the biggest banks in the country," she says. These industries rely on huge databases to track users of financial products.
Software developers quickly realized that the huge database keepers were limited in market potential as well as naturally limited in practical deliverables. The next generation of solutions linked to — but didn't manage —other operations: the call center, the Internet or any other touch point.
The current crop of campaign management software is on an altogether different scale, offering touch-point management capability, real-time analytics and so on. These products not only help with outbound marketing efforts — sending the appropriate email message to the intended customer — but they assist and manage inbound marketing. These are reactive systems that execute a personal message on a Web page, or that offer call-center reps marketing suggestions or scripts for when a customer calls in.
Reality bytes
Making this seamless marketing system a reality, though, isn't easy. It requires soul-searching about business needs, which is not something marketers always have time todo
. So often short-term goals — end-of-quarter results and sales forecasts — take up all the energy. But before companies take on campaign marketing software, the marketing department needs to ask serious questions. For instance, is there already a good database in place? That's important because all marketing is going to start with a list of customers, or prospects, and a history of how they have behaved.
At this point, some companies opt to buy a suite of technology apps and rebuild their e-marketing base from the ground up. Others might choose to buy a few applications and link them to an existing database. The first option requires a steeper up-front cost because many applications are being purchased at once. The second option, while seeming to be less costly at the start, can end up being even more expensive because some of the promises that campaign management software is simply "plug and play" are usually wishful thinking, at best. Link the wrong software to the wrong existing database and a company can spend forever working out the bugs.
But e-marketing technology is necessary for launching both direct-mail and email campaigns, personalizing email messages and Web site greetings, monitoring how customers and prospects respond (both on- and -offline) and prompting and analyzing those results. The weeks — even months — once needed to get campaign results have been reduced to a matter of days, even hours. Campaign management applications deliver real-time results;
marketers can view multiple campaigns 24/7.
Obviously, just buying and installing off-the-shelf technology isn't enough. Companies must be willing to transform the way they aredo
ing business, says Wheelhouse's Ingari. "People say, 慦e are going to automate the process,'" he says, "but that isn't what these systemsdo
. They enable creative behavior."
Campaign management tools also customize, analyze and prospect, he says, adding that transforming campaign management efforts into CRM begin
s with a vision.
Star Tribune turns the page
At Minneapolis' Star Tribune, campaign management software was part of an overall integration of a fledgling Internet effort within traditional newspaper publishing.
Now in business 135 years, no one can deny that Star Tribune is at a mature stage of the product cycle, but as the nation's 12th largest Sunday newspaper, it has a six-year-old Web site (www.startribune.com). Two million unique visitors log on per month, says Michael Baum, director of DM.
The Web has largely re-defined newspaper publishers — the Star Tribune included — from an ink-and-paper publishing operation to an "information provider" to targeted and specific readerships, says Baum. One key consequence: Campaign management software is used to learn more about readers and to leverage that knowledge to deliver more effective advertising and content messages, whether through personal email messages, direct mail or mass marketing in the newspaper's pages. Readers, meanwhile, who access information either online or in print also receive direct-marketing messages from local and national advertisers.
In the world of campaign management technology, the Star Tribune could be called an old pro. The team that Baum leads has been using the technology for three years, which gives it a few years' edge on most other large companies. The complexity of the newspaper's business dictates that the software can accommodate growth and layered areas of responsibility, as well as be simple enough for a marketer to operate, he says.
So far, the current system manages the Star Tribune's internal direct-marketing business, says Baum, which now employs 25 DMers. Two years ago the company signed on 20 advertisers to participate in a program that would include both online and offline direct marketing. The number of advertisers has grown to 165.
The direct-marketing and email-advertising services are sold through the newspaper sales force. In addition to delivering the standard advertising messages, the Star Tribune also manages the customer-loyalty program for a local supermarket chain. The direct-marketing division operates the national direct-marketing programs for Tires Plus, a 600-store chain in 39 states, and for Macy's West. At the heart of the business, Baum says, are campaign management applications.
But it didn't come together easily. The Star Tribune initially purchased the wrong type of system when it started its campaign management effort, admits Baum. The company struggled for six months with the technology before realizing that the effort was a waste of energy and money. "They sort of oversold what they coulddo
," says Baum of the first vendor. "Fortunately, we put together an agreement that allowed us to cut off the relationship with minimal exposure.
"[Still], we were frustrated because we were chomping at the bit," he adds. Investigation began anew on other companies that weredo
ing similar marketing efforts. A new list of potential software vendors emerged. After six months of review, the Star Tribune's direct-marketing business selected Unica for its campaign-management marketing applications.
The first software installation and subsequent replacement search took 18 months, an interim no one anticipated. "Management began to ask, 慦hat kind of yahoos are you guys?'" concedes Baum, who helped persuade management to stay on board.
Good thing. The programs continue to grow as the direct-marketing division markets subscriptions and now offers the options to renew via email and pay invoices online.
Zapdata, a company that provides businesses with sales leads and mailing lists, at first rejected the campaign management software on the market and built a proprietary campaign management program. The company, which puts together custom business-contact lists for direct mail, telemarketing and sales calls, based its system on the traditional triggers of direct marketing: recency, frequency and monetary value, says Tom Gaither, VP of customer marketing.
This first system was built todo
"just-in-time marketing" — reaching a customer before there is time for the account to lapse, says Gaither. "There are also some customers who haven't made a purchase within 90 days. Instead of thinking about that once a quarter, wouldn't it be better to automatically reach out to them?"
Those who visit the Web site and register for information, but whodo
not purchase a list, are given, gratis, 25 sales leads. The software was designed to remind those who hadn't yet taken advantage that they were still entitled to services. When they came online todo
wnload their free lists, another trigger was generated that would reach them at some future point and remind them about Zapdata.
"The person who built the system was one of those rare, 憈wo-position players' — someone with both marketing savvy and technical expertise, notes Gaither. Eventually, however, Zapdata realized that it would be too costly to maintain the homegrown solution. It's even riskier relying on staffers who can leave at anytime. Eventually the company chose Revenio to handle the ongoing online communications.
Zapdata has also added layers to its online communication. As clients and prospects reply to the email messages, they are asked questions that drilldo
wn to their real needs. "If someone comes butdo
esn't make a purchase, we ask, 慦hy not?'" says Gaither.
Zapdata gets a 15- to -20-percent response rate to the questionnaire, he says. The responses create a separate lead list. These respondents are asked to attend seminars and trade-show demonstrations. The responses also help Zapdata modify its products or offers, if necessary.
Using a third-party tool has made the system more efficient, says Gaither. "We'redo
ing more marketing programs and we'redo
ing them faster with the same number of people," he notes.
Look for new solutions to enhance the relationship of inbound and outbound touch points, adds Vince Bowey, VP of solutions marketing for E.piphany. Wedo
n't yet have an ATM machine serves up a loan application based on personalization data and the Web click-stream history, but that day may be coming, he says.
拜托各位兄弟啦！！！