Marketing Governance

Marketing needs to be faster, more relevant and tied directly to revenue goals. These demands must be met with limited resources and in an environment thats constantly changing. How do best in class marketing organizations ovecome this challenge?

Marcom Central is a customizable marketing technology application that promises to make sure you to make the most of your marketing efforts. Its a cloud-based tool, one of the Software as a Service solutions on the market. It can be used to create both digital (email and web) or print (brochures, ads, flyers) marketing material. With an online digital asset library and templates for marketing materials, the software vendor aims to reduce costs in marketing and ensure global brand consistency, claiming a 40% decrease of operational marketing costs with their users. It also offers a reporting tool, and is compatible with other systems used, such as ERP and CRM. .

. .

Marketing Automation technology lets you integrate all of your technology resources into one interaged toolkit. But where do you start?

Never worry, Act On software are here to tell you how to get the most out of a Marketing Automation system once its up and running. In this video the process is broken down into five easy steps:

1. Pick a system that is easy to handle and covers your needs.
2. Deploy the system by using it to run your existing marketing material, and to create new output.
3. Make improvements such as list segmentation, landing pages and reporting.
4. Measure results and see if youre more efficient than before.
5. Review and refine the processes and see if you can make more improvements. (Really, step 3 and 4 should be an ongoing process in our opinion.)
6. Look ahead and integrate the Marketing Automation solution into the marketing planning process. .

. .

Digital Asset Management involves more than just storing images in a neatly organized library. When it comes to managing a brands logo and media, there are all kinds of legal and financial issues to take into account. What if the wrong rights for an image have been bought? What if it isnt used according to the contract? Rights claims can be astronomical, but the negative publicity is free.

A Digital Asset Management or Brand Asset Management system, as software vendor Vyre calls it, helps marketers to use images in the right way. In the video below (opens in a new window), the Sales and Marketing director and the head of Professional Services from Vyre explain how a Brand Asset Management system can ensure media are always used as they should be.

.

. .

Tangent Snowball have taken something that could have been really complicated and distilled it down into something that is actually quite simple.

Software vendorCarlsberg UK to improve relations with existing customers and to attract new customers for the brewer. Pub owners have access to a the We Deliver More Marketing Automation platform, where they can order products, use email, web-to-print for marketing materials, and keep an events planner.

David Scott, Carlsbergs customer marketing manager, praises the systems customer friendliness, and says it allows the brewer to maintain a more personal way of communicating with their customers, while also allowing Carlsberg to organize and structure the B2B communication process. .

. .

Eloqua makes it easy to see how marketing drives revenue so you can make better decisions about where to spend resources.

In the eyes of many management teams, marketing is still an art instead of a a science. The need to prove the contribution of Marketing towards company revenue is evident and urgent. Getting the right statistics and financial data is key to proving the worth of Marketing to any organization. The Revenue Performance Management solution by software vendorEloqua helps with this. It offers a variety of dashboards, data, and metrics. Almost anything to do with Marketing and Sales can be measured and analyzed, it seems: data on the cost per response, lead and opportunity. The reports are interactive and can be easily shared so everyone can see where investments need to be made.

Knowledge really is power, according to Eloqua. This solution might just put the power in the hands of marketers. .

. . .

Another MRM case study this week, this time of a collaboration between Brazilian software vendor Arizona and the Brazilian division of Spanish bank Arizona. The marketing team name a few features that switching to an MRM solution has brought them: easily sharing and sending files to and from agencies, budget management, and planning tools.

Whats interesting is that they approached the MRM project very thoroughly. Starting at the bottom of the organization, at the production level, the implementation of MRM software is working its way up via management to analysis. This division of is actually quite similar to MRMLOGIQs Ten Functional Areas model. The integrated approach makes all marketing-related information visible quickly and easily, which allows marketers to justify their expenses and become fully accountable. . .

. .

Save time managing media, spend time being creative.

Weve seen quite a few vendor videos for Digital Asset Mangement (DAM) solutions, and heres yet another one. OpenText Media Management 7.0 is specifically designed for use in creative professions such as marketing, broadcasting and publishing. These industries make heavy use of rich media content such as photos and videos, and a well organized digital asset library is crucial for a speedy prodution process. Whats more, this solution allows you to transfer content into different formats as required for tablets, e-books, mobile devices and the like.

The OpenText DAM includes several modules: for brand management, media management, text management, video management, for example. All in all, it looks like theyve got most rich media covered. .

. .

‘Marketing as we know it is dead. But there is a better way. Alterian gives you the tools to understand, create and deliver in the new world of customer engagement.

Software giant Alterian introduces its four different marketing software solutions to help todays marketers navigate the complicated world of customer engagement. The underlying idea for each of these solutions is of course the customer. If you listen to what they are saying, you can adjust your marketing activities accordingly and create personalized, relevant content delivered at the right time.

The Campaign Manager is the broadest solution, designed for managing entire campaigns. Knowledge is power and by understanding the audience, you can adjust and optimize campaigns to create maximum effect across multiple channels. A more specific solution is the Dynamic Messenger, which analyzes online behavior with regard to email, allowing you to personalize and finetune email messages. The Content Manager solution promises to help you create interactive and relevant websites, that allow business users to engage customers when they visit. And finally, of course there is a social media solution: SM2, which allows you to analyze how consumers talk about your brand, and become part of the conversation.

.

. .

CDC Software. This vendor video gives a few sneak peeks at the Customer Relations Management program. Integrated with Microsoft Office and Outlook, a customizable dashboard, its features include data management, document management, and social integration, with all social media channels accessible from a central dashboard. It even offers a Marketing Automation function, which is not a typical feature of CRM systems. And of course it also runs on smartphones. CDC does a good job of making Pivotal look like the system around which businesses revolve. .

. . 

Direxxis introduces their marketing solution dmEDGE. Direxxis provides off the shelf direct marketing solutions, designed to support the marketing process.

The system features different modules, including Marketing Asset Management, Relationship Management, Marketing Performance Management, which, according to Direxxis, help you centralize your content data and business rules and enable you to accurately implement and track field marketing programs. .

. .