The campaign is a fundamental component of modern marketing that brands rarely question. It informs the way we think, act, analyze, budget, and plan. But perhaps most importantly, it affects the
way we treat our customers.
By definition, campaigns have three critical components: An opponent, a battlefield objective, and a deadline. Stemming from the
17th-century French term “campagne,” or “open field,” the word originally described armies’s advancement from the fortress to the
fields in spring as they attempted to gain territory. The word campaign is, of course, also associated with politics, where opponents, battlefield objectives, and seasonal deadlines are equally
applicable.
However, what is it about war and politics that made us say, "That's how we want to approach marketing!"? Long after warfare and electioneering moved to
more sophisticated models, marketers are still stuck in the 17th century. Let’s examine some of the specific ways campaigns cause trouble for
today’s brands.
advertisement
advertisement
Trouble with Campaigns #1: The Opponent
In a campaign, there is a winner and a loser. You try to force your opponent into an
unfavorable terrain, with few palatable options. In marketing, we do this with popup ads, misleading emails, and FOMO. Why do we treat customers like the enemy? Why do we force them into such narrow
victory conditions like “Everything Must Go!” or “This Saturday Only!”? It comes down to a combination of things. We don’t have the capability for defining wins
differently for each customer. We don’t have the capability to measure wins that occur outside of the objectives or time windows of campaigns. And so, we skirmish with our customer.
Trouble with Campaigns #2: The Battlefield Objective
Campaigns are measured with short-term, tactical metrics. In marketing, this is often a combination of
impressions, clicks, form fills, and direct responses to a call-to-action. It’s rare for these objectives to be correlated with long-term objectives like churn reduction or brand loyalty. Out of
fear that our campaigns will show to have a negative effect or no effect at all, we only measure the things our tools are capable of measuring. Marketing clouds typically don’t understand our
customers or our long-term objectives, so they are not capable of optimizing for them.
Trouble with Campaigns #3: The Deadline
The spring thaw dictated
the beginning of war season in the 17th century, but modern marketers are no less a slave to the calendar. Presidents Day is about mattresses, Memorial Day is
about appliances, and Thanksgiving Friday is dominated by box-store finds. What of the customer who needs a mattress in April or October? Even companies without obvious seasons have a campaign
calendar. Why do we force our customers to conform to our arbitrary cadence? In part, we do this because we need campaigns to end so that we can measure them. We start with static budgets, create
static audiences, and static workflow rules. In order to learn and adapt, we have to end a campaign and plan another.
Getting out of the trenches
Marketers have been talking about relationship marketing for 15 years, but until now, we were limited by our technology. Luckily for 21st century
marketers (and our customers), we no longer need to be subject to the 17th century model of warfare. Emerging artificial intelligence technologies allow
marketers to move beyond the limitations of campaigns, providing opportunities to create human interactions at a scale that’s not humanly possible. No opponents, no vanity metrics, no enforced
seasonal cadence.
Instead, marketers can optimize for long-term goals like customer lifetime value, which benefits both you and your customer. There is no arbitrary deadline, no
static audience segments, no workflow rules. The marketer is freed to analyze and gain insights at will, creating and launching new experiences as part of the ever-evolving mix of
interactions.
Of course, some offers and incentives will still align with seasons and deadlines, making the campaign framework useful. But, for most of our interactions,
it’s time to stop waging war on our customers and move to a better model based on mutually beneficial outcomes.