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What is Campaign Management?

Before, if we had a corner shop, we could have a conversation with our customers and meet every one personally, know their likes, preferences and we were able to respond to them appropriately and even influence their purchasing decisions. Based on a mutual trust relationship.

Today, with the growth in the number of stores, branches, employees and products, it is not possible to meet customers at the same level of detail and establish the same type of close relation in a traditional way.

Customers have been moving to other channels such as social networking sites, product recommendation sites, places to express what they like, where they share their shopping experiences and qualify the shops; there they are interacting with other stores and consumers.

They are providing valuable information and the retailers have to be in those places too to listen, understand their feelings and opinions, and start working on building new relationships. A relation with the customer develops first, listening, knowing and engaging with them. Then the conversation starts, but like when talking to another person, for the conversation to be interesting, must be relevant, it must be about the issues that are of interest for the customer and do so when he has the greater willingness to listen and, to respond.

To listen to customers as in a conversation is required first, to describe him, i.e. have their main characteristics and, as we have a huge number of customers, group them according to their characteristics into customer segments.

Unlike the older stores where we saw and had direct contact with each customer, nowadays it is not possible to do so. Today we have to use data to describe and identify each customer. We get the data from the points where we have contact with them like the call center, e-mail, the company’s website or social networking contact and any other place where the customer mentions the company.

Within this description of the customers through data, are the data provided when they contacted the store, by what means, what did he say, what did he buy, how did he pay, where did he buy, if he returned the product, visited the online store and made comments about the products, we can have the data and enrich it with income levels and demographic composition at neighborhood, etc.

Based on the data, we can get customer information and build their profile.
Once you have the customer profile and because of the number of customers we have, we need to know which data is available and what information can give, that is relevant to the business.

That is, we have to ask the right questions to know what can be gotten from the data. For example, if I have a store that is focused on providing greater value to high-income couples without children, who seek better products and a personalized shopping experience.

I have to segment my customers to identify which have these characteristics. The segments are groups of customers with similar characteristics but which can be distinguished from each other. For example, a group can have single men, with revenues of over 20 thousand dollars, living in the north of the city; the other group is men, married, with revenues of over 30 thousand dollars.

To create the segment we must first explore the data we have from customers, and we would be thinking that most of the customers are married and have no children, but if we review the data of 10 customers we will find out that 3 have a son and 5 have children, while the remaining are single.

Since these results were obtained we have an idea of what is in the data, and know what kind of questions could be formulated. If the goal is to focus on customers who have more than one child, the impact and relevance of the effort will be much less than if done between the ones that have one child or the ones that do not have children.

Knowing the data, the customer segments are created and, targeted campaigns can be made for each one, customized in spite of not knowing in person every customer, it is possible to have a very clear idea of who he is, what he does and what he likes through data. With that the effectiveness of any marketing effort increases.

Once you have the customer groups, you can respond to their concerns and needs in a personalized way, when required by the means the customer prefers most.

Even, using customer groups already formed with information from existing customers. You can apply the same criteria to new customers and prospects who have never had contact with the company before. Its characteristics are analyzed to determine which segment they best fit in and, with this information we can give them the same treatment and proactively make tailored offerings. This makes it possible to anticipate what the customer will need in the future.

Using this information and the ability to create marketing efforts targeted with content, answers and specific offers, you can make a more rational and effective marketing budget allocation, meaning that each dollar spent will create the most profit for the company and the results can be quantified in monetary terms to give credibility to the marketing department.

Therefore, managing campaigns is to select people who would react according to the objective to get the best results with the least possible cost.

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