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Starting Situation
Campaign Marketing Tools are often bridging between Marketing and Data management Teams, giving marketing ideas structure and shape within a form of coordinated and well measured marketing activities.
There is an obvious tendency on the international market to choose solutions that can be easily rolled out to all countries being part of a global strategy to simplify and unify technical infrastructure and processes.
The local organizational set up and capacity is not always an immediate match to a certain capability imposed by a group strategy and when this happens, it can lead to lack of adoption of the tool when the Roll-Out is not properly taking into account the complete local environment and context within a detailed implementation plan.
This situation is the starting point in a project we recently had for an international utility company, looking at bringing a campaign management tool to operational mode and re-establish the need and value of such a solution within the local marketing organization.
Solution Strategy
Identifying the level of customization required for a better adoption of the campaign marketing tool within the local set up and capabilities by emphasizing the benefits and added value it can bring when supporting their local marketing strategy and objectives.
Understand the local differences within the technical and functional infrastructure and propose eventually a tailored use of this tool and a gradual implementation approach that better fits local needs and skills.
Carefully consider team's capabilities, experience and skills and bring that into perspective within the local market maturity with regards to Campaign Management Solutions and Support.
Position this tool at the core of all marketing coordinated actions for the purpose of creating a consistent and structured customer journey.
The Objectives of the Project are defined as follows:
Evaluate improvement points of the implementation already in place as a result of the Campaign Management Tool Roll-Out and achieve full integration in daily business initiatives and processes.
Approach
- Provided a complete evaluation of the local needs with regards to their IT Infrastructure, CRM Set Up, internal marketing processes
- Empowered the local team and minimized dependencies with the remote headquarter team
- Provided On-site training for the local team to bring them up to speed with the required understanding and knowledge of the tool, its potential and better plan new releases matching local objectives rather than a global release strategy
- Improved Measurement & Evaluation for more transparency within the local organization. Proposed a new campaign structure with more granularities required for insightful reporting & campaign improvement analyses - using the offer management module. Consistency was a key point here to achieve a maturity level of standardization and automation
- Centralized marketing activities and re-positioned the tool as the main campaign execution Tool
Key Learnings
A campaign management tool has to be fully integrated within the internal marketing processes and has to serve the local goals and objectives.
The complexity of the tool should also match the local team capacity& capabilities. Customization of one tool and its development plan to meet local set up and limitations is crucial when rolling out a tool internationally.
The level of support the team can receive locally is very important even when support at global level is provided. On Demand local support is a very valuable option to consider bringing much more local flexibility and reassurance.
Consistency& structure is key to make this tool visible in the organization and give it the right value it deserves. Without it, the tool will remain a technical tool without bringing any valuable insights to the organization.
Outlook
The further development of the marketing tool will have to continue within the guidelines of the overall company strategy but better integrated with the internal objectives.
Developing the Tool further to support Email and real time activities to better react to changes on the market and a achieve a better coordination between all customer touch points.
