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Research firm Gartner recently released its annual Magic Quadrant report for multichannel campaign management (MCM). As marketing automation continues to grow at a compound annual rate of 14.7 percent, MCM will increasingly become a critical component of marketing operations, according to the report. The challenge vendors and marketers face, however, is bridging the gap between old world marketing through offline channels and the rising shift toward online. As marketers shift their dollars from "mass-marketed, one-channel, one-way, company-driven campaigns to multichannel, measurable interaction-driven campaigns," vendors are responding with "more advanced campaign execution" that are built for the marketer not the technology team, writes Adam Sarner, principal research analyst of CRM at Gartner. Gartner's evaluation criteria centers on three overarching criteria:
- basic (segmentation, campaign execution and campaign workflow) and advanced campaign management (event triggering and real-time recommendations in inbound and outbound environments);
- basic and advanced analytics (predictive analytics and campaign optimization); and
- e-marketing functionality (Web analytics, community marketing and search marketing.)
"Marketers are certainly waking up to e-marketing," Sarner says, adding that "the online channel is a major influencer of online and offline sales." Therefore, offline campaign management, he says, has to connect with online campaign management. "The vision of online campaign management has actually come from Omniture and Coremetrics," he adds. But the two vendors focus on web analytics and aren't actually in the campaign management space. While they have the advanced measurement tools, they are not focused on bridging online advertising, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) to understand how one campaign affects another. This, Sarner says, is where campaign management needs to go.However, some of the more established vendors have traditionally lived in the offline world, whereas niche players tend to be more focused with new online channels (e.g., SMS, on-demand printing). Nevertheless, this isn't to say MCM vendors aren't aware of this imperative. Enterprise marketeering management provider, Unica, for example, acquired web analytics solution Sane Solutions in 2006.
Moreover, campaign management players, like Unica, have historically focused on business-to-consumer (B2C) relationships. Now, the world is capturing valuable insight from both B2C and business-to-business (B2B) relationships, calling for B2B-specific functionality,such as event management and lead management. Gartner's Magic Quadrant is divided to illustrate the general performance of:
- leaders (Unica, SAS, Teradata, and Oracle-Siebel);
- challengers (Aprimo, Infor CRM Epiphany, and SAP);
- visionaries (Art Technology Group); and
- niche players (Alterian, Eloqua, Market2Lead, Neolane, Oracle E-Business Suite & Peoplesoft, RightNow Technologies, Responsys, and SmartFocus.)
However, Sarner warns marketers against simplifying the decision to adopt a MCM solution just based on "a dot and two axes." Marketers need to understand what their purpose is, who they're targeting, and what channels they want to use. If you say, "Hey, vendor, give me a purpose," they're going to create their vision, Sarner says -- not yours. Most of his client calls are focused primarily on understanding the corporate strategy. Only by understanding strategy can companies find the most suitable software. Shopping for a solution isn't about which vendor provides the most coverage. Instead, marketers want to find the appropriate channels that best fit their initiatives. "You never want the technology to lead."
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