Here are several excerpts from an article by Lauren McKay, Editorial Assistant, CRM Magazine, 6 Metrics for Marketing in a Recession:
With news of marketing budget cuts making headlines almost daily, it’s clear that marketers aren’t having an easy time these days. A recent report from Gartner analyst Kimberly Collins may not offer much hope of the pressure easing up on its own, but does provide some advice for how to deal with the situation as the pressure beats down.
In her report, “The Top Six CRM Marketing Processes for a Cost-Constrained Economy,” Collins says driving and proving return on investment (ROI) is essential during the downturn.
Here are Collins’ six marketing processes for a cost-constrained economy…
1. Lead management: Gartner predicts that organizations that implement and automate lead management processes this year will increase revenue by more than 10 percent. Lead management requires closing the gap between marketing and sales. By expanding the role of marketing with lead management, salespeople will be able to follow up with leads that are better qualified, resulting in better opportunities.
2. Retention management: When money is tight, you have to work with what you’ve got — customers included. It’s less expensive to retain a profitable customer than it is to acquire a new one — and, Collins notes, the new one’s likely to be less profitable anyway. Retention management requires analysis of customer value and of churn. Identify the factors causing customers to churn, and implement alerts and actions to take before a customer walks away. According to Gartner’s strategic-planning assumption, companies with effective retention management in place will reduce churn of profitable customers by more than 10 percent within six months.
3. Online marketing: “Now is not the time to cut online-marketing spending,” Collins writes, adding that our current economic crisis is worlds apart from the dot-com era when organizations essentially ran away from e-commerce and online spending. “Now you want to reach and engage your customers,” she says. “It’s how you engage with them in the online experience.” Collins reveals that Gartner, in recent months, has experienced a flow of inquiries regarding e-commerce projects. “Many of them are seeing this as a channel that they can’t afford to hold status quo on,” she says. Collins’ research indicates that, in 2009, companies that invest in new online-marketing processes will see at least a 10 percent increase in revenue within six months.
4. Creative production management: This is an area marketers may mistakenly overlook as they hunt for ways to improve accountability and cut costs. Automating the creative process can reveal inefficiencies and can also reduce a marketing project’s time-to-market. Software can eliminate “busy work” and essentially allow a company to reduce its budget without a loss of effectiveness. The strategic-planning assumption says that organizations that automate creative production will save more than 15 percent on creative advertising budgets in as little as three months.
5. Marketing fulfillment: These solutions, often part of a marketing resource management (MRM) module, can lead to discovery of wasted collateral. Cutting down on printed material and physical storage costs can enable a marketing department to trim costs by moving to on-demand printing and storage. Marketing fulfillment implementations will lead to a reduction of 5 percent of waste within three to six months.
6. Budgeting and spending management: “Improving marketing’s accountability is required to convince the finance department of the value of marketing’s programs,” Collins writes, adding that marketers should create a standard set of planning, budgeting, and financial management processes. Aligning with financials management will lead to fewer budget cuts.
