THE MARKETING TECHNOLOGIST™

Book Review: High Performance Marketing

2006-04-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

The marketing profession is in a state of flux right now. CEO's are challenging the notion that marketing is a strategic activity that falls under the category of "cost of doing business". Consumers are becoming more resistant to traditional (intrusive) marketing tactics and are opting out at an alarming rate. Performance-driven marketing, with an emphasis on "transparency and accountability", is more important than ever before.

Given this, consider High Performance Marketing by Naras Eechambadi to be the guidebook for leading marketing into the new millennium. Mr. Eechambadi, the founder and CEO of Quaero Corporation, covers six primary areas of focus: effective processes, actionable strategies, enabling technologies, information assets, organizational alignment, and appropriate measures. There are also case studies that illustrate many of the concepts. The book does border on salesmanship at times due to the author's business interest. But, it is an easy read and definitely highly recommended to any marketing professional, regardless of discipline, searching for real world solutions to some of the contemporary challenges faced by marketing organizations world wide.

Marketing Technologist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Unica Expands its Footprint

2006-04-11T00:43:00.000-07:00

Unica Corporation, a leading Enterprise Marketing Management software vendor, is exploring new unchartered territory with two recent acquisitions. In December, the company purchased Marketsoft, a provider of event detection and lead management solutions. And in March, it acquired web analytics company Sane Solutions, LLC.

On March 28, Unica announced two new products - Affinium Detect and Affinium Leads. According to Unica's website, "these products are new releases and enhancements of the former MarketSoft Software Corporation products for event-detection, customer alerting, and lead management."

The Marketing Technologist View

Affinium Detect, if it performs as advertised, fills a huge gap in Affinium Campaigns event detection capabilities. The addition of a robust event engine with pre-packaged triggers will add more arrows in the quiver for Unica customers who want to develop out of the box right time offer management capabilities for upsell, cross-sell, and retention marketing. I'd want to see a demo to assess usability, the amount of customization that is available, and the level of integration with the other Affinium modules. But certainly this holds promise.

I also like the idea of Unica extending its interactive marketing capabilities. The acquisition of Sane Solutions aligns with Unica's multi-channel enterprise marketing vision. Many web analytic capabilities are hosted, which fits the online model to a tee. But, that creates data management issues when you want to analyze customer behavior across multiple channels. And that is important for non-dotcom companies whose customers often browse on the web, but purchase offline. I believe Unica will offer an on-premise open architecture solution in-line with its other offerings, which will be a differentiator.

In contrast, Affinium Leads (in my opinion) is a head scratcher. There isn't any mention of integration with any of the leading Sales Force Automation solutions. Is it intended to be stand-alone? To my knowledge, Marketsoft didn't gain a lot of traction around its lead and contact management offering and I'm not sure why Unica would want to venture into this space (even with its installed base).

Rethinking the Top Two Deciles

2006-04-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

According to an article written by Kristine Bremner on DMNews.com, a panel of list executives addressing the Direct Marketing Club of New York suggested that “reliance on top-tier names yielded by models has taken a toll” and that the “mailing of the upper deciles of models has resulted in excessive mailing of the same names”. Panelists encouraged testing lower deciles, which actually may yield better results.

A Fundamental Problem

2006-04-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, whose opinion I respect, suggested that the information provided here so far is "boiler plate" and most professionals attracted to a blog of this kind would consider a lot of the information to be pretty basic.

I thought his assessment was fair and I agree that the majority of what I have shared here thus far falls into the category of "fundamentals". But, I am not just catering to the experienced professional and therefore laying a foundation is important. And perhaps there are times when a "back to basics" line of thinking might benefit even the seasoned marketing veteran.

In upcoming posts, we will discuss various marketing tools and how they are applied to improve overall marketing effectiveness (even outside the direct marketing area). I will also up the news quotient on this site. Keep that feedback coming in your emails and comments.

The Four Enablers: People

2006-03-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

There are four key enablers that I would group under the heading of marketing operations (in no specific order): technology, data, people, and process. In the final post of the series, it is time to talk about the most important factor in any enterprise marketing management program. Having the right team of professionals and surrounding them with the appropriate level of support is paramount. And developing a formal staffing plan will help guide the process.

People

Most formal staffing plans will include the following:

Some background detail including objectives, business benefit, issues, risks, and any additional relevant historical information.
A skills assessment that breaks down the core compentencies needed to perform each of the functions.
An assessment of your companies resource pool to determine whether the required skills are available internally. If not, how they be staffed externally (e.g. permanent hires, consultants, outsourcing, etc.)? Human resources should be able to help with this.
Job descriptions that map to the skills assessment. Don’t forget support and interface functions.
Organization charts that map to the job descriptions.
Non-labor resources (facilities, hardware, software, and other equipment) that will needed by the organization to perform the work. One important issue is geography, which will impact facility decisions, recruiting costs, training costs, and travel in general.
Internal/External training and other activities associated with ongoing staff development.
The budget needed for labor, non-labor resources, and associated capital/expense (to the level of detail required by the organization).
A schedule that defines the process that will be followed to perform the staffing and the timing of the process. Key assumptions and dependencies should be addressed.
Defined roles and responsibilities for the staffing project.

