Issue 1, Oct-09 - Percassity Solutions | Marketing data strategy, marketing operations & marketing insight

| perspectives |

Welcome to Percassityperspectives, the first issue of our new email newsletter with the latest industry updates, articles and news from Percassity ourselves.

We hope you find the newsletter useful and interesting and welcome your feedback. Just hit reply and send us your comments and queries, or email perspectives@percassity.com.

Best regards,

Percassity Marketing Data Solutions.

News Round-up

Germany Introduce Data Protection Legislation
Until this summer, German data protection legislation was a patchwork of regional policies and much of the central legislation was actually based on general commercial law. However in early July, the German Federal Parliament finally passed laws around protection and use of personal data.

The main point for marketers is that, as expected, the regime will be ‘opt-in’ for personal data collected for marketing use. As that follows generally accepted best practise, it shouldn’t have too much impact on many organisations, and for existing commercially available consumer lists there is a 3 year transition period.

The good news for B2B marketers is that commercial direct marketing will continue to operate under ‘opt-out’, an exception that follows the UK model. For more details on this and other aspects of data protection its worth registering with a specialist marketing law information website. One we’ve found is useful is www.marketinglaw.co.uk.

New Star on the block
August saw the launch of another name to add to the ever growing list of CRM on-demand vendors entering the UK market. Star CRM is aimed at the larger end of the SME market, with a starting price of £19.99 per user per month (based on 251-plus users), Star CRM is built around Microsoft’s CRM products, so most of the user interface will look familiar, and straightforward integration with favourites such as Excel and Outlook will make it easy to use. They’ll also throw in some standard analytics and reporting. Check out www.crm.star.co.uk

Google watch
There have been rumblings for a while that everyone’s favourite search engine is to be re-launched. Now sources tell us that Google is testing more than just a "next-generation" search infrastructure, it's testing at least a portion of a revamped software architecture that will likely underpin all of its online applications for years to come.

Code named “Caffeine” this new search infrastructure is built on a complete overhaul of the company's custom-built Google File System, a project two years in the making. At least informally, Google refers to this file system redux as GFS2.

Caffeine includes, as Google Head Of Webspam Team Matt Cutts tells us, a top-to-bottom rewrite of the Google's indexing system - i.e., the system that builds a database of all known websites, complete with all the metadata needed to describe them. It's not an effort to change the way that index is used to generate search results.

Ultimately what these changes will truly mean to existing Search Engine Rankings for websites is yet to be known but by past experience Google will keep the Search Engine Optimisation Industry on its toes.

From the Blog
In the first of two parts taken from our companion blog Diary of a Marketing Insight Guy, this recent post discusses a best practice approach to implementing a CRM solution. (Sign-up to receive regular postings on marketing data strategy, operations and insight.)

Eleven Steps to kick off your CRM system project
We’ve run many marketing automation projects over the years, both large and small. Here’s a simplified version of the methodology we use, and some hints around getting your project up and running!

1. Project Feasibility - an informal review to scope the potential project and set some expectations. This process might be no more than a short internal meeting, but at this stage you’ll not only be able to roughly size the project, but you’ll also have a good handle on the costs you’re currently incurring. Look at the organisation’s current levels of marketing activity, not only in departments carrying out marketing, but also Sales and other functions. Try and come up with some metrics such as spend (internal, number of activities, overall number of touches), and the programme objectives; customer acquisition, retention, up-sell/cross-sell. Don’t forget softer marketing activities such as newsletters sent by product or customer service groups.

You also need to get a rough idea of the data available, again don’t forget to look out-side the main marketing teams as well as internally. This usually means Sales, Finance (if there is no data warehouse), Customer Services and product management teams.

Add into the mix your organisation’s future needs, growth strategies, new products, desired improvement in customer experiences, structural acquisitions, as well as any predictable internal factors around people or structural changes.

Activity + Costs + Data Resource + Business Objectives are the inputs you’ll need do outline the project scope.

2. Initiate Project - you might have an internal project initiation process or it might be a more informal set of actions. But any successful project will need most of these components in place:

Business Buy-in - Your project is going to need or catalyse change in your business. Now is the time to get your directors or SVP’s on board. And don’t forget to keep up a dialogue with the guys in IT!
Project Champion (Board) - Someone with a stake in the project’s success and with enough political weight to fight your corner for resource and support
Project Manager - A good PM combines a detailed technical understanding with the oleaginous charm of a diplomat and the motivational skills of Madame Whiplash! They can be either from marketing or from IT or both! At times it's going to be a full time job, so make sure they have the bandwidth.
Success Definition - Develop meaningful indicators of success; these might include reduction in costs, improvement in productivity or trends in conversion costs. Keep them simple (at least what you share with the business) and realistic.

