Marketing Automation: Practical Steps to More Effective Direct Marketing
Marketing AutomationPractical Steps to More Effective Direct MarketingMarketing is an investment and should not be viewed as an expense. Marketing automation offers significant potential for boosting your marketing group's impact by leveraging that investment toward increasing profits. Marketing Automation details the components of marketing automation, the well-balanced coordination of financial systems, customer information, information management, and campaign management, as well as the integration of response models of customer behavior. Based on author Jeff LeSueur's seven years' direct marketing experience and six years with SAS® and SAS® Marketing Automation software, Marketing Automation emphasizes the practical steps that marketers can take to improve the effectiveness of marketing and increase profits.Jeff LeSueur's innovative text demonstrates by example how the marketing automation solution can support your entire marketing team and how marketing automation provides improved efficiency and effectiveness at every stage of the marketing process—from setting strategy to targeting opportunities, from implementing campaign initiatives to measuring results. By offering a practical and comprehensive framework for applying a marketing solution, Marketing Automation defines clear action plans for:Comprehensive data managementCampaign managementFinancial and marketing information integrationMarketing customer informationImplementation of customer analytics with an emphasis on applicationPart One clarifies and emphasizes the importance of operating financial management statements and reveals how to leverage analysis of marketing investments toward increasing profit. Part Two empowers marketers to participate more fully in each step of the marketing process and describes the essential best practices for more effective marketing. Screenshots of marketing automation features and functions are included to illustrate critical points in the marketing process such as selecting the audience, defining communication channels, testing, and closing the loop for more effective customer relationship management. Advanced topics are addressed in Part Three, including strategic marketing and the corresponding software applications that allow marketers to execute tasks such as managing contact frequency, optimizing communication decisions given resource constraints, effectively managing more models, and event-based communications.Marketing Automation covers a broad range of business functions, including operating financial management, marketing financial planning, return on investment, information technology, customer information management, and the marketing process. This practical guide expertly covers the components of marketing automation, their application, and how these components can help you to effect more—and more targeted—campaigns, increasing value to your customers as well as to your business.