Making the investment up front to compile this information will eliminate a lot of ambiguity, but as always the devil is in the details. Every organization has unique issues that have to be addressed. What assumptions have already been put in place? How does the group need to be aligned organizationally to be effective? What are the channels being supported? Are there change management issues? Will internal politics be a factor? Having an experienced professional to guide the organization through this process will mitigate many of the risks associated with staffing a marketing management function.

The Four Enablers: Process

2006-03-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

There are four key enablers that I would group under the heading of marketing operations (in no specific order): technology, data, people, and process. In the last post, I addressed key activities around data management . Now here comes the dirty little secret. Almost every technology enhancement requires significant process re-engineering and change management to realize full benefit. And most companies under budget when to comes to consulting or in-house resources to address that aspect of their program initiative.

Process

Let’s say your organization is contemplating investment in an Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) platform. EMM is all about enabling a rigorous approach to planning, excecuting, and measuring marketing activities. A baseline understanding of your current process is needed to assess where there are gaps and to determine if the marketing organization and support functions are ready to adopt changes made possible by the new technology. For instance:

Are there well defined roles and responsibilities? Is there clear accountability and ownership? What groups (including third parties) are involved in the marketing process and how will EMM change those interactions?
Are there issues impacting the marketing effort that will not be addressed through the implementation of an EMM application (e.g. data quality, compliance, marketing strategy, etc.)? How will they impact the overall success of the project?
Is measuring the ROI of marketing programs and their impact on customer profitability a priority? Is financial analysis routinely applied against marketing activities? What metrics exist and how often are they updated? Who has access to the information?
Do approved standards exist for program documentation, review and approvals, include/exclude criteria, and outputs including forecasts, in-campaign reporting, file layouts, and post campaign analysis? Are the standards enforced?
Do the necessary skill sets in the organization exist to leverage the technology? Do the existing personnel have the aptitude and desire to be trained in the use of the new tools? Is there a best practice or legacy mentality?
Are the teams organized such that they can manage the increased through-put enabled through automation?

This is just a sample, but hopefully it illustrates some of the workflow and organization related issues that should be addressed. Having someone with experience in the company that can lead in-house initiatives geared towards identifying and closing any gaps or at least coordinate the work of third party change agents will reduce overall time and costs. And with increased emphasis on timely payback of IT spend; most of this work should be done in advance or at least in parallel of any implementation effort.

Blog Interrupted

2006-03-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, life does intrude at times. Marketing Technologist has taken a short hiatus due to a family illness and spring break, but the next post in the "enabler series" and news on recent acquisitions by Unica Corporation will be forthcoming. Please stay tuned.

Using Analyst Research for Vendor Selection

2006-02-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

According to a story by Melissa Campanelli at DMNews, Forrester has weighed in on marketing technology with the publication of a Q1 2006 edition of their Forrester Wave™ report on Enterprise Marketing Platforms. According to Forrester’s website, Forrester Wave™ “is an objective methodology to evaluate competing products, services, and suppliers, as well as a means of clearly presenting the findings of the evaluation.”

I can’t personally vouch for the content of this new report, but analyst research can be an important resource to companies embarking on a vendor evaluation and selection process. Third party research can expedite requirements gathering by providing a deeper understanding of the features and functionality available in a category. It can also provide information that can be used to compile the right target list of vendors for an RFI or RFP. Both are key factors to the eventual success or failure of a project. And flawless execution in these phases will build credibility with vendors that can be used as capital later.

Research can be misused. I wouldn't use analyst research in lieu of a formal request for proposal. RFPs provide the framework for competitive bidding, which will drive down license and maintenance costs. And written responses and demonstrations that tie back to the RFP will help illuminate strengths and weaknesses against specific needs that will feed into the evaluation process. There are situations when an RFP is not warranted - mainly when the cost of the technology and risk factors do not justify administering a formal bidding process or when it is unlikely that vendors will expend resources to respond based on the value of the contract(s) or the relationship.

The following is an alphabetical short list of mostly fee based resources on the web that can provide information on marketing technology:

Direct Marketing Association (http://www.the-dma.org)
Forrester Research, Inc. (http://www.forrester.com)
Gartner, Inc. (http://www.gartner.com)
IDC (http://www.idc.com)
Knowledge Storm, Inc. (http://knowledgestorm.com)

The Four Enablers: Data

2006-02-17T01:11:00.000-07:00

There are four key enablers that I would group under the heading of marketing operations (in no specific order): technology, data, people, and process. In the last post, I addressed key activities around the management of marketing technology in the enterprise. Tools are great, but without the right underlying data, they simply become expensive boondoggles.

Data

Having accurate data on customer and prospects that is timely and delivered in a form that can be leveraged by the information workers in your marketing organization is absolutely critical. Sounds simple, right? Well, insert your favorite cliche here because this is where things tend to go sideways. And perhaps where having a Marketing Technologist in the business unit provides the most value.

