Business Challenge
A major online publishing company recognised that their Online Marketing requirements could not be met by conventional marketing and IT systems. An IT solution was required which could quickly provide key information to enable tactical decisions to be made - to swiftly exploit opportunities or to cut failing Online Marketing initiatives. The eCRM would also enable detailed strategic analysis.
The Marketing goal was to achieve ‘one-to-one’ marketing enabling the Online Marketing department to know an ‘individual’ subscriber profile or segmented groups of subscribers to a level where it would be possible to anticipate future subscriber requirements, subscriber reaction to events, etc. and to be able to exploit these events to maximise opportunities.
These requirements could only be met by the development of a customised Online Marketing eCRM System. The solution required the combined talents of Creative, Marketing, Design and Technical people. The solution required development of a Marketing eCRM which could exploit the information captured from promotional 'micro' websites.
We managed the delivery of the full solution from project initiation through to final testing and live. We also technically managed the resulting Marketing campaigns. Our specific contribution included:
- Project managed from initiation through to live
- Technically led the project
- Defined business and technical specifications
- Defined the Marketing reporting requirements
- Defined technical interfaces requirements
- Managed the graphical design process
- Defined, managed and tested security
- Ensured that Data Protection Act (DPA) criteria were met
- Acted as interface between Marketing and Technical to ensure no misunderstandings
- Acted as technical interface between the Marketing department and all third-party marketing agencies
- Defined testing strategy
- Carried testing from unit testing through to full end-to-end testing
- Defined and ensured operational support requirements
Business Benefits
Business benefits resulting at the campaign and strategic Marketing levels included:
Campaign:
At the individual Marketing campaign level, the following were achieved:
- Campaign Effectiveness Information - Monitoring the effectiveness and progress of campaigns on an almost real-time basis. Enabling ineffective strategies to be stopped and greater effort put into campaigns which were clearly effective.
- Proactive Decision Making – Marketing were able to quickly see which initiatives were working and those that were not. They were able to exploit successful initiatives and cut losses on initiatives which were clearly not working
- Prospect Information - Capture email addresses, demographic information, etc.
- Track Prospects - Track individual users, for example, where they came from, what they looked at, etc.
- Identify Blind Spots – Identify where important messages were being missed by prospects
- Cost Savings – Enabled the carrying out of Marketing tests quickly, effectively and more cheaply
- New Insights - Provided the ability to look at data in new ways in order to provide insights not previously available.
Strategic:
At the strategic level, the following were achieved:
- Customer Understanding – Enabled greater customer understanding
- Segmentation Models – Developed segmentation models and prospect lists
- Personalised Experience – Able to segment prospects in order to personalise Marketing initiatives
- Customer Acquisition Models – Able to build customer acquisition models' 'Hot Prospects'
- Customer Communications Strategy - Able to develop and refine communications strategies for each segment
- Lower Costs - Lowered the cost of customer acquisition and retention
- Retention Strategies – Enabled the improvement and refinement of retention strategies
- Brand Loyalty – Enabled the creation and implementation of brand loyalty strategies
- Cross Selling Opportunities – Able to identify and implement targeted cross-selling opportunities
- Refer a Friend – Able to implement new strategies, for example, Refer a Friend (see Case Studies)
- Targeted Marketing - Targeting specific interest groups or individuals
- Model Subscriber Behaviour – Able to model subscriber behaviour and so enable the improvement of Marketing offer
- Identify Behavioural Triggers – Using the statistics, graphs and reports generated it became possible to identify changes in subscriber behaviour
- Historical Trends – Provided historical data on individual campaigns, trends, etc.
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