Planning campaign management

The best laid plans of mice and marketers often go astray. Dates change, costs go up, budgets go down and marketing plans continually alter. Meanwhile, everyone involved has to be kept up to speed. A project management solution can keep marketers on top of ever-changing details and smooth the way for a successful campaign.

Project management, which used to be viewed as a discipline in its own right, has become an essential skill dispersed throughout the workforce.

Earlier this year a YouGov survey commissioned by Microsoft revealed that 40 per cent of UK professionals are now expected to manage complex projects as a part of their daily work, despite this function not being reflected in their job title.

Howard Lewis, project product marketing manager at Microsoft UK, says, “Most professionals in the UK today are project managers: they just don’t seem to know it. Project management is no longer undertaken only by professionals with the expertise and training of dedicated ‘project managers’.”

While campaign management tools have not yet penetrated deeply into smaller organisations (where, apart from pen and paper, Microsoft Word remains the most widely used method; closely followed by Excel) the shift in project management responsibility has affected the marketing department as much as any other.

For marketers with no specific project management expertise or technical training (and let’s face it, that’s most of them) software tools are available to help improve performance – and make their lives a lot easier – in communicating with a team, problem-solving, customer service, time management and delivering to a deadline.

Whereas technology has traditionally focused on B2C marketing – where communications can reach millions of people – in B2B the emphasis is on quality rather than quantity. Small selections make sense, and every contact in the database is important.

How does it work?

Broadly speaking, a campaign management solution provides a repository for a marketer’s data to then assign contacts to campaigns and manage the responses. Contacts can be selected based on various criteria, such as industry sector, company size and type, or the recipient’s job description. A good solution will also produce a first class report at the click of a button, significantly shrinking cost by reducing reporting time.

The choice of solution is determined by who is going to be using it. Traditionally, solutions have been desktop-based and suitable for a single user. Where a project management team needs to share data, companies have moved to a server-based model, capable of interfacing with common tools such as Microsoft Office, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Being connected to a server provides the overview that management needs to see what team members are working on, who else they need to interact with or what is not being utilised. The main difference between the needs of large and small organisations is in the area of integrating the various systems.

Before marketers start the search for the right solution, Gary Kemp, MD of B2B marketing agency Connection2, offers this advice, “Many of these systems do similar things. The critical point is that they’re only as good as the data you’ve got. In the same way as the three important things in retail are location, location and location, in marketing they are list, list and list.”

Kemp continues, “You can have the ‘Rolls-Royce’ of campaign management tools, but unless you have the correct data and can target effectively, you’re wasting your money. Campaign management tools do not absolve you from the responsibility of thinking about your campaign.”

Kemp also advises businesses to choose a system that is flexible or ‘scalable’, to meet different companies’ demands. This invariably means having to customise the system to make it do what you want it to.

Core objectives

While project management tools differentiate themselves by the ease with which users can accomplish tasks, Lewis of Microsoft says that there are three core principles of project management.

“First, there’s the need for efficiency – delivering the same end goal for less cost. Second, the need to bring a product to market sooner. What’s the cost to a company if a deadline is missed? But also, what are the benefits of delivering sooner and being in control? And third, getting more value for my marketing pounds. Project management is about delivering on cost, time and value.”

One product, Microsoft Office Project, includes templates for specific marketing activities. Lewis of Microsoft says there are three essential functions to look out for in a system.

Levelling: tasks are rescheduled or split according to available resources, the personnel assigned to them and the changing timescale. Levelling can be controlled by various parameters and can be instigated either automatically or manually.

Dependency: where the success of a task or ‘milestone’ within a project depends on other tasks being completed first; a work breakdown structure (WBS) provides a hierarchical arrangement and forms a responsibility matrix. If tasks are ‘flipped’, or completed out of the sequence originally planned, the WBS is amended to show the project manager the revised task list.

Critical path analysis: this comprises a ‘forward pass’ and a ‘backward pass’, a method for determining the most expedient process for accomplishing a task.

Step-by-step process

Another supplier is Neolane, which provides what it calls ‘frictionless marketing solutions’ to companies in a variety of sectors. Some 30 per cent of its customers are B2B.

Stephane Dietrich, group marketing director of Neolane, says, “Marketers need easy-to-use tools, especially in smaller organisations, where they don’t have the inhouse technical back-up. A campaign management system can help an SME to avoid relying on specialist agencies and give marketers greater control over their project.”

Neolane organises major areas of functionality in what it calls a ‘closed-loop’ approach. This virtuous cycle encompasses what the company says are the six key steps in managing a DM campaign.

Data management: This basic need gives marketers a single view of their contacts, often integrated with an existing CRM system.

Targeting and segmentation: This gives the marketer the selection capabilities to send the right message to the right recipient at the right time.

Content management: It is especially critical for marketers in smaller organisations that they be able to work in set structures. Content management provides a reusable template for completing those parts of a project that remain consistent from campaign to campaign, resulting in both time and cost savings. This function is used by two thirds of Neolane’s B2B customers.

Personalisation: some recipients are only interested in some parts of a marketing message, others in all the parts. Personalisation enables better, highly targeted communications.

Delivery: this dictates the means by which a communication is received, for example by email, SMS or DM.

Reporting: This technology enables marketers to define customer actions online by seeing who clicks on an email to link to a website and, critically, which products they look at. The sales team is automatically notified and can then attempt to convert the prospect.

Campaign management systems enable marketers to take an integrated, automated approach to campaigns while interfacing with existing sources of information within the organisation. The use of marketing scenario templates means that marketing teams can work together in line with corporate guidelines and are closely involved in the targeting process before, during and after the campaigns, all the while excluding irrelevant recipients and updating contact information. They can then see the details of reactions, such as openings, clicks and areas of interest, before receiving a final report for further analysis

Campaign management systems: A guideline

  • Know your clients. Delivering on and exceeding client expectations can result in rewards.
  • Don’t hang around. Services are delivered quicker to market than hard goods, so the competitive edge phase is short before similar products are launched.
  • Invest in market research. Keep your finger on the market pulse, market research and product development to stay ahead.
  • Build trust. Buyers of intangible services prefer to buy from suppliers they trust.
  • Ensure brand consistency. Employees must resonate the brand values and understand the brand philosophy.
  • Use external communications. Brand and marketing materials are good for communicating messages and can build trust. 
  • Deliver on promises. Make sure you can deliver on promises, or your reputation and credibility can suffer.

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