How successful is your campaign and promotion management?

Towards best-practice campaign management strategies

Welcome to the new normal

Businesses today are under unprecedented pressure to increase spending efficiency, whenever and wherever possible. To halt the rapid decline in marketing ROI and improve their performance, marketers must address a number of wider challenges: The tremendous upsurge in new technology, media and channels means that campaigns are becoming increasingly complex The shift to online and mobile interaction, along with the upsurge in social media, means that consumers have higher expectations than ever before Consumers attach increasing importance to the quality of buying experience, quite apart from the product/service being purchased. Especially now, as more companies shift marketing spend from traditional media to new interactive vehicles, marketers need to be equipped to build and sustain new types of relationships with their customers. This means delivering the right interaction, at the right moment on the right channel.

Identifying the impacts

To help marketers understand the impact of these dramatic changes, Accenture has conducted a survey focused on identifying best practice campaign management strategies in this new normal. Interviews were carried out between April and June 2010 with CRM sales managers in 86 companies. The research was based on B2C, crossindustry respondents in 15 countries across Europe (Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). This short paper draws on this research to highlight the qualities that set leading marketers apart, as well as suggesting how companies can move up the campaign management maturity curve towards high performance.

Current market trends challenges ahead

Beyond question, the digital shift is fuelling a rapid change in consumer behaviours. 86 percent of customers do not trust advertising information. 20 percent seek out peer comments from other online users. And 80 percent use the internet to conduct price comparisons1. In other words, consumers are not just more savvy they are also much more demanding. Marketers today must be equipped to pick the right moment to engage with target customers. And the results of our survey back this up. Respondents view best practices in campaign management as essential to achieve customer strategy (for 77 percent of companies), as well as being a priority area of future investment (for 59 percent of companies). Crucially too, under-investment in campaign management is closely correlated with poor performance.

Is your campaign activity integrated across all channels?

1 Accenture Global Customer Services Survey 2010.

Level of integration between outbound and inbound campaign management tools 3%

Outbound only tool Inbound only tool Outbound and inbound performed with separate tools One integrated tool used for outbound and inbound

33%

24%

No specific campaigning tool

3%

37%

Views on Campaign Management (CM)

77% of the respondents 77% of the respondents 77% CM as important rated CM as important or rated of the respondents or rated CM as important or very important to achieve very important to achieve very to achieve their important strategy... their customer strategy... their customer strategy... customer
very important

7%

7% 8% 8% 8% 7%

8%

8% 8%

30% 30%

30%

47% 47% CM importance to

47%
very important very important

not important not important

not important

CM importance to to CM importance achieve strategy achieve strategy achieve strategy

45%

1% 1%

1%

3%

3% 3%24%
unsatisfied unsatisfied

24% 24%

45% 45%
CM satisf action level CM satisf action level

27% 27%
very satisfied very satisfied

27%

... but only were ... but only 28% ofsatisfied respondents28% of respondents were satisfied respondentswere satisfied with their current level of with their current performance in CM level with their current level ofof performance performancein CM in CM

... but only 28% of

unsatisfied

CM satisf action level

very satisfied

In many companies, however, we found that marketers have a long journey ahead of them. From campaign management set-up, through planning and building the interaction, to execution, monitoring and measurement, much remains to be achieved. The following findings highlight the scale of challenge and the level of opportunity for those markets that move towards best practice campaign management:

0 percent of organisations lack 2 data quality improvement processes 7 percent are unable to effectively 6 link inbound and outbound activity 7 percent have no inbound 2 marketing tool 9 percent are unable to obtain a 4 single campaign history view 9 percent measure revenue impact 5 on some, but not all, campaigns.

In other words, joined-up campaign management capabilities are still in short supply. As a result, marketers in many companies struggle to maintain consistency of campaign messaging across all channels and, in many cases, continue to lack the deep customer insights they need to improve customer interaction and define customer engagement.

Key campaign management challenges identified by organisations

Deeper customer Insights to better interact with customers and define customer engagement
Analytics 5% Multi Channel integration 24%

Quicker to market for own campaigns and competitor response campaigns Customer-centric campaigns as opposed to product-centric

Time to Market 6% Customer Centricity 8%

Maintain consistency of campaign messaging across all channels

Imrove effectiveness and efficiency through increased campaign automation

Automation 12% Framework/ Process Definition 18% IT Tool implementation & Integration12%

Integrate inbound and outbound tools across all channels

Better Targeting/ Segmentation 15%

Use better segmentation to improve customer targeting for campaigns The graphic above highlights these deficiencies, identifying the key strategic priorities identified by marketers in our survey. to achieve effective segmentation based on customer needs, behaviours and values. 5 Campaign Processes: Because campaign management processes are clearly defined, with function and execution channels closely aligned, leaders can adapt campaigns quickly in response to competitor activity. 6 Multi-channel Integration & Campaign Execution: Leaders benefit from a single view of customer contacts across all channels with fully integrated toolsets. This enables cross-channel lead management with consistent offers, messaging and experience. 7 Measurement & Reporting: Robust use of control groups informs their campaign analysis, with a particular focus on ROI measurement for all activity and near real-time campaign response tracking. By focusing on these seven core capabilities, companies can successfully move up the campaign management maturity scale from mass marketing, through targeted communication to personalised communication and interactive dialogue.

