What is campaign management?
Campaign management is the process of organizing, segmenting, targeting, and managing multichannel marketing messages. The act of a campaign manager is to integrate data on the purpose market with existing data about customers to actively drive impressive marketing campaigns. Some campaign manager duties include writing and editing campaign copy, managing implementation, ensuring brand identity is consistent in messaging, and providing results and analytics after the campaign is run. But don’t get caught up on the definition, the roles and rules of campaign management are constantly evolving.
So, before you close this tab and start researching the best campaign management tools, keep these necessary factors in your back pocket during evaluation.
1. Easy to Adopt for Team Members
Unless you are studying up on how to become a campaign manager, you need to search a tool that will be easy to train and use for your marketing team. Some tools have all the bells and whistles but require hours and hours of training. Test drive a tool with your team and see how they like it. If they can’t set up a easy campaign after an hour or two of training, continue your search.
2. Lead Management
Tools that offer lead management allow you to value your prospects based on their readiness to buy so sales can focus their attempts on the best opportunities. Lead scores are given based on their activity within the campaign. Which links did they click? How much time did they spend reading an email? Did they subscribe to the newsletter? A great campaign management software does the leg work for you, so you can certify which leads have the highest propensity to buy, and tailor your marketing messaging accordingly.
3. Multichannel Marketing Automation
Gone are the days of juicy email subject lines and obscure, attention-grabbing messages. Customers are no longer falling for the “Is a hippo chasing you?” line and with a click of a button, your thought-out email is routed straight into their spam folder. You need a campaign management system that allows you to interact with prospects and customers on multiple channels. Whether it’s texting, social media, or live chat—you want to be at the top of your customers’ minds. This way, the buying process is more controlled by the customer than the marketer.
4. Content Marketing Functionalities
Companies need resources to develop compelling content that will drive people to their websites through all various channels. Look for a campaign management software that allows you to develop and reuse content across several campaigns. This allows you to create landing pages where you can drive personalized content to audience segments and direct them back to your website.
5. Easy-to-Use Analytics
These features are nothing without measurement and analysis. It’s extremely important to be able to evaluate the success of your campaigns and learn more about your audience. Analytics tell you what messaging is working and how your customers are responding to your campaigns. This data is especially necessary for sales, as they need to work in tandem with marketing to make sure all messaging is consistent and on brand.
Researching and testing several tools in comparison will help you understand which qualities are more necessary than others. In the end, you need to evaluate what tool is going to work best for you and your marketing needs.
