In an earlier post, I wrote about the confusing array of terms and acronyms that fill the marketing technology landscape, and I defined five major types of marketing technologies. I also noted that a newer term – Marketing Execution Platform or MEP – should now be on your radar. In this post, I’ll describe what a marketing execution platform is and what functions MEPs are designed to support.
At ADAM Software, we say that a marketing execution platform is a suite of integrated technological capabilities that, collectively, will enable companies to optimize marketing operations. We define marketing operations as all of the activities and business processes that are required to perform the marketing function. Therefore, marketing operations includes all of the following:
- The creation, manipulation, and management of marketing communications assets for all relevant media formats.
- The design, management, and execution of marketing-related business processes and workflows.
- The development, execution, and measurement of marketing activities, campaigns and programs, and the management of the resources used in the performance of the marketing function. These resources include people (internal staff), time, external marketing services providers, and purchased media. This group of activities also includes planning and administrative processes such as forecasting, budgeting, and project management.
- The management of product-related information that is used (a) to create marketing materials such as product brochures and printed catalogs, and (b) to feed and support online catalogs and/or e-commerce systems.
- The production, publication, and fulfillment/distribution of marketing materials.
The diagram below depicts these five major marketing operations functions and shows the major marketing technologies that support each function.
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A comprehensive marketing execution platform will support all major marketing operations activities and processes. However, a marketing execution platform is not so much a fixed set of specific capabilities as a technology framework. While all MEPs are built on a solid foundation of marketing asset management and business process management, the specific capabilities included will be matched to individual enterprise needs.
In my next post, I’ll explain why marketing execution platforms are a natural response to today’s marketing challenges.
This post was previously published on the ADAM blog. . .