Remove inefficiences and non-value adding processes and align the organisational people, skills, processes and technology

Best practice campaign management in focus

Leading organisations are ready to meet customer demands across a range of channels, inbound and outbound, and communicate effectively at every stage of the customer lifecycle, with well-defined welcome, education, development, reward and retention programmes. Crucially, they can determine what offer should be made to which customer at any given point in time and through the most appropriate channel. So what does best practice look like in operational terms? Organisation Leading organisations centralise and rigorously coordinate their marketing activities. With a dedicated customer base management team acting as the central hub responsible for operational delivery, they control all inbound and outbound below-the-line campaign management activity.

Identifying best practice

Based on the results of our survey, we know that leaders in campaign management excel in seven areas: 1 Organisation & Governance: Leaders have developed a customer segment-based organisation structure with a single function owning customer contact strategy. 2 Tools & Capability: They combine sophisticated predictive modelling capabilities with best-of-breed campaign management technology for both inbound and outbound activity, with real-time campaigning capability driven off customer lifecycle events. 3 Customer Data Management: Leaders obtain deep insights into customer and household behaviours using dedicated marketing data-marts for strategic data insights. 4 Segmentation & Targeting: They use sophisticated analytics capabilities

Leaders also have a single team maintaining contact rules, acting as the gate-keeper to the customer relationship and deciding which customers should receive specific offers, and when. Revenue generation, customer churn and enhanced customer experience are the three principal key performance indicators for the central management hub.

Planning the interaction

Customer analytics and detailed segmentation are widely used in campaign management, but these resources are still often underexploited. Many companies are failing to prioritise campaigns against their customer base, as well as lacking a process for managing customer communications across multiple channels. By contrast, leaders develop a single campaign plan detailing all related activities planned for the customer base. Organised by customer segments, channels and strategic objectives, this includes campaign prioritisation based on business customer lifecycle rules, as well as capacity and legal constraints. All activity is mapped against a detailed business case that includes customer impact, value drivers and channel cost. Leaders also leverage the full potential of analytics to create personalised offers that can be extended to customers in real time.

Building the interaction

The majority of marketers still attempt to build customer interactions with access to, at best, limited data. Unable to develop customised materials, almost half of all organisations use basic personalisation in their customer communications. Leaders use best-of-breed tools to support campaign management planning, modelling, decision-making and optimisation. With a single data repository storing data on customer value, profile, behaviour and interaction history, they benefit from a single view of each target customer. They recognise the unique value of the data they hold, conducting regular dynamic data cleansing, enrichment and consolidation via automated data extraction. Leaders are also equipped to execute event-based marketing, with predefined campaigns automatically triggered when a specific event is identified on a clients profile.

Do you think your response rate is above average?

How quickly can you move from campaign planning to execution?

Executing the interaction

Best-practice campaign execution enables integrated offerings, ensuring consistent delivery across multiple channels an increasingly vital consideration in todays marketplace. Leaders use a single campaign optimisation system to manage all interactions across inbound and outbound contact points. They also institutionalise a Pilot-Learn-Deploy culture to ensure that every campaign is tested (and the results analysed) across multiple channels prior to full roll-out. Campaign teams are closely aligned with all channels, with leaders creating a dedicated team to ensure channel and marketing alignment. By focusing on the key business change elements of campaign management execution, this ensures seamless support across training, incentives, process change, KPIs and communications.

Monitoring & measuring the interaction

The ability to track campaign responses on a near real-time basis provides marketers with real agility a vital quality in such a fast-changing marketplace. Leaders build on a culture of experimentation and evaluation, combining robust test and control groups with detailed measurement tracking for campaigns. They use activity performance analysis as an important input for strategic planning, financial planning and proposition development. At any point during a campaign, they can track and report activity on a revenue contribution basis, while having highlevel visibility into broader campaign management metrics and trends. And they strive to continuously improve the accuracy and consistency of their reporting with a quality officer on hand to assess and refine materials.

Governance
Successful campaign management strategies are built on robust governance. This means developing a clear roadmap focused on core capabilities, namely: mproving IT tools I mproving the electronic customer I dialogue mproving multi-channel capacity I utomating campaigns A educing time to market R mproving company processes. I In leading companies, planned business cases and ROI on campaign management spend are continuously reviewed, meaning that budgets can be rapidly reallocated when priorities change. Because they have a single function (local or central) responsible for developing their campaign management capabilities and roadmap, they can manage in-life projects in line with overall strategy.

Next steps
Best practice campaign management capabilities are core to competitive edge. The first step is to identify strategic objectives and align these with the capabilities needed to achieve them. Grounded in Accentures in-depth experience with organisations in this area, we work with marketers to evaluate their existing capabilities against marketing leading practices, identifying gaps and recommending areas for improvement. Once this diagnostic stage is completed, we work with companies to put in place tools and processes that will enhance campaign management and multichannel customer management performance. For many companies, the journey ahead appears challenging. But it is important to remember that success does not call for overnight transformation. Incremental, planned approaches to best practice campaign management deliver the most sustainable results.

Contact us
For further information, please contact: Stefano Fanfarillo Senior Manager Accenture | Management Consulting CRM Global Service Line Tel: +44 (0) 20 7844 5480 Mob: +44 (0) 7901 812 882 Stefano.Fanfarillo@accenture.com Accentures Customer Relationship Management team helps organisations achieve high performance by transforming their marketing, sales and customer service functions to support accelerated growth, increase profitability and greater operating efficiency. We offer an integrated portfolio of solutions designed to help organisations know their customers better, reach customers in ways that deliver improved cost-efficiency and higher return on investment; and deliver customer experiences that fulfil the promise of the brand, create trust and loyalty and enable profitable growth.

About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 211,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the worlds most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$21.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2010. Its home page is www.accenture.com.

Copyright 2011 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.