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 | Patrick O'Halloran, Entiera You Asked
What should be the top priorities for CRM-minded chief marketers today? | | |
The Expert's Answer
The rules for success have changed dramatically. Today’s chief marketing
officer needs to be a “test and learn” person relying on a strong
infrastructure of data, tools, and analytics to make CRM work. With an average
tenure of twenty-four months, chief marketing officers need to move beyond historical,
traditional issues and rise to a new set of five challenges--fast:
- Gain value by understanding real costs.
At a micro level, understanding the ROI of a single marketing promotion or
campaign is important, but it is also essential to see the forest for the
trees and understand that the cost of the forest is not the price of each
tree added together. A macro view of marketing costs helps CMOs understand
the
true cost of all the technology needed to run marketing, and then consider
new advances such as software as a service (SaaS), which can dramatically
reduce costs while providing bundled functionality.
- Get the most complete view possible, as it evolves.
It seems like every day there is another new and powerful channel to communicate
with customers. First there was the internet, then texting, and now Twitter--what
next? The challenges these new channels represent are magnified by the
fact that things happen in warp speed as opposed to the “boring” traditional
channels such as direct mail, outbound telemarketing and even email. Again,
to effectively
market to suspects, prospects, and customers, a company has
to be able to create a complete view of their constituents.
- Combine traditional
programs with the new wave of campaigns.
Traditional batch outbound campaigns are still very popular; particularly
email campaigns where the costs are extremely low as compared to direct
mail. Companies
need to master the new wave of campaigns -- including inbound driven, event-driven,
online, and multi-channel -- and combine them for maximum effect.
- Know which
channels are making you money.
John Wannamaker’s quote is relevant today: "I know half of my
marketing dollars are wasted...I just don't know which half!" Marketers
today need to know which channels are more effective or less wasteful in terms
of marketing spend; they need to allocate scarce marketing dollars to the most
appropriate, highest return channels. How this is accomplished can dramatically
improve an overall marketing program.
- Keep it customer-centric with the right
metrics.
CMOs must continue their customer-centric journey by focusing
on the customer-access, industry-relevant metrics that provide a compass
for future journeys, campaigns, and programs. Metrics need to be stated in
terms
of the customer, readily accessible at very frequent intervals, or in real
time, such as “average revenue per customer” and “revenue
per customer segment.” Most metrics can be anchored around three main
goals: customer acquisition, customer development (cross sell/up sell), and
customer
loyalty (churn/retention). By laying out plans based on customer segments,
CMOs can use these metrics for course corrections.
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Patrick O'Halloran is chief executive officer of Entiera, premier provider of the industry’s first on demand marketing automation suite, offering comprehensive capabilities for today’s multi-channel marketer. He can be reached at pohalloran@entiera.com.
Entiera
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