Design Discussion: Marketing Automation

By Earl LaChance

As Marketing Automation implementations have matured over the last few years, we've begun to see the impact of their initial designs. Much like the customizations that have crippled enterprise applications like SAP, PeopleSoft, and Siebel throughout the 90's and early 2000's, flawed designs are impacting campaign management systems.

One overall consideration is that every component of a campaign should reside in it's proper application. Some key design elements that one should consider when implementing a campaign management solution:

• Keep the calculations and logic where they belong; ensure that the models and calculations are built external to the campaign management application. An example of this is to maintain models and their associated algorithms within a Data Mining application. The results of these models should be some of the first inputs when creating a campaign (or an offer stream within a large campaign)
• There should be a well thought-out information map, that translates the cryptic data that resides in the Data Warehouse or the Data Mart into business terms that the common marketing user can understand and relate to. An example of this would be the ubiquitous "0" or "1" for negative/positive... these types of flags should be converted to an obvious value for a marketing user such as "Client" vs. "Prospect".
• Keep the business logic where it belongs: the actual campaign management application. This application, usually graphical in nature, is where the Marketing Analyst can apply their business rules to determine the client or prospect list to be contacted for said campaign. Complex calculations and customer segmentation should have already been performed before the marketing user creates the actual campaign. This eases adoption for the business and enforces the use of the correct application for the proper purpose.

Of course, there are many other elements to a solid Marketing Automation/Campaign Management software design - the aforementioned are a few key elements that should be considered in order to maintain flexibility for future marketing requirements.