Campaign Management Applications

Campaign management modules allow marketers to use customer-related data in order to develop, execute and evaluate targeted communications and offers. Customer segmentation for campaign purposes is, in some cases, possible at the level of the individual customer, enabling unique communications to be designed.

In multi-channel environments, campaign management is particularly challenging. Some fashion retailers, for example, have multiple transactional channels including free-standing stores, department store concessions, e-tail websites, home shopping catalogues, catalogue stores and perhaps even a television shopping channel.

Some customers may be unique to a single channel, but most will be multi-channel prospects, if not already customers of several channels. Integration of communication and offer strategies, and evaluation of performance, requires a substantial amount of technology-aided coordination across these channels.

Event-based, or trigger, marketing is the term used to describe the messaging and offer development to customers at particular points in time. An event triggers the communication and offer.

Event-based campaigns can be initiated by customer behaviors, or contextual conditions. A call to a contact center is an example of a customer-initiated event.

When a credit-card customer calls a contact center to enquire about the current rate of interest, this can be taken as indication that the customer is comparing alternatives, and may switch to a different provider.

This event may trigger an offer designed to retain the customer. Examples of contextual events are the birth of a child or a public holiday. Both of these indicate potential changes in buyer behavior, initiating a marketing response. Event-based marketing also occurs in the business-to-business context. The event may be a change of personnel on the customer-side, the approaching expiry of a contract or a request for information (RFI).