Not knowing the best actions to take when marketing to consumers can be a gamble. Important insight is buried deep inside oceans of data. Often, customer data may seem either out of reach or too complicated to be useful. Co-ordinating numerous third parties and internal departments along with finding the right personnel to analyse and execute refined campaigns are complicated tasks for most marketing groups. How can marketers make wise campaign decisions? Is there an easier way to deliver relevant cross-channel messages to prospects and customers? Read on to find out...

1. An Acxiom White Paper
How to reduce the risk of
bad marketing decisions
The many advantages of affordable
cross-channel marketing solutions
By Steve Merritt and Will Nipper
with assistance from Farrell Wilson

2. Deciding where to invest marketing budget often carries the
same risks as spinning a roulette wheel. Placing the company
chips on a few intuitively selected marketing ideas could pay off
or bust the company. Marketing directors must deliver, but often
lack the advanced tools that can lead to success.
Not knowing the best actions to take when Trends influencing marketing
marketing to consumers can be a gamble.
A growing number of channels and the pressure
Important insight is buried deep inside oceans
to do more with less are two key drivers
of data. Often, customer data may seem either
motivating marketing to change. These trends
out of reach or too complicated to be useful.
also create conflicts for marketing. “Proliferation
Co-ordinating numerous third parties and
of choice offers marketers new opportunities
internal departments along with finding the
such as social networks, mobile and branded
right personnel to analyse and execute refined
entertainment. Each of these has its own success
campaigns are complicated tasks for most
metric and dynamic, making comparison
marketing groups. Add in cross-channel
and the calculation of ROI impossible,” stated a
consumer preferences and the result is a
Forrester Research report.1 New channels mean
complex knot that cannot be undone by
more work for marketing. As marketing
most organisations.
departments face pressure to cut budgets whilst
expanding capabilities, technology will play an
How can marketers make wise campaign
important role in enabling success, stated a
decisions? Is there an easier way to deliver
Gartner study.2
relevant cross-channel messages to prospects
and customers?
To meet these challenges, many companies are
turning to affordable cross-channel marketing
solutions. Designed to bring the power of
high-end database marketing tools to mid-sized
organisations, these solutions enable marketing
groups to execute automated cross-channel The growing importance of customer data will
campaigns based on intelligent insight rather enable businesses to deliver more streamlined
than intuition. This white paper will examine the
challenges faced by marketing and reveal the
marketing campaigns that reduce costs
many advantages of affordable cross-channel
marketing solutions.

3. Leveraging customer insight will be an important Part of the problem is the long arm of marketing.
key to success. “The customer database, initially For example, database marketing, product
built in most organisations to support direct marketing, creative advertising, branding, media
marketing, is increasingly being used far beyond planning, marketing communications and public
its original purpose,” stated a Forrester Research relations are just a sampling of the groups that
study.3 The study found that the customer create messages that influence customers. When
database is influencing many different activities, partners such as marketing service providers,
such as telemarketing, customer segmentation market research firms, email service providers and
strategies, market research, contact optimisation, direct marketing companies are added to the mix,
traditional advertising, public relations, search the resulting communication co-ordination can be
marketing, customer service calls, product overwhelming. Then consider how a customer
development and product pricing. behaves when contacting the call centre, visiting
the company website or responding to emails.
However, marketers face major challenges Accessing and interpreting mountains of customer
bringing customer information into their databases data spread across groups is a Herculean task for
and delivering integrated messages across many marketing departments.
channels. Research shows that businesses are
actually worse off than they were just a few
years ago. A Forrester Research study found
that the number of businesses integrating
communications across channels has dropped, To eliminate the perception that marketing
from 62% in 2005 to only 43% in 2007.4 This is is a cost centre, marketing efforts must be
most likely due to the growing complexity of the
many available channels.
related back to sales.
Challenges that deter marketing’s success
Three major challenges stand in the way of the
marketing department’s success: the inability to As a result of data deluge, usable customer
prove that marketing efforts are working, out of and prospect information is actually sparse.
control spending and different groups competing For example, Forrester Research found that
for the same customers. only half of businesses claim to have both email
and physical addresses for more than 40%
Measuring the immeasurable of their customer records.5 Making the case
that marketing is having an impact becomes
Marketing is facing increased pressure to justify
particularly challenging when the results cannot
its expenses. Because data resides in a variety of
be connected to sales. Fortunately, new
information sources and among different groups,
solutions are attacking these problems head-on.
it's often impossible to know how a marketing
activity directly impacts on sales. This can lead
to the perception that marketing is a cost centre
in need of trimming.

