Blog: marketing operations
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Moving Toward Integrated Marketing: Considerations Beyond Campaigns
4/10/12Continue ReadingSkim through any current collection of marketing best practices and marketing integration is
sure to be a central theme. So while the concept of a cohesive multi-channel marketing strategy is hardly new, many if not most organizations have yet to fully adopt this best practice. Newer companies have the advantage of building their internal processes to fit the post-digital landscape, but for most firms, integration is a massive undertaking requiring complex transformation across multiple layers. The deepest challenges include siloed organizational structures both inside and outside marketing; conflicting objectives across business units; and the absence of the right tools and data to effectively integrate campaigns. -
Direct Mail Darwinism: Surviving in the Digital Age
8/16/11Continue ReadingIf history is to be trusted, in 1748, a middle-aged Benjamin Franklin scribed a maxim that today is seemingly as elemental as his discovery of electricity. In his Advice to a Young Tradesman, Franklin wrote, “Remember that time is money.” With the current economic climate, who can question this wisdom?
Deliberating on Franklin’s advice, it is easy to distill his argument down to a simple matter of efficiency. Indeed, “efficiency” has become an increasingly common buzz word in today’s global marketplace, instilled in our vernacular by black belts. The one function that has been, for the most part, immune to this trend is marketing. This result has been, perhaps, precipitated by the legacy view that marketing is the last bastion of creativity and streamlining the creative process can stifle innovation.
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The Red Thread for Effective Marketing Execution
7/19/10Continue ReadingHave you taken the time to look around at what's happening across many business organizations lately? The typical IT and Marketing departments have gone through a dramatic change. The last few years have been quite a renaissance for these groups. Gone are the IT operations and development groups. Most of these roles have traveled the less-expensive-yet-not-always-faster outsourced direction. Now, there are more clouds than switches.
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Marketing Operations 2.0
6/10/10Continue ReadingMarketing Operations is a term that has been in common use for several years now. It has become synonymous with improving and automating direct marketing processes to achieve maximum throughput at minimum cost. Given the tough economic conditions that have prevailed over the last few years, the focus for work in the marketing operations area has naturally been on being more “efficient," meaning doing more with the same resources or less. As the economy slowly recovers however, marketers are beginning to think beyond the efficiency of the next campaign or branding initiative and are focusing in two related areas – (i) the changing nature of the marketing they are doing (or should be doing), and (ii) redefining or enhancing marketing operations to support those changes.
