Essential Marketing Software: A Guide to Strategic Selection

In today’s fast-evolving digital landscape, the sheer volume of “must-have” marketing software solutions can feel overwhelming. New tools emerge constantly, each promising to be the definitive answer to a marketing manager’s prayers. This explosion of options makes choosing the right marketing software increasingly complex.

Are you looking for an Email Service Provider (ESP), a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, a Business Intelligence & Analytics solution, or perhaps a robust marketing automation or lead management platform? The key to making the right choice lies in returning to the fundamentals of marketing.

Ultimately, a marketer’s core objective is to optimize communication streams with customers, making them more effective and efficient. Therefore, your marketing software selection must be driven by the specific process elements you aim to enhance. For instance, if your primary goal is to efficiently generate leads for your sales team, you’ll require a different solution than if you’re focused on implementing advanced personalization techniques on your responsive website.

Understanding the 4 Core Communication Needs

To simplify the vast array of communication and information stream requirements, we can categorize needs across two fundamental dimensions:

1. Is the communication process internal or external?
2. Is the communication process supported a 1-to-1 interaction or an N-to-N interaction, utilizing tools and business rules?

This diagram illustrates that every company inherently has four distinct classes of communication needs. Importantly, every organization addresses these needs in some capacity. Often, certain needs are not supported by technology, forcing companies to rely on manual, inefficient processes.

The identification of these inefficient manual processes frequently acts as the main catalyst for the development of new marketing software. Data-related marketing software can thus be classified within these same domains, manifesting in several primary forms:

• The data warehouse (often linked with Business Intelligence tools)
• The CRM system (encompassing lead management, e-commerce, and more)
• The marketing database, campaign management, and digital communication tools
• Collaborative environments like Sharepoint and Intranet systems

Each of these tools fulfills a unique and vital role. It’s common for organizations to have several of these technologies implemented side-by-side, each complementing the others within the broader communication ecosystem.

The Indispensability of Marketing Software

Communication needs are fundamental; they aren’t chosen but rather emerge as a company develops and defines how it serves its markets. All marketing technology is developed to meet these evolving needs and enhance marketer efficiency.

While some companies opt not to use marketing software, it’s crucial to recognize that this choice often translates into fulfilling communication needs through labor-intensive and challenging-to-coordinate manual methods. Imagine the impact if your company lacked some of these fundamental tools. The immediate consequence would be that critical communication needs would either be met by tools not designed for the purpose or supported entirely manually. Anyone who has experienced such a scenario can attest to the difficulties and frustrations it creates.

How to Strategically Choose the Right Marketing Software

Given the classification above, selecting the appropriate marketing software becomes a much simpler task. All you need to do is follow these three essential steps:

1. Pinpoint the Specific Need You’re Addressing

This is the most critical starting point for your selection process. Many businesses mistakenly begin by choosing tools and then attempting to force their needs into the capabilities of the selected software. This “tool-first” approach is often a recipe for disaster, as most software is meticulously designed for specific purposes.

Once a tool is implemented, switching can be incredibly difficult, both from an organizational and a technological perspective. A study by Experian highlighted that historical choices for the wrong tools are often perceived as the number one bottleneck preventing marketers from fully deploying their strategies.

An initial selection can often be guided by the responsibilities of the requesting department:

• IT / Business Intelligence departments typically require tools for data integration and reporting, leading them towards data warehousing or BI technology.
• A CRM manager oversees all personal interactions between front-end/back-end staff and clients.
• Marketing managers usually need tools to manage large-scale communications, segmented by various data points. For them, analytics, planning, multichannel communication, