Issue 4, Jul-10 - Percassity Solutions | Marketing data strategy, marketing operations & marketing insight

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Just before the summer holidays get underway in earnest, we’re bringing you another Percassityperspectives, with industry updates, articles and commentary, together with news about what we’re up to at Percassity. In this issue we look to the future, with discussions on what lies ahead for direct mail and privacy legislation, as well as reflecting on the existence of marketing "all-rounders".

We always enjoy hearing about the success you’re achieving with Marketing Operations too. Let us know how you’re getting on, together with comments on Percassityperspectives, by emailing perspectives@percassity.com.

Yours sincerely,

Percassity Marketing Data Solutions

News Round-up

Renaissance ahead for direct mail
Despite the overwhelming attention paid to digital marketing by practitioners, agencies and commentators, the venerable direct mail option still has a role to play, according to a host of recent evidence. While the reasons for mail not being included in campaign activity include cost and fashion, the real reason might be that the newest influx of marketers are simply not familiar with it.

However, in a recent survey conducted by FedEx, 87 per cent of companies reported that they believe printed marketing tools are “somewhat to very effective” at attracting customers. Digital marketing is by no means being eschewed, with 36 per cent of respondents stating their intention to use social media to engage customers, but 44 per cent of small firms also intend to increase their use of newsletters and direct mail campaigns this year. Altogether, 61 per cent of the survey responders thought that direct mail is actually better at bringing in business than web-based advertising.

Despite this positive view of direct mail among smaller businesses, the Royal Mail has found that of the largest 3,000 companies in the UK, 2,000 of them say they are still not using direct mail. This apparently significant missed opportunity for achieving marketing results is further backed-up by additional research from Royal Mail’s Mail Media Centre providing evidence that a mailpack can generate engagement with young “digital native” consumers just as effectively as digital.

Seemingly the banks have caught on to this insight though (or simply never embraced any other way of doing things!). Mintel Comperemedia, the direct marketing intelligence company, found that financial services are still relying on direct mail to attract customers and restore public trust in the sector.

Data protection feedback and new cookie guidelines
The UK Ministry of Justice has outlined plans to obtain views on the European Data Protection Directive and the Data Protection Act to “ensure that current laws continue to safeguard people’s personal data in the 21st Century”. Views are being sought about the impact of data protection on individuals and business and whether the current powers of the Information Commissioner could be strengthened. The move is in preparation for negotiations towards a new EU data protection instrument.

The initiative to gather evidence on whether the current data protection laws continue to be relevant in the face of social and technological changes makes no reference to forthcoming legislation surrounding the use of cookies. These snippets of code saved by users’ web browsers in order to track their browsing activity are the subject of an EU Directive which national governments are obliged to pass into law by early 2011. The order states that a cookie can be stored only if the user “has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information”. This onerous requirement could have a profound impact on users’ experience of the web, causing more irritation than it safeguards privacy.

At the same time, the UK’s privacy enforcement body, The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has published a code of practice regarding the gathering and processing of personal information online. The use of cookies usually represents the collection of personal information, of which some users may not be completely aware. “However, using personal data in this way is not intrinsically unfair or intrusive,” says the ICO, but “it is good practice to provide a simple means of disabling the targeting of advertising using behavioural data.” This suggests a perhaps slightly less intrusive means by which website visitors can opt-out of their activity being tracked via cookies. We’ll be watching these developments with interest, and will update you in later issues of Perspectives.

Opinion

Do Marketing All-rounders really exist?
Charles Eaton-Hennah, Director, Database Marketing Consulting
I was recently discussing a diagnostics project at a large financial services client with an experienced consultant. We were benchmarking the performance of the marketing department, and one aspect we looked at was their team structure and balance of resources.

The client was running some pretty sophisticated data driven activities, using a campaign management tool, and the consultant mentioned in passing, that “of course” specialists would be needed to use it.

