NYLON
integrated marketing
White Paper Integrated Marketing Integrating Analytical, Creative & Operational Marketing
integrated marketing
NYLON
Integrating Analytical, Creative & Operational Marketing
integrated marketing
NYLON
Energize customer relationships by revitalizing marketing capabilities By Joah Santos Attracting and retaining the most valuable customers requires companies to aggressively market products and services to increase the economic value of both their brand and customer relationships. In addition, companies must sustain bottom-line performance in the face of skyrocketing marketing costs. To realize these goals, companies must continue their efforts to maximize their investments in the sales and service technologies that help reach, understand and interact intelligently with customers. Traditionally, marketing within customer relationship solutions has been characterized by operational marketing, otherwise known as customer management. While operational marketing has contributed to improved customer service, it has neither reversed the declining return-on-marketing investments nor reduced the message clutter and fragmentation that threatens customer loyalty. Moving forward it is imperative that creative and analytical marketing disciplines are brought into the fold along with operational marketing. To most effectively do so, leaders must understand the value of each of these distinct marketing disciplines, as well as their components (see Figure 1). Figure 1. The revitalization of marketing
alyt ical mar ke An t
More sophisticated tools and more disciplined approaches increase the return-onmarketing investment
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Customer and brand value
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Customer insight drives treatment across every touch point
Customer communications are synchronized across every channel—both online and off
Analytical marketing: Interpreting and acting upon customer data Analytical marketing uses processes and sophisticated technologies that allow businesses to direct their overall marketing investments across their brands and customers. In a sense, analytical marketing tools are the nuts and bolts of marketing. Without them, the marketing effort flounders. Specifically, analytical marketing converts customer data, gathered at various touch points, into relevant insights that direct market segmentation activities and feed into more effective campaign design. Through predictive modeling, analytics lead to a more robust understanding of customers and markets and an improved ability to make strategic and operational decisions about customer treatment. The ultimate outcome is increased profitability, based on customer differentiation, and more informed decisions related to the development of product, pricing, promotion, packaging and channels. Analytical marketing also allows companies to test the effectiveness of various customer relationship management (CRM) efforts. Without analytics, executives will keep investing in CRM without ever knowing where their money is having the greatest impact. In short, analytical marketing puts customer insights to work for the organization and prevents the company from delivering the wrong content to the wrong person at the wrong time. Questions analytical marketing capabilities can answer: Which of our consumer segments are most likely to drive our future growth? To grow our revenue by 10 percent, which marketing levers should we emphasize? How can we best allocate our CRM investment dollars, and what is the expected return? What insights do we need to understand before delivering our customer promise?
Integrating Analytical, Creative & Operational Marketing
Creative marketing: Reaching customers with a consistent, total experience As the number of customer channels has exploded, so has the need for creative marketing, which involves all the activities associated with building and sustaining a compelling brand and ensuring that customer interactions reflect a satisfying brand experience. In the past, creative marketing efforts have been applied to CRM efforts in much the same way as technology. That is, in the rush to meet perceived demand, creative marketing campaigns were slapped onto the larger CRM initiatives in a haphazard and fragmented way. It has been far too easy for companies to develop a host of messages—from ad campaigns to customer service representative scripts—that are unintentionally inconsistent and thus frustrating to customers. Fortunately, companies are changing the way they approach creative marketing. By integrating its processes with those of analytical and operational marketing, and by focusing on the total customer experience, creative marketing can now be used to build a unified brand across all of a company's online and offline channels. Questions creative marketing capabilities can answer:· What is our desired brand position? How should we strategically position our brand? How can we promote a seamless “face” to our customers? How should we reallocate our marketing investments to significantly increase revenue and profit growth?
The goal of operational marketing is to enable ongoing “conversations” with individual customers across all channels. But these conversations will become an ongoing dialogue only if you know and understand your customer segments (which analytical marketing addresses) and are telling your customers what they want to hear (which creative marketing addresses). Questions operational marketing capabilities can answer:· How can we improve customer service and use it to grow our business? What insights can be used to better personalize our customer interactions? How should we differentiate our sales and services across customer segments? How can we enable cross selling and “up-selling” to an item of higher value?
The combined power of marketing disciplines When the analytical, creative and operational marketing disciplines work in tandem with a company's existing sales and service capabilities, the entire CRM effort becomes revitalized. Information becomes dynamic. Insights become powerful barometers of customer likes and dislikes. Comprehensive marketing campaigns become targeted and compelling. The result is a customer base that is pleased with unique and personalized interactions. Customer loyalty rises, as does brand value and, ultimately, revenue.
Operational marketing: Interacting knowledgeably with customers When people think about a marketing investment to improve CRM capabilities, they are usually referring to operational marketing. Operational marketing encompasses all the activities that relate to creating a positive customer interaction. Customer insights play a large role in operational marketing, as do data mining and data warehousing, which continuously harvest customer information from a variety of contact points. Leveraged by creative and analytical marketing capabilities, this information is assessed and converted into meaningful insights that drive ongoing, personalized marketing efforts when a customer is visiting the company's website or contacting the call center. Contact us at contact@imNylon.com. For additional insights and research from Nylon, visit the knowledge section of www.imNylon.com and subscribe to our newsletter . for updates ©Nylon 2011. All rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are meant to stimulate thought and discussion. As each business has unique requirements and objectives, these ideas should not be viewed as professional advice with respect to your business.