tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34368959.post8268979980182592704..comments2024-03-25T04:32:02.396-04:00Comments on Customer Experience Matrix: SAS Acquires AssetLink: Great for Enterprises, But What About the Rest of Us?David Raabhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03489754392712536104noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34368959.post-91517188588356587332011-02-24T08:52:02.600-05:002011-02-24T08:52:02.600-05:00Hi David,
2 things stand out (to me) in your post...Hi David,<br /><br />2 things stand out (to me) in your post; and I want to add two points that are dear to me.<br /><br />The first is that the acquiring enterprise software vendors are clearly aware of the huge ROI (for them and their clients) from integrated marketing management (IMM) systems - otherwise they wouldn't be making acquisitions. The reason why is simple: IMM improves marketing results. Our colleague Kim Collins VP and Analyst at Gartner recently wrote that firms that adopt (IMM) could increase their return on marketing investment by at least 50%. Those of us who have seen how direct marketers have made staggering amounts of money using data to make marketing decisions realize that bringing these same quantitative practices to digital marketing (where they can be executed with far less cost), will be a bonanza for those who implement marketing automation. To a firm such as Apple that spends more than a billion a year on marketing, this should translate into a lot of IMM software and services revenue for the vendor that they choose for IMM. IMM is to Marketing what CRM is to Sales – if you don’t have one, you’re not in the game. It may take a while, but every successful company is going to have IMM. <br /><br />In your post you raise the issue that "While I also love that vision, I suspect that only a few large firms will have the resources to implement it. This could mean that, in practice, integrated marketing management is limited to enterprise buyers". This is a reasonable concern as one observes the M&A at the high end of the industry. However there is no reason why vendors can’t develop easy to use and deploy cloud-based IMM systems for mid-sized marketing organizations(as we are at MarketingPilot). While smaller marketing organizations may not be able to invest in the advanced modeling and data analysis that large enterprises can, they can still hugely benefit from automated marketing campaigns and an ability to make decisions based upon ROMI rather than gut. <br /><br />One also must not forget that most marketing is in fact done by agencies working for corporate marketing departments. At my firm we are seeing more and more agencies adapt to the new 'digital' order and adopt integrated marketing management and campaign automation technologies. These adaptive agencies are growing rapidly and are moving their clients to use more and more digital media instead of traditional print and broadcast channels. These agencies are also providing many of the new analytical skills and technologies to their clients, big and small. <br /><br />My last point is this: one of the ‘premises’ of IMM is that marketing investment decisions are ROMI based. To be able to calculate ROMI you must be able to track spend and results. In a digital world tracking results can be quickly and relatively easily automated. Tracking and allocating the spend is another story; the critical enabling technology here is marketing resource management. It’s no surprise (to me) that IBM, Teradata and SAS all sought out acquisitions that provided strong MRM.<br /><br />Ken Kornbluh<br />CEO<br />MarketingPilot Software<br />ken.kornbluh@marketingpilot.comUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06915204909575440512noreply@blogger.com