Digital Communications Technology & Marketing

Digital Communications Technology & Marketing

Digital Communications Technology & Marketing

Introduction

In most organizations, the marketing department is one of the last areas to embrace enterprise technology. Tools and desktop applications have dominated the environment, but with the adoption of customer relationship management (CRM) systems and e-mail marketing solutions, marketers are starting to see the benefits that large-scale automation can bring, including increased efficiencies, more accurate reporting capabilities, and reduced costs. However, this is just the beginning.

Discussion

There are a few key marketing technologies that not only improve bottom line results, but also impact on the top line. Accenture completed a study on marketing automation tools and found that a company with 725 sales representatives and 25 customer service representatives could increase selling time, revenues, and promotions effectiveness, while at the same time providing $10 million to $12 million in cost savings. The Ford Division of Ford Motor Company is realizing cost savings of $2 million per year using a brand asset management system, one of the four tools described below.

Marketing software can increase sales and boost the return on investment (ROI) of marketing spend by allowing companies to launch products and campaigns faster and with tighter brand control. This chapter defines these new technologies, outlines the primary benefits, and suggests how executives can facilitate the phased deployment of these solutions for maximum ROI. Featured case studies include the Ford Division of Ford Motor Company, National Semiconductor, and Cole Haan (Philip 1999).

The landscape of marketing solutions is a confusing place with little agreement on categories or definitions. Vendors are touting enterprise content management, brand management, marketing automation, marketing resource management, workflow applications, and many other marketing solutions. To add to the confusion - and perhaps apprehension on the part of corporations - there was a wave of marketing resource management software that over-promised and under-delivered. In this chapter, we will avoid the buzzwords and acronyms as much as possible and focus on the benefits of four key marketing technology solutions:

brand asset management systems;

collaboration tools;

workflow and project management tools; and

online ad creation software.

These four marketing technologies are essential for corporations that want to increase efficiencies and productivity in the marketing department, resulting in increased revenue, brand integrity, and shareholder value.

Brand asset management systems, also called digital asset management or media asset management, are the cornerstone of any brand management initiative, because they contain and control the basic building blocks of the brand strategy - the product images, logos, marketing collateral, video clips, presentations, illustrations, documents, and other rich media assets that communicate brand, company, and product to a corporation's many stakeholders (Mentzer 2004). Brand asset management systems are sophisticated catalogs that store all of a company's brand and marketing assets in a secure database, making them available to authorized users over the Web. For example, the marketing communications department can store all of the latest product literature in this catalog, so that resellers across the globe can access the new product information as soon as it ...