• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, June 30, 2011

According to a new report from Forrester Consulting to understand how interactive marketers use customer data to drive communications, develop promotions, and deliver consistent customer experiences, speed of response resonates loudly with interactive marketers. Realtime customer insights and engagement across all channels are "the game." Given the velocity and frequency of customer interactions, interactive marketers are denied the luxury of timedelayed analysis and response.

Forrester defines the term interactive marketing as: The use of addressable channels like email, search, display advertising, social media, mobile, or online video to sense and respond to customer need.

Through indepth surveys Forrester found that interactive marketers continue to struggle with customer data management issues. Although established channels such as email, website, display, and search are actively measured by interactive marketers, leveraging collective customer insight across channels remains a distant reality for many.

The study yielded these key findings:

·      The need for speed resonates loudly with interactive marketers. Marketing technology, listening across both digital and social channels, and advanced data management capabilities are foundational capabilities to address this need

·      Integrated campaign management is a strategic imperative, and extends into the need for greater collaboration across interactive marketing teams

·      ROI continues to haunt interactive marketers, as they struggle with organizational and budgetary barriers that hinder progress toward a more customer-centric and dialogue-focused approach to campaign management

·      Marketers continue to execute and measure campaigns in isolation from each other without a full view into customer activities across multiple channels. As a result, marketers still rely on using interactive channels to push messages versus encouraging customer dialogue

·      Interactive marketers struggle to execute effective crosschannel programs. Measurement and analytics capability is influenced by poor data collection, lack of data integration, and disparate data sources

Originally, interactive marketing was a practice limited to paid media channels such as display advertising and search engine marketing campaigns, but the discipline evolved over time to encompass all things digital, including owned and earned media channels such as blogs, microsites, websites, and social media touchpoints. As a result of interactive marketing's modern broad scope, organizations currently face multiple challenges.

Lack of accountability is a barrier to future investment. Quantifying the results of interactive marketing programs is a challenge for marketers and not limited just to proving the value of emerging channels. Twenty percent of respondents in the study rank this as the biggest challenge they face in their organizations.

Interactive marketers are adept at planning and executing campaigns across each individual interactive channel, says the report, but continue to grapple with creating a unified view of customer interactions across channels to extract insight. This is among the top three challenges that interactive marketers face.

While interactive marketers experiment fairly aggressively in emerging channels, the potential of channels such as social and mobile to foster customer dialogue is unrealized, says the report. Social, mobile, video, and other emerging media are viewed as channels for communication and brand presence versus a medium of dialogue, cocreation, and testing of new product ideas.

Today's interactive marketing challenges and opportunities drive the evolution of interactive marketers, and a new breed is emerging to take advantage of these opportunities. The following criteria define the characteristics of these interactive marketers and ensures the new campaign management mandate.

·      Focus on a dialogue rather than broadcasting messages

·      Emphasize the customer rather than the channel

·      The New Campaign Management Mandate

·      Ensure greater accountability

·      Enable realtime management

·      Enhance relevance and personalization

·      Improve data and process integration.

Survey respondents rank web analytics, social management tools, and customer data hubs as key technology enablers to overcome marketing challenges

And, the report concludes that organizations that want to embrace the new campaign management mandate should consider these preparations:

·      Develop multiskilled interactive marketers committed to the customer-centricity vision

·      Regardless of whether the interactive marketer is an enforcer, an innovator, an enabler, or a pioneer, devise clear campaign road maps and supporting marketing technology infrastructure

·      Accentuate the marketing and IT relationship

·      Plan for change management processes

·      Focus on process automation and technologies

·      Build a culture with customer knowledge at the core

For additional information about the study, find the PDF file of The New Campaign Management Mandate here.