3. 1st Stage Requirements Definition and Data Audit Documentation

A high quality piece of work at this stage is vital to the success of the project; investment in time here will be repaid by a successful implementation many fold. When you start writing the cheques is too late to be finding figure out that what is being delivered doesn’t meet your needs.
Clearly prioritise all key features; essential/desirable/optional. On any requirements document the nice-to-haves tend to take up the same amount of space as the need-to-haves.
Think about phasing; its likely any substantial project will be delivered (and paid for) in a number of stages; prioritise key deliverables, but you also need to work out the optimum structure to meet operational constraints.
Identify any internal process changes needed, this is another area that is easy to overlook or underestimate. Does this need to be a vendor deliverable or can the business handle it themselves?
The Data Aaudit doesn’t need to be exhaustive at this stage; but you need to have a very good handle on the inputs the system will need, files layouts where applicable, approximate record quantities, and source system dependencies. In any complex organisation it's easy to underestimate the number of data sources needed for build and production. On one recent project the estimate was 18. The real number once an exhaustive process was complete? 61!

Look out for the next issue of Percassityperspectives for the second part of this article, or view the complete post straight away.

Percassity Developments
High quality web data capture solution launched
Intelligent Web Response from Percassity is a smart data capture technology ensures you get complete, high quality data from your web forms.

The solution comprises an intelligent form featuring automatic language selection, rapid address completion and real-time data quality validation. Try it for yourself and download international data quality expert Graham Rhind’s ebook Better data quality from your web form with our compliments.

CRM training deployment nears conclusion
Percassity co-founder Simon Daniels’ summer-long engagement to develop and deliver training materials for a CRM roll-out at a New York based software vendor is drawing to a successful conclusion. Two hundred plus Sales personnel across North America have been trained on the new system via on-site or remote training sessions, together with the creation of “leave behind” training resources.

Percassity puts its money where its mouth is!
We’re evaluating a short list of CRM systems for our internal use. We’ll go with one of the SaaS solutions, and it will help us with client service and well as business development. In addition, we’ll learn more about how SaaS products survive in the real world and will be sharing with you any learning points.

Events
Forthcoming marketing operations and insight themed events and networking opportunitis.

Identifying and Leveraging your B2B Influencers in a Web 2.0 world 22 October 2009
The Institute of Direct Marketing explores the potential of Influencer Marketing in the social media age.

Accelerate Your Business with SugarCRM 27 October 2009
One-day session providing a look into the future of CRM practices and technology.

Data Management and Information Quality Conference 2-5 November 2009
Three co-located conferences on Data Management, Information Quality and Data Warehouse & Business Intelligence.

Profiting from data in B2B Marketing
3 November 2009
One day workshop on delivering the right message to the right person at the right time, from the Direct Marketing Association.

Figaro Social Media Conference 3 November 2009
Understanding the macro trends of our digital age, thriving and surviving social Media and other sessions. Early bird discount ends today

Email customer lifecycle: List growth 10 November 2009
Part one in a four-part series of DMA events for marketers looking to take their email programmes to the next level, exploring the different stages in the customer lifecycle and improving ROI.

Email us with details of events you would like to be included in the next issue of Percassityperspectives.

Elsewhere on the web...
Our pick from the blogosphere and twitterverse. Let us know of anything interesting you've read that we should include next time.

Proving that email marketing is alive and well, the recent DMA B2B Engagement Email Marketing conference featured a number of very good quality and thought provoking presenations, with the day's hashtag #DMAEMC providing a great summary.

Whilst we're proving things, a couple of recent blog posts from Scott Brinker (aka Chief Marketing Technologist) and David Baldaro argue that whilst social media marketing has it's place, more traditional techniques are still highly valid. We agree!

Good news for tech marketers in particular: White papers remain most influential for tech buyers. Which then raises the question of whether registration should be required or not?

About Percassity Solutions
Co-founded by former Gartner colleagues Simon Daniels and Charles Eaton-Hennah, Percassity Solutions is a marketing data, operations and insight consultancy. We help to:

Enhance and obtain data for campaign activity, and ensure the best possible data quality
Implement marketing automation systems and campaign execution processes
Use analytics to optimise marketing activity targeting
Refine contact strategy to maximise response and reduce disengagement

Read more about how we can help with your marketing data management challenges.

Percassity Marketing Data Solutions Ltd
Suite 27, 61 Praed Street, London, W2 1NS, United Kingdom | +44 (0)20 7193 7682

perspectives@percassity.com | www.percassity.com

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