Bronto Excel Add-In

The items discussed in this post are part of a broader initiative to automate and improvement business processes around the Marketing function at ATD.

Being relevant is increasingly a challenge most Marketing departments face. Sending a given communication to all your audience is very easy, but it comes at a very high cost. In most industries opted-out users will spend and engage much less than subscribed users.

The solution to this problem is simple: focus on targeting and value. The value part of the equation is “what in this message is attractive to the user?”. Will they learn something new? Acquire a skill? The second part is “who will enjoy this message the most?”.

At ATD we’re big Tableau (DATA) users. Our Business Intelligence team has created many dashboards, spanning most of our business lines. A subgroup of these dashboards are Operational Dashboards— meaning: they usually assist in tactical decisions.

Nowadays, a Marketing Manager can start exploring a data visualization, applying many filters and different segmentation.

All this exploration is reflected in a “Cross-Tab” tableau sheet. Once the Marketing Manager is happy with his or her segment, they simply export it to Excel.

To further streamline this flow, we created an Excel Add-In that allows someone to quickly create a list in Bronto.

A user simply selects the column that contains email addresses and clicks the “Create List” button.

You simply need to give it a name and that’s it. The list can be selected as a delivery group for a message and is available right away.

We believe that this data-first approach to marketing communications will really improve the way we communicate with our members and customers.