The Marketing Executives Group International

Why SaaS-Based Marketing Software Isn’t Always Enough

Marketing Resource Management (MRM) and Multichannel Campaign Management (MCM) platforms such as Aprimo have really taken off in the past few years, becoming a top-of-mind want, if not need, for a growing number of large and medium-sized corporate marketing departments. 

The benefits are significant:  dramatically improved efficiency of production processes, centralized repositories of all marketing materials, comprehensive tracking and approvals of budget and spend information, and explicit alignment of all campaigns, tactics and outreach activities – including online, print, social and traditional media – to high-level corporate objectives and strategies.  The question for corporate marketers is no longer should they pursue an MRM or MCM strategy, but rather how?

Therein lies the next frontier of MRM and MCM adoption:  how can marketers get the full benefit of MRM and MCM platforms such as Aprimo, without being forced to swallow the unwanted cost and distraction of software implementation, management and in-house skill development?  

Let’s be blunt:  Marketers don’t want to be software experts.  Also, they’d rather not be entirely dependent on their IT departments to install, configure and manage the software solution on their behalf.  In fact, they would much prefer to spend time formulating new marketing campaigns than learn the subtleties of workflow design or email outreach features.   Marketers want to be marketers:  they want to brainstorm ideas with other teammates and they’d rather leave the software details to someone else.  But with one important caveat: only if they don’t lose control of their business.

Software vendors such as Aprimo have responded to such concerns.  Now marketers have at least three different options on how to get their MRM:  they can license and install it on-premise (the traditional route), or they can license and have it hosted for them by the vendor, or they can subscribe to the software in an on-demand fashion, a.k.a. the “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model.  In fact, the SaaS model is becoming the software vendor’s default response to the marketer’s concerns.

That’s all good and SaaS is certainly a compelling and welcome option.  Unfortunately, for many marketers SaaS still isn’t enough.

The issue is this:  even with SaaS, marketers still need to learn how to use the software.  They still need to figure out how to map their marketing processes into the software’s context.  They still have to problem solve and develop workarounds to get the tool to behave the way they’d like it to.  They still have to configure, test and fine-tune their workflows and email triggers.  And if you add this effort across the dozens or hundreds of users that need to become versed on the tool so they can successfully use it in their day-to-day jobs, there’s still a huge organizational change management issue.  This is all because at the end of the day, it’s still “Software” as a Service.  But as we said earlier, for marketers it isn’t about Software, it’s about Marketing.

The better option would be Marketing as a Service, not Software as a Service.  It’s more.  It’s MaaS!

Imagine an outsourced MRM or MCM solution that is more than just software.  Of course, the software platform itself would be still implemented and managed in an on-demand style like SaaS, but the solution goes far beyond that.  Your solution partner in this case is not just providing you with on-demand software:  they’re providing you with on-demand marketing services (that oh by the way, just happens to be executed and managed by your partner who’s running the software for you in a SaaS fashion).

For example, you decide you want to formulate a specific St. Patrick’s Day email campaign to several hundred thousand prospects based on certain demographic and past purchase characteristics.  You call in your MaaS partner.  They send in a team of marketing experts (not software experts) to brainstorm with your marketing team.  They quickly work with you to fine-tune your segmentation, messaging, and offering.  They develop creative content for you as well.   They go back to their offices, map the business and marketing needs into the software itself (which they are managing SaaS-style on your behalf), they execute it, and they deliver the results of your campaign back to you.  Complete with reports and analysis of the campaign’s effectiveness and suggestions for improvement on the next run.  And as a client, you pay only for this single execution of your St. Patrick’s Day campaign.  A la Carte.  Bite sized.  You spend your time being a better and faster marketer.  Your MaaS partner augmented your scarce resources just when you were short-staffed.  In addition, they shielded you from the software idiosyncrasies.

As another example, you decide you liked that A la Carte approach, and you’d like to explore further and start getting into the production workflow aspects of MRM to help automate your marketing operations in an ongoing fashion.  Once again you call in your MaaS partner.  They send in a team of operations experts and together you identify specific activities and processes that you’d like to manage on the MRM platform.  Your MaaS partner formulates and configures a workflow that neatly aligns to your business needs and even streamlines the overall process.  They teach your team how to use the application, focusing only those features that are directly relevant to your team’s roles and job functions.  They create real-time status reports that are uncannily similar to the spreadsheets and one-off queries that you had several people struggling to prepare every week, but these new reports are automatically generated and shot out via email to your managers and executives on a periodic basis.  In short, your MRM production platform is defined, configured and managed on your behalf by your MaaS partner.  That partner might speak geek behind closed doors, but they only speak marketing to you.

In a MaaS solution you always stay totally in control.  Your MaaS partner supports and augments your marketing staff.  You will still have direct access to your marketing data and you will still interact real-time with the data right there on the platform itself.  But you didn’t have to jump through hoops to configure it, brainstorm it, support it, enhance it, learn it, or even train on it.  Your MaaS partner does all of that for you.  They assist you on a case-by-case, use by use, or time period by time period basis.  You get creative help on an as-needed basis.   Your partner can help with segmentation, messaging and offer formulation on a campaign-by-campaign level.  They work with your data and come back with analysis and insights to help your team further drive effectiveness.  It’s all done on an MRM or MCM platform that has become painless and to some extent even invisible to you.

In summary, MaaS is kind of like SaaS.  It’s the same sort of “on-demand” economic and availability model.  But the solution breadth is expanded to encompass an array of marketing services that are integral to needs of marketers at a time when organizations everywhere are being pushed to achieve more with fewer in-house resources.  It’s really Software and Marketing services delivered together in an on-demand fashion - when you need it, how you need.

TopRight Partners is Mucho MaaS / www.toprightcreative.com

Denise Cowden | w. 678.384.6700 x 125 | c. 770.403.0106

TopRight Partners, based in Atlanta, is unique in that it is the only marketing strategy consultancy that is also a certified Aprimo Marketing Studio solutions provider.  We offer our clients two key value propositions:

1. Transformational Marketing Strategy:  an analytics-supported decision making methodology leading to the definition of a creative, pragmatic marketing strategy
2. Execution Support Aimed at Results:  a focus on the right issues and initiatives, augmented with the explicit delivery of marketing capability and capacity

TopRight brings 7 years of experience working with Aprimo marketing platforms.  We’ve served clients in a number of industries and deployed Aprimo solutions end-to-end in both on-premise and hosted environments.

With the recent release of Aprimo Marketing Studio On-Demand, TopRight is pleased to offer a comprehensive array of Marketing as a Service (MaaS) capabilities that our team will manage and execute using Aprimo Marketing Studio.  The objective is to enable clients to remain 100% focused on their own marketing initiatives and campaigns.

TopRight collaborates with your team to help them formulate transformational marketing strategies.  TopRight also brings the resources needed to setup and manage the details for you, end-to-end, all on Aprimo Marketing Studio.  We can even help your team develop creative content for your campaigns.  No pain.  No delays.  No learning curve.  No personnel dedication.  Only results.

TopRight’s Marketing as a Service capability is:

• Comprehensive & turnkey outsourcing of the Marketing Studio platform:  configuration, data source upload, administration, execution, report extraction and delivery
• Assistance with creative, copy, process & campaign design, circulation, analysis
• Dashboards, current status and results always at your fingertips

 You’re a marketer.  Stay that way.  Leave the Aprimo Marketing Studio details to TopRight.

Denise Cowden | w. 678.384.6700 x 125 | c. 770.403.0106