Retailers Hot on Campaign Management Tools

A research paper written by Joe Skorupa for Retail Info Systems News on "The Campaign Management Imperative" reveals some interesting results (although the size of the sample of retailers was, curiously, not revealed, 25% of the respondents had sales of $100 - 500 million, 10% had sales from $500 million to $1 billion, 20% had sales from $1 - 2 billion, and 45% had sales exceeding $2 billion).

Here are key takeaways from this custom research report:

• 36.5% of respondents plan to become up to date with their campaign management systems within the next 12 months.
• The top two key drivers for upgrading campaign management systems are the ability to manage more targeted segments (73.7%) and multi-channel capability (63.2%).
• Since both of these drivers help executives become better at multi-tasking, it demonstrates how this software can help retail organizations do more with less.
• It also shows that retailers recognize the power of using deep customer analytical data to fine tune campaigns, and how important multi-channel sales and promotion have become for successful retailing today.
• Being able to link seamlessly with loyalty-card programs means marketers can better tap into the power of their deepest source of data and most valuable customer segments.
• By a wide margin, customer retention is the number one goal or capability retailers seek when upgrading a campaign management system (77.8%).
• The value of lifetime customers and an emphasis on building true loyalty are more important now than ever before. The best way to achieve these goals and measure your success rate is through customer retention.
• As campaign management tools become fuller featured with greater capabilities, they also demand greater collaboration and accuracy from ther departments they touch. Digging into the data we see that inventory management, for example, is an area that also uses campaign management tools, as do purchasing and pricing.
• It is not surprising the digital channels added together far surpass the
store channel in campaign management usage. The big surprise is the heavy emphasis on the mobile or mCommerce channel (31.6%). Due to a relatively low barrier to entry, mCommerce was the hot marketing buzz word during the 2009 holiday season.
• Desperate to find a growth channel in one of the toughest years on record, a large number of retailers went from zero mCommerce promotions to a full gallop in just a few months. 2010 is shaping up to be the year of mCommerce, as retailers exploit the consumer’s love affair with the smart phone and other mobile Internet devices.
• The vast majority of retailers (80%) collaborate with vendors or suppliers during some portion of their promotion campaigns. This includes 65% who say the process is somewhat collaborative, plus 15% who say they have fully collaborative and integrated systems with vendors or suppliers.
• 15% is a low figure for those with fully collaborative and integrated systems. There are tremendous efficiencies and profits to be made through close retailer/supplier collaboration, especially during promotion campaigns.
• Packaged applications and Software as a Service (SaaS) are the top two IT architecture approaches for campaign management implementation, both of which were chosen by 23.8%. The days of internally developed software (14.3%) are on the wane. CIOs have turned a corner in their approach to IT architecture, and are not likely to look back.