Marketing & Technology Allignment Challanges

DMA Marketing Technology Study from the Winterberry Group

Speed-to-market and “customer-centrism” also key drivers of
technology and process adoption, according to new white paper
sponsored by DMA Marketing Technology Council

NEW YORK, August 28, 2007 — Monumental challenges confront marketers looking to improve their performance. Channel proliferation, rising costs and an increasingly cluttered media landscape are impeding customer communications, while complex internal processes—and out-of-date organizational structures and technologies—frustrate the business of developing offers.

To help marketers conquer those challenges, a discipline has emerged to apply best-practice process engineering and the latest technology. Known as marketing automation, the practice has grown dramatically over the last decade—with nearly 70 percent of marketers now engaged in planning or implementing processes that stand to drive dramatic improvements in both marketing efficiency and effectiveness.

That’s one of the findings of a new white paper released today by Winterberry Group, sponsored by the Direct Marketing Association’s Marketing Technology Council. The study, entitled Marketing Automation and the Enterprise Opportunity, explores the drivers and inhibitors impacting marketing automation adoption today and setting the table for continued expansion in the years ahead.

The product of in-depth interviews with over 50 senior marketing and marketing services executives throughout North America and Europe, the white paper identifies six key trends defining the current marketing automation implementation environment. They are:

•	The rise of “customer-centric” marketing, the rapid pace of innovation in product development and the demand for continuous process efficiency improvement are driving the development and adoption of marketing automation
•	Corporate financial pressures—including increased marketing budget scrutiny and the heightened demand for financial transparency and accountability—have spurred the integration of financial tools into MRM systems and other automation platforms
•	When marketing automation adoption plans are stymied, the causes are largely bureaucratic in nature, reflecting the emerging status of the discipline rather than fundamental shortcomings in technology availability or effectiveness
•	Poor organizational alignment and the complexity of integrating new software solutions with legacy systems are the leading challenges confronting marketers during the marketing automation “on-boarding” process
•	A significant skill gap continues to divide the “marketing” and “technology” factions within organizations, impeding faster and more successful marketing automation implementation
•	Organizations that have adopted marketing automation are beginning to report improved performance in terms of both revenue growth and internal productivity; these benefits appear to be both industry- and channel-agnostic.

“Over the next several years, marketing technology will continue to mature, enabling better and faster implementations that will span all of the marketing functions,” said Bruce Biegel, senior managing director at Winterberry Group. “As the road to a successful implementation is a continuous process, those who begin planning and enablement today will be best positioned to manage the marketing challenges and take advantage of marketing opportunities towards the end of the decade.”

Marketing Automation and the Enterprise Opportunity is available for complimentary download via the Research page of Winterberry Group’s Web site, located at http://www.winterberrygroup.com/research/. DMA members may access the paper through the DMA’s Web site at http://www.the-dma.org/councils/mtccouncil/.