That statement struck me, partly because it closely aligns with my own views, but mostly because it runs contrary to the marketing messages of so many product vendors, who still cling to the myth that their products are so simple to use that generalist marketers can run complex campaigns using them.

While avoiding generalisations, I’m sure we’ve all known marketers who, while happy with sophisticated brand analysis and creative briefs, run a mile from a spreadsheet. Equally, we can probably also think of “data-heads” who are rather dismissive of what they see as the soft, fluffy (and to them, completely mystifying) side of marketing. In popular psychology, there is general acceptance that certain functions (e.g. logic, creativity) are lateralised, that is, located in the right or left side of the brain, and that most individuals have a tendency to be left or right brained. It’s not that simple of course, and no one is entirely one sided. For example, left-handers tend to be more balanced; although 95% of right-handers have left-brain dominance for language, only 18.8% of left-handed people have right-hemisphere dominance for language function. [As an aside, perhaps that balance goes some way to explaining why so many marketing hybrids, like me, seem to be cack-handers!]

So it appears odd that vendors still position complex campaign automation and modelling tools as being suitable for marketing managers. Their vision is often that the marketing automation system becomes central to all of the functions’ activities, with each and every member of the team using it continually.

At Percassity we feel it's futile to believe that, even with sufficient will and training, an organisation can have a team of all-round marketers, able to run a creative brief in one minute, prepare product strategy in another, and run a modelled data extract based on the analysis of previous campaign performance in the next.

In our experience vendors and marketing leaders need to have a much more realistic approach. An effective campaign team will contain individuals with different skills working together, including data analysts and marketing campaign managers. Particularly effective organisations also have key individuals with hybrid skills, able to bridge the gap between data and creativity - often these individuals are in leadership roles. Effective Marketing Operations has a key role in building this balance, ensuring that processes are optimised for effective and rapid execution, and that technology is correctly harnessed.

However, until the vendors allow this particular sacred cow to die a natural death, we’re going to continue to see major investments in marketing technology fail to meet its objectives because “None of our marketing managers are using the system”.

From the Blog
Highlighting a post from our companion blog Diary of a Marketing Insight Guy, in this issue we look at the question of whether outsourcing is the best approach to marketing data management. Sign-up to receive regular postings on marketing data strategy, operations and insight from the Diary of a Marketing Insight Guy blog.

External marketing service provider or internal database?
A recent discussion in the pages of Database Marketing magazine, regarding the merits of in-house versus out-sourced data management, was reassuringly familiar. I’ve been involved in many debates as to the best approach over the years, with no definitive answer being reached. It depends, of course, on the circumstances of the organisation and it’s marketing requirements.

It may be possible, with a database that doesn’t involve too many feeds or updates, to hold it externally and undertake batch cleansing. Increasingly though, the proliferation of data sources, update frequency and links to other systems in the organisation means such a stand-alone approach isn’t feasible. In addition, data cleansing can’t be viewed as simply an occasional process, but one of continuous improvement.

This doesn’t necessarily dictate an in-house or external solution, but whatever the solution is, it must be able to integrate with other corporate systems and data sources. Enquiries captured on the website need to be stored in the marketing database for inclusion in ongoing nurturing activity, campaign outcomes fed back for tracking and measurement and qualified leads passed to Sales, with the eventual results recorded for ROI analysis.

Marketing systems and processes must increasingly be integrated with the wider enterprise and both MSPs and solution vendors must ensure that this is what they are delivering.

Read this post on the Diary of a Marketing Insight Guy blog.

Percassity Developments
Doing the rounds
Percassity co-founder Simon Daniels has been busy on the talking circuit recently. Delivering a talk to the British Computer Society’s Data Management Specialist Group/DAMA quarterly meeting on the theme of "Does Data Quality matter?" Simon highlighted some business drivers that suggest the answer is very much “yes”. At the DMDays conference in New York, Simon joined a panel discussion debate exploring what the future of Marketing might look like.