It is ideal to have an insider who can quickly address timing and feasibility issues related to potential system changes or new systems development during the planning of marketing campaigns. IT practioners tend to get lost in this process since most do not fully understand the marketing function and therefore have difficulties dealing directly with their business partners. And IT and business unit priorities rarely align. The unfortunate by-product of this is IT becomes an obstacle rather than a solution provider and often is the scapegoat for missed commitments even when they are not directly to blame.

A marketing technology group in the business unit bridges the gap through a working knowledge of marketing combined with legacy system expertise and awareness of IT related challenges. They can lead a separate working session (if needed) to do the requirements analysis. They can credibly discuss trade-offs around thorny issues such as return on investment, data quality, and software testing. During implementation, they partner with other business units, IT, and/or vendors to make the enhancement with two-way communication back to the business partner if issues arise.

Timing is absolutely critical in all this. Successful organizations address technology early in the planning cycle providing adequate lead time for a thorough impact assessment, funding (if necessary), release planning, and development. Doing so ensures that marketing programs are derailed less often by data or system related issues, which translates to fewer missed commitments and lost opportunity as your team executes its marketing plan.

The Four Enablers: Technology

2006-02-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

There are four key enablers that I would group under the heading of marketing operations (in no specific order): technology, data, people, and process. In reality, you cannot separate these into silos because they are all interrelated. But, for the purposes of this discussion, I will address each separately and discuss how the Marketing Technologist impacts the business in all four.

Technology

The modern marketing organization is a data driven enterprise. In response to this trend, vendors have developed an arsenal of tools that marketers can use to acquire, store, profile, segment, and mine information about their customers and potential customers. They can also execute personalized marketing campaigns through multiple channels, predict results, and measure performance in a continuous learning cycle. We will delve into this topic in greater detail in subsequent posts. But, in general, the Marketing Technologist should be the point person in your organization for everything related to marketing technology. This should include:

Staying on top of emerging technologies, industry trends, and innovative applications of technology
Developing an forward looking strategy and implementation roadmap aligned with your marketing planning process for investment in marketing infrastructure
Working with business partners to support in-year program requirements
Budgeting and business case development with Finance
Taking a leadership role in all issues related to vendor management including talking to vendors about potential opportunities, guiding the organization through the RFI/RFP process, contract negotiations, implementation, and ongoing support
Partnering with IT on make vs. buy decisions, funding, prioritization, implementation, ongoing development, and maintenance activities
Arranging for tool training, working sessions, and other learning opportunities for the user community

Don't underestimate the amount of time spent on these activities and the impact they have on your organization. Issues on any these fronts often lead to increased costs and loss of revenue. And often the impacts are imperceptible since they occur over a period of months or even years. Next topic of discussion: Enabler #2 (Data)

CMO Magazine Goes on a Hiatus

2006-01-27T23:34:00.000-07:00

If you were a fan of CXO Media's Chief Marketing Officer Magazine (count me among you), then you probably already know that they have suspended publication. Rob O'Regan, CMO's Editor in Chief, delivered the bad news in a letter to their readers this past month. Thankfully, much of the magazines outstanding content will still be available on the CMO Website.

The Role of the Marketing Technologist

2006-01-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Let me share with you an idea that to some may seem to be out in left field. If you don't have an individual at a senior level in your marketing organization dedicated to what I affectionately refer to as the "four enablers": technology, data, people, and process, then you are placing limits on your team's ability to execute your marketing plan. I hear many rationales for why this role isn't established within marketing.

"Our IT Organization handles our technology needs". That is great and IT should be accountable for technology, but is there a team within IT dedicated to supporting Marketing? Is it staffed with individuals whose core competencies lie in data warehousing, marketing automation, analytics, and business intelligence? Does the IT staff understand the dynamics of the marketing function? Would you trust your IT group to help you with organization redesign, workflow, or other process related issues? Is Marketing considered a top priority within the IT organization? Does IT interact well with your business partners? If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then you should have someone in your organization partnering with IT to help fill some of these gaps.

"We wear many hats here". It is not uncommon, especially in small to mid-size companies, for a Director or Vice President of Direct Marketing to also be responsible for marketing technology and process related concerns. However, in high demand periods, these individuals will shift their attention to the marketing calendar and many of the supporting functions will get put on the back burner. Isn't it better to have that role focus on marketing program execution and measurement? How many individuals have a strong background in both functions? I would argue that having someone with a laser focus on operations will give your team the best opportunity to execute flawlessly on a consistent basis. And there are other aspects of the "four enablers" that extend beyond the direct marketing realm into other parts of the marketing organization, but that is a subject for another post.

"That is considered a staff function". Why does the Marketing Technologist role have to be a senior level position? Marketing organizations are often aligned by business unit (B2C, B2B), life stage (Acquisition, Upsell, Winback), or by channel (inbound, outbound, web, etc.). Not having the function at an enterprise level leads to lost opportunities. Best practices aren't leveraged, information silos develop, and vendors take a "divide and conquer" approach which leads to over investment and proliferation of point solutions which lack integration. There are other strategic concerns, which I will cover later.

Next week, I will dive deeper into the "four enablers" and the leadership role that the Marketing Technologist takes in each of these key areas. Suggestions for future topics are also welcome.