As new technology evolves, the capacity to store and analyze information, the complexity of people’s decision-making process, and the amount of new campaign analytics technics increase. Based on our research, the future in campaign analytics will also be influenced by these factors: data-driven campaign analysis will gain its standing, customer relationship management will involve new approaches for marketing campaigns, and some traditional and popular aspects of campaign analytics may be in decline.
Future Development
Building one-to-one strong relationships with customers has become an important aspect of marketing campaigns. The emerging tools designed and developed by people, such as data scientists, further improve the practices. According to 25 marketing experts [1], the future in marketing campaign may develop towards the below topics.
- Cross Channel Marketing Campaign
One famous adoption of cross channel campaign is Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign. “Interpersonal communication allowed Obama to build a political constituency (purchasing community) and get to know potential voters (customers).” [2] The channels used are Radio, TV, Email, and Social media, including a Youtube Q&A live stream.
Though this is a successful example, cross channel, or multi-channel marketing currently seems to be considered as simply bringing in different channels into marketing campaign practices. The channels may include websites, retail stores, mail order catalogs, direct mail, email, and mobile. However, to reach the greatest efficiency, it actually should be customer-oriented. For instance, the chart below demonstrates a simple example of how media channels integrate and influence each other in pairs. [3] In reality, the combination of channels are much more complex. Thus challenges arise.
Some approaches to help us face the challenges are: targeted messaging, highly choreographed campaigns, and marketing response attribution. Personalized messages are essential to attract customers and let them willing to act. Marketers should also “constantly develop and coordinate highly orchestrated touch points and micro-campaigns that span multiple channels fluidly, in a way that the customer finds meaningful and trustworthy”. And “knowing what triggered each response would enable marketers to assess whether or not their marketing efforts were getting the best results”. [4]
- Social Network Marketing Campaign
The key issue that raises the importance of cross channel marketing campaign is the fast development of social network. Reaching the vast population requires less and less cost now. In 2013, Smart used Twitter’s conversational platform to engage with users. Its creative response acquired over 22 million impressions in three days, and Smart USA increased its Twitter followers by 1,755%.
To meet the demand for such marketing opportunities, major social network platforms are providing related services now. For instance, Google+ allows for targeted advertising methods, navigation services, and other forms of location-based marketing and promotion. Except for current major players like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, others like Instagram, LinkedIn, and MySpace will provide new opportunities and even new tactics in the future, based on their different characteristics. [6]
- Others
As we discussed earlier, the trend of shifting the emphasis of marketing campaigns to individual customers is inevitable. Promising technics such as real time marketing and native advertising, presented in earlier blogs, can be expected to largely influence the marketing campaign practices.
Potential Problems
As the ability to mine and analyze data increases, the regulatory threat to the right to use it also increases. While organizations massively collect information and analyze it, the question arises: do they have the right to do so? The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about Turnstyle. The company placed hundreds of sensors throughout businesses in downtown Toronto to gather signals from smartphones as they search for open Wi-Fi networks. [7] Though Turnstyle anonymized the data, it is still doubtful for both moral and legal considerations.
The dilemma is that we need information to analyze target customers, but “any information that distinguishes one person from another can be used for re-identifying anonymous data,” wrote computer scientists Arvind Narayanan, now at Princeton University, and Vitaly Shmatikov of the University of Texas at Austin in a 2010 article in Communications of the ACM. Legislative attention may be needed for the future development.
Aspects in Decline
Traditional campaign technics, though they will still have their fans, may experience a decline of use in the future. Methods of traditional marketing campaign may include print advertisements, such as newsletters, billboards, flyers and newspaper print ads, and television spots or commercials, as well as radio spots advertising a business, product or service. [8]
It is not to say that these traditional technics will not be used in the future. They have been proven to be effective by the market anyway. The future of marketing campaign, as well as campaign analytics, should rather be a mixture of traditional and emerging technics to reach the highest efficiency.
[1] Jay Baer. “25 Inspired Marketing Predictions for 2013”. Social Media Strategy.http://www.convinceandconvert.com/social-media-strategy/25-inspired-marketing-predictions-for-2013/
[2] V. Kumar, W. Reinartz. “Customer Relationship Management: Chapter 11 Campaign Management”. http://www.drvkumar.com/books/crm2/Ch11.pdf
[3] Megan Marrs. “Multi-Channel Marketing 101: Why Does Cross-Channel Marketing Matter”. Marketing Strategy. October 15, 2013. http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/10/15/multi-channel-marketing#
[4] “Multichannel Marketing: What it is and why it matters”. SAS: Marketing Insights.
http://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/marketing/multichannel-marketing.html
[5] “The Best Social Media Campaigns on Every Popular Platform in 2013”. http://www.bellybuttonsonmarketing.com/2013/03/23/the-best-social-media-campaigns-in-2013/#sthash.88oohpQd.dpuf
[6] Jayson DeMers. “The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014”. Forbes. September 24, 2013. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2013/09/24/the-top-7-social-media-marketing-trends-that-will-dominate-2014/
[7] Kate Crawford. “When Big Data Marketing Becomes Stalking”. March 18, 2014. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-big-data-marketing-becomes-stalking1/
[8] Valencia Higuera, “Advantages & Disadvantages of Traditional Marketing”. Demand Media. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-traditional-marketing-25573.html