Percassity celebrates first birthday!
We were very proud earlier this summer to mark our first year in business, concluding a busy twelve months with engagements on three continents. Activities have included a CRM deployment and data quality project for a New York based client and the development of a campaign management project in Hong Kong. Closer to home, we’ve undertaken Salesforce.com data enhancements for a security software vendor, data audit and strategy development for a larger publisher and guided the selection of a CRM solution for an industrial engineering company. Look out for case studies on some of these and other engagements soon.

Worst practices in Marketing Operations
Due to be published later this month, our new whitepaper, Worst practices in Marketing Operations, examines some key areas where Marketing Operations go wrong and offers some suggestions for best practices that we’ve seen. If you’d like to receive a copy as soon as it’s ready, send us a request by email.

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

Direct Mail Driving Digital, 8 September, London
UK Direct Marketing Association evening seminar highlighting two companies’ use of integrated marketing campaigns to maximise response rates.

ad:tech, 21-22 September, London
Opportunity for marketing professionals wanting to stay ahead of the latest interactive media, advertising and marketing trends.

DMA 2010 Conference & Exhibition, October 9 – 14, San Francisco, CA
Focusing on the integration of direct and digital marketing, DMA2010 from the US Direct Marketing Association aims to deliver strategies to enhance the end user experience and maximize ROI.

The B2B Metrics of Multi-Channel Marketing, 14 October, London
Explore the vital topic of marketing accountability at the second Institute of Direct Marketing B2B knowledge and networking evening and gain actionable ideas for application within multi-channel B2B campaigns.

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.

Insightful observations as always in the Customer Experience Matrix blog by David Raab (@draab) on the current status of privacy in Privacy: Does Anybody Care?. Perhaps the Ministry of Justice and European Commission should read this! (See main article in this issue.)

A couple of different posts recently have addressed the issue of cold email and its long term prospects. The general consensus is that it continues to have a role to play, when done right, according to Rupert Harrison in Is there a future for email list rental? and Anne Marsden (@annemarsden) in I didn’t order this!

Featured Tweet this time comes from Carlos Hidalgo (@cahidalgo): Just saw another vendor promoting their "Lead Management Automation Solution." #LeadManagement is a business process not technology. No arguments from us there.

Send us anything you’ve come across that you’d like to share. And don't forget to follow Marketing Insight Guy @mktginsightguy for regular Tweets on marketing data strategy and marketing operations.

Recruitment
Situations vacant. Contact us if you have a role you'd like featured.

Senior Data Planner
Award-winning integrated agency requires an experienced Data Planner from an agency environment. Ideal for anyone who enjoys extracting key business insights from data, are fully conversant with analytical concepts, have a concrete knowledge using data in direct marketing with an appetite for digital and ATL. London. £60,000 + bens. Direct Recruitment

Marketing Strategy Consultants & Analysts
Numerous positions in management consultancies covering one (or more) of the following: media mix optimization, consumer insight, price/promotion analysis. London. £35-£45k, £45-£55k, £60-£70k. McGraw Stone Consulting

About Percassity Solutions
Co-founded by former Gartner colleagues Simon Daniels and Charles Eaton-Hennah, Percassity Marketing Data Solutions is a marketing data strategy and marketing operations consultancy. Adopting advisory and implementation roles, we help organisations to harness their data, systems and processes in order to address challenges such as vendor selection, inefficient campaign execution, sales and marketing integration issues and an inability to accurately measure marketing results.

We help to:

Obtain and enhance data for campaign activity, and ensure the best possible data quality and response results
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 or download our quick reference guide to Percassity Solutions.

Put us to the Percassity 3 in 30 Challenge! In as little as thirty minutes, we’ll discuss the challenges you are facing with marketing data strategy and marketing operations, and come back to you with three suggestions for improving your marketing effectiveness.

Request your Percassity 3 in 30 Challenge session and take the first step towards solving your marketing data strategy and marketing operations issues.

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 | @mktginsightguy

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