Marketing Automation

In today's market, it takes more than good products and services to succeed.

Successful marketing requires more precise segmentation and more sophisticated communications with customers--the lifeblood of every business--than ever before. Expertly explaining the components of marketing automation and their application and benefit to the marketing process, Marketing Automation shows you how to develop more effective and targeted direct marketing campaigns, from the planning and execution of promotions to the complete leveraging of marketing to increase your profits.

Designed to get you quickly up to speed, you will discover:
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How to evolve complex, yet agile, customer communication strategies
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Ways to focus already limited marketing resources on the right opportunities
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Advice on viewing, tracking, and measuring results
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How to optimally use current software applications to empower you to effect stronger, more responsive marketing programs

Straightforward and balanced, this essential guide presents a new and better way to strengthen your competitive position by using your precious customer data to increase your bottom line. Required reading for executives, marketing managers, and anyone needing to know the essentials of maximizing the profitability of every customer relationship for their business, Marketing Automation makes every marketing dollar count with a sound road map all executives can understand and follow.

Preface ix

Overview 1

Part 1 Marketing Financials

Chapter 1 Profit and Loss Fundamentals 7

Chapter 2 Profit and Loss Component Details 15

Chapter 3 Managing the P&L 29

Chapter 4 Measuring Marketing Effectiveness 41

Chapter 5 Measuring Return on Investment 51

Chapter 6 Marketing Financials 63

Chapter 7 Improving Response: Modeling and Analytics 79

Chapter 8 Creating a Marketing Financials Worksheet 87

Part 2 Marketing Automation

Chapter 9 Relevant Marketing Automation Information 103

Chapter 10 Financial and Marketing Information Integration 129

Chapter 11 Marketing Customer Information 137

Chapter 12 Data Acquisition, Storage, and Retrieval 149

Chapter 13 Data Warehouse Hardware and Software Configuration 173

Chapter 14 Making Information Useful: Access, Delivery, and Organization 183

Chapter 15 Information Map 205

Chapter 16 Using Information 229

Chapter 17 Response Testing 265

Chapter 18 Modeling 289

Part 3 Advanced Topics

Chapter 19 Optimizing Contact Strategy 299

Chapter 20 Strategic Marketing 313

Conclusion 325

Index 329

JEFF LeSUEUR has a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from New York University. He has spent the last thirteen years in the advancement of marketing automation applications, as director of database marketing for BMG Direct and in marketing, research, and development for SAS Marketing Automation since joining SAS in 2000. His breadth of product-related experience enables him to understand how marketers can benefit most from marketing automation.

Marketing 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 management
• Campaign management
• Financial and marketing information integration
• Marketing customer information
• Implementation of customer analytics with an emphasis on application

Part 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.