OMS 2010: Integrated Marketing Strategy Case Study

by SEO Expert on 02/23/10 at 4:00 pm

Overview

What is integrated marketing? Intregrated marketing encompasses both the ability to coordinate multiple channels and activities to drive a consistent brand and campaign message as well as the ability to pull together data from multiple sources and manage your marketing as one coordinated operation. The end result is better execution and better efficiency.

Sean Shoffstall, Director of Product Marketing, Ozone Online

Sean spent the first few minutes of today’s presentation identifying the overload of data sources and analytics. He covered, budget planning, campaign management, campaign spending and so forth. Seems today’s theme is “pain points”, as this was the third session where pain points seem to be used more than once.

Identifying costs was part of a case study Sean recorded. The campaign included 24 countries, 80+ products, live and virtual events, single biggest spend for the year and best opportunity for testing. The previous year, every geo did their own thing, great email program but no integrated reporting, all costs were in separate systems, hard to reconcile, no scoring or pre-qualification of leads.

Previous year’s results: inconsistent brand and campaign execution, good response but poor follow through and very little longevity. By integrating data from multiple sources via API, Sean was able to create a central point of tracking for all campaigns, conversion elements and channels. The exercise took nearly 3 years, and the result was the tracking capability unlike no other. Essentially, campaigns can be be pre-planned and calendared with all the required tracking elements, so then the Marketing Manager could pretty much sit back and let it roll.

What They Really Needed was a Hub

Better Planning

• Planners enter proposals into Ariba
• Executives approve or deny spend
• Synchronize with Aprimo
• Marketing managers have a smoother approval process
• Real time accounting of spend

Campaign Planning

• Still different agencies, different geos but now a single source

Campaign Development

• Develop campaign execution template to syndicate out
• Campaign materials and media plans shared
• Source code and link generation standard
• Coordinated roll-out plan

Campaign Testing

• In NA alone, 24 test cells first round email then rolled out to 120 segments
• Key messages are now rolled out to email and newsletter sponsorships
• PPC and banner testing in first 2 weeks
• Geos run own testing plans but have instant insight into NA results

Email Best Practices

Alert: Analysis of New CAN-SPAM Rules
vs
CAN-SPAM – Must Know Updates

The latter performed better because the keywords of the subject line are moved to the front.

Better Execution

• Set the timer and sit back
• On-site sign in feeds attendance data into Aprimo to trigger follow-up activities
• Post event surveys fed into lead scoring workflow
• As spend happened budgets are updated

Subject lines are tested and messaging is A/B tested in batches. Campaign reporting is now “real-time” on marketing activities. The ability to be nimble with marketing spend was improved.

Best Practice: Data Segmentation

If you engage your customer with a specific message rather than a broad message, you’re likely to get a 18% higher response. Customers actions can actually now tell you how they preferred to be messaged. Mine the data for key learnings about your customers. Don’t forget social media.

Better Leads

• Automatically assign leads to specific queues
• Previous response history helps drive priority
• Sales people now have insight into response and purchase history
• Leads are now qualified before sending over to Salesforce.com for distribution

Post-implementation showed that segmentation created a huge improvement.

Reporting & Conclusion

Custom dashboard creation allows for any level to view custom reports. In a nutshell, Sean’s presentation gave us 30,000 foot view of what segmentation and robust tracking can do to ROI and provide the business with a better understanding of the results from every offline and online campaign, since every data source feeds into a central reporting system. Considering the technology requirements required nearly 3 years of development and the use of multiple (not so cost effective) web applications, for most businesses this level of granularity might actually produce data overload, unless of course you have a dedicated SMO Team, SEO Team, PPC Team, Email Team, Content/Blogging Team, Media Team and PR Team. If you can afford all of those resources and aren’t tracking data as described above – call Sean.