Get Beyond Old Style Campaign Thinking

Hi – I am back from vacation, the kids are off to school and I’m ready to blog. My thanks to Peter Kim for keeping the fire burning while I was away.

I wanted to pick on a comment that was made to a prior post. Specifically, “old style campaign thinking will not adequately support the real time needs-based marketing.” I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. The very term “campaign” conjures up the image of a bullhorn – marketers shouting out what they want their audience to hear. With the control and choice that consumers have today, marketing must be more flexible -- more agile.    

Many of us have been talking about this for years, but the time has come. Firms must shift communications strategies away from one size fits all push marketing – to one that is responsive to individual customer behaviors. These strategies go beyond traditional outbound channels like direct mail and telemarketing – they focus on customer interactions. Firms I work with in the financial, telecommunications, and travel industries are blending marketing into customer centers, Web sites, branches, and even ATM's. In fact, in a study we published last fall, more than 58% of marketers we surveyed said their firm already targets marketing offers in one or more inbound channels. Another 27% said they planned to in the next year.

               

But, I believe the strategy will fail if we approach customer interactions with the traditional campaign mindset – let’s tell customers what we want him to hear – rather than view each interaction as an opportunity to deepen the emotional bond with the customer, build trust, and, only possibly, deepen the financial relationship.

    

So, I ask, is it time to blow up that age old term, “campaign”? My take (she hedges…)? Traditional campaigns still serve a purpose, but they’re no longer the most important tool in the marketer toolbox. Thoughts?

Tags: Interaction Management, Enterprise Marketing Management, Campaign Management, Real Time Marketing :: Add to del.icio.us

Comments

[Colin]

Methinks no need to hedge. Customers have moved on and are in fact choosing how they will interact. I found a fascinating piece in "my Forrester" today, entitled "Use Promotions To Cut Through Ad Clutter" by Shar VanBoskirk with Julie M. Katz.

The context I got is that consumers are using promotions to self select from their chosen provider, in lieu of having to listen to all the marketing garble out there.

But even that will be short lived when smart firms figure out how to be there at the right time, right place with appropriate offers for their customers.

I'd suggest, that "right time, right place", is the diametric opposite of campaign.

[Elana]

Colin,

Here's the reason I hedge just a bit... As firms bring new products and services to market they still need to make their clients aware of these new products and services. Certainly we should only be communicating to those customers that are likely to have interest in the new products. However, the mechanics of creating the communication, identifying who to target it to, etc., all fall within the traditional campaign construct. Although we all agree that marketing should pick up its bullhorn much less frequently, it's unrealistic to think the bullhorn goes away entirely.

Here's a quote from ELOAN that I published in a report entitled, "Case Studies In Event Triggered Marketing" (see http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/0,7211,37467,00.html): "Although response rates for the triggered programs are much higher, the distribution is lower. Our blast email campaigns have a very low response rate, but we send them to such a large population that the revenue they generate is much greater than what we see from the event-triggered programs."

How do you argue with that business reality?