4. Wasteful spending
Because not all customer data is in one place,
marketing departments often employ anecdotal
contact strategies in the hope that ‘something When customer data does not reside in a central
will work’. Rather than making evidence-based location, different departments often send
decisions, marketing must often take a shot in
the dark, hoping customers will respond. conflicting messages to the same customers.
Departmental groups that are understaffed
This typically results in multiple - and often
or fear internal competition are often responsible
conflicting - offers to the same customer. For
example, an email campaign promoting a discount for stalling integrated marketing efforts.
can improve conversions. However, the same
campaign offered to a consumer who has already
purchased the product or service could damage
the overall customer experience. The result of
When multiple departments must work together
duplicated marketing is wasted materials and
for cross-channel marketing, challenges
inefficient spending.
often occur. The fear of internal competition,
co-ordinating with multiple service providers,
This becomes more complicated when many
and working with data from different systems
different third parties are employed to help
represent some of the major issues. Adding
communicate with customers. For example,
different philosophical perspectives on marketing
one partner might handle email and the other
further complicates efforts. For example, the
direct mail. Because customer actions and insight
online group is often a new generation of
are locked inside different data repositories,
marketers, while traditional channel champions
making informed contact decisions becomes
may not fully understand the value or operation
virtually impossible. The end result is often
of online channels. A brief examination of how
“over marketing” to customers. However, new
the marketing department has used information
technology is helping marketing gain better
over time provides further insight.
insight to intelligently direct its marketing efforts.
Brief history of marketing databases
Marketing silos hinder progress
In the mid-1990s, marketing departments built
Many marketing executives see the value of
large, separate databases for customers and
integrating marketing channels, but lack the
prospects. A number of different tools were
in-house resources to properly implement such
used with the databases to execute and track
efforts. Marketing silos inside the organisation
campaigns. For example, data mining, campaign
complicate this. “Most firms structure their
management and reporting tools were common.
business around products or channels. As a
However, marketers needed to learn to use all
result, they lack a cross business understanding
of these separate applications. The good news
of the value of individual customers. The result?
was they replaced paper and complex
Communications are seldom co-ordinated or
spreadsheets. The bad news was that it took a
consistent across lines of business or channels,”
long time to execute campaigns because of the
stated Forrester Research.6
many steps and tools.
When multiple, isolated databases function across
business units, the result is a lack of a central
repository of customer data and no understanding
Marketing databases and tools have grown
of a customer's relationship to the entire
business. According to Forrester Research, with the emergence of new channels,
“each team focuses on maximising the results creating many different tools that must be
of its respective business or channel without
any consideration for optimising the value of leveraged to gain customer insight.
each customer on an enterprise-wide basis.”

5. By around 2000, large database companies
began acquiring and assimilating individual tools
into one larger solution. This meant a single Affordable cross-channel marketing solutions
company could provide everything under one enable simple execution of marketing
brand. However, new channels, such as email,
were growing in popularity. As a result, the campaigns based on a complete view of
number of tools and databases increased for their customers’ behaviour and preferences
online and offline efforts. Ultimately, the cost
of using database tools dropped and results
improved. However, the continuing emergence
of new channels meant it took longer to With this type of solution, customers can be
prepare campaigns. easily segmented into groups based on actual
knowledge of their behaviour. For example,
By 2005, many tools became fully integrated high-value customers can easily be located
with databases. Marketers could quickly begin and offered special incentives. Alternatively,
analysis with much smaller learning curves. This customers exhibiting behaviour similar to
offered greater efficiencies and enabled marketing high-value customers can be nurtured into
departments to execute more campaigns with more valuable relationships.
less effort. However, marketers still needed to
start tracking channel preferences and maintain
privacy and legal requirements. Today, there are
far more channels, making integrated marketing
efforts even more difficult.
The next step: affordable cross-channel
marketing solutions
Designed to help marketers make informed
decisions and measure success, affordable cross-
channel marketing solutions are empowering
marketing groups with the same high-powered
tools used by the UK's top companies, but
without the great expense. These solutions
combine customer and prospect data in a single
repository, bringing together data from multiple
departments and partners for greater insight and
advanced contact strategies. Now all the essential
tools and processes are available in one
automated solution that works across channels.
By gathering and organising customer contact
information and transactional history, affordable
cross-channel marketing solutions can provide
a single view of each customer and prospect
(see Figure 1). Now the full picture of a customer’s
interaction across departments and channels
is fully revealed.
Figure 1: The top image demonstrates the many
data sources that provide a partial picture of
a consumer. The lower image shows how all
of that data can be brought together to provide
a complete view of a customer, enabling unified
analysis, optimisation and messaging. Figure 1

6. Affordable yet powerful The benefits of affordable cross-channel
marketing solutions
These solutions are affordable because they
automate and standardise typical consumer Affordable cross-channel marketing solutions provide
marketing procedures. Predefined functionality many important advantages tomarketing teams:
allows marketers to begin using the solution
• Empowers marketers to make analytically
immediately, while providing optional
driven, fact-based marketing decisions
customisation. In addition, advanced solutions
are pre-configured for specific vertical industries • Enables cross-channel communication based
such as retail, insurance, travel and entertainment. on behaviour and preferences, improving
Another reason these solutions cost less is response
because they are hosted; meaning no upfront
• Demonstrates the effectiveness of marketing
hardware expenses or on-site installation
campaigns with comprehensive reporting
is required.
and tracking
Critical capabilities • Eliminates up-front capital outlay, enabling
faster implementation
Once data is piped into the system, key
data recognition and hygiene procedures are • Centralises customer data into a single
automated. This means that a customer who location for advanced marketing tactics
interacts with different departments, systems or • Empowers directors to market more
channels is easily determined and all actions and intelligently and with more relevant offers
preferences are properly attributed to that one
person. For example, data from point-of-sale, • Speeds campaign efficiency by planning and
reservation, transactional, sales and operational executing campaigns in less than an hour
systems are all aggregated and properly analysed • Enables marketers to deliver more relevant
to provide actionable customer intelligence. messages to fewer individuals with greater return
With this central view of customers, • Reduces costs by eliminating duplicate or
marketers can: inaccurate customer data
• Analyse customer data • Calculates the cost of campaigns automatically
Valuable customers can be found and key • Helps manage campaigns within budget
sources of prospects revealed. parameters
• Segment customers • Enables the creation of smaller,
Customers can now be easily grouped more effective campaigns.
and marketed to based on a variety of
characteristics, such as profitability, behaviour,
propensity to purchase and channels used.
• Manage campaigns
Campaigns can be easily managed across
Affordable cross-channel marketing
channels, such as call centre, email and solutions allow delivery of
direct mail. Campaign execution can be better results at lower costs
fully automated and occur simultaneously
across channels.

7. Example: responding to a market crash • End-to-end integration
The ideal solution should handle all critical
A travel company was about to send an offer for
processes, from data import and cleansing
a high-end property. However, the stock market
to campaign management and reporting.
took a major downturn and economic pundits
In addition, online and offline touch points
said the problem would be likely to go on for
should be integrated.
some time. Knowing the planned offer would
not resonate with consumers, they quickly • Optional demographic and lifestyle data
re-evaluated their options. After crafting new Work with a company that can add accurate
messaging and a new target, the company demographic and lifestyle data to your existing
decided to test response with a low-cost, customer database. Such insight should come
targeted email campaign to a specific group from multiple high-quality sources. Possible
of its customers. types of data may include geographic location,
age, income, family type and life stage.
• Sixty-day implementations
Look for a solution that can be rapidly
implemented in only two months to help
A travel company responds to market
marketing departments quickly begin
conditions and rapidly creates, tests and seeing results.
executes a new, more effective campaign • Cross-channel message delivery
Ask if the company can deliver messages
via direct mail, email, the Web and mobile
channels, and if they offer real-time
customisation of messages.
Using a simple Web-based interface, they were
• Privacy and preferences
able to pinpoint the appropriate consumers and
Work with a company that understands
immediately send the offer. After a few hours,
the complexities of compliance with privacy
they determined the offer was very effective and
laws and can help ensure consumer
broadened their scope to a larger group of similar
communication preferences are observed.
consumers, using traditional channels such
as direct mail. What should have taken weeks
was done in mere days.
Look for a solution that requires no upfront
What to look for in an affordable cross- hardware or software investment and can
channel marketing solution
be rapidly implemented
When shopping for affordable cross-channel
marketing solutions, consider these important
requirements:
• Industry-specific expertise
• Affordable subscription model
Seek a company that understands the
The ideal solution should not require any
unique requirements of your industry and
up-front hardware or software investments.
offers pre-packaged, industry-specific
Look for a hosted solution that has a simple,
marketing functionality.
flat-rate monthly fee.
• Marketing strategy and execution
• Fully functional campaign management
If needed, look for a company that can
capabilities
develop a full customer intelligence solution
Seek a solution that includes campaign
roadmap. This can include creative services,
management tools, eliminating the need
executing campaigns across channels,
to invest inmultiple applications.
evaluating performance and making process
• Highly granular customer segmentation improvements. It is especially helpful to work
The solution should offer precise customer with a company that can understand and
segmentation to improve campaign results assess existing capabilities and provide
and deliver ultra-relevant messages and offers. investment advice to help improve returns.

8. The Acxiom advantage
Acxiom’s MarketEdge-X™ provides high-
performance marketing power at affordable prices.
Built to enable marketing departments to deliver
MarketEdge-X provides business-critical insight
cross-channel marketing campaigns based and allows simplified campaign execution,
on a full knowledge of customer behaviour and without breaking the budget.
preferences, the solution is helping businesses
make intelligent marketing decisions. Powered
by Acxiom’s AbiliTec® customer recognition
system, MarketEdge-X provides marketers
with a comprehensive view of its customers,
delivered with un-matched speed and accuracy.
Built on a 35-year legacy of delivering marketing
databases for the world’s largest companies,
MarketEdge-X brings the same tools, techniques
and experiences to growing businesses. Built
as an easy-to-use, drag and drop application,
the solution allows for the rapid execution of
integrated cross-channel marketing campaigns.
Acxiom’s vertical industry consultants can
help create better online user experiences for
consumers and find the best media channels
(such as the Internet and mobile devices) for
added revenue sources. Acxiom marketing
specialists can help analyse existing internal
corporate data, develop a strategy, deploy
optimised customer communications and
provide back-end reporting.
With offices in North America, Europe, Asia,
Australia and South America, Acxiom is
well equipped to meet the global needs of
consumer companies. Start making highly
informed marketing decisions based on
true consumer insight. Let Acxiom show
you the way.
1 Kemp. M. B. & Kim, P. (February 8, 2008). Forrester Research. The connected agency.
2 Collins, K. (August 19, 2008). Gartner. Eight facts every CIO needs to know about marketing technology decisions.
3 Frankland, D. (March 11, 2008). Forrester Research. The customer database amps up its influence.
4 Ibid.
5 Frankland, D. (March 11, 2008). Forrester Research. The customer database amps up its influence.
6 Frankland, D. (October 22, 2008). Forrester Research. Defining an enterprisewide customer contact strategy.

9. For more information on MarketEdge-X,
call 0800 035 2755
or visit www.acxiom.co.uk
for more information about Acxiom’s
affordable cross-channel marketing solution.
Acxiom Ltd Counting House 53 Tooley Street London SE1 2QN UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7526 5100 Fax: +44 (0)20 7526 5200 www.acxiom.co.uk ukenquiries@acxiom.com
© 2009 Acxiom Corporation. All rights reserved. Acxiom and AbiliTec are registered trademarks of Acxiom Corporation. MarketEdge-X
is a trademark of Acxiom Corporation. All other trademarks and service marks mentioned herein are property of their respective owners. 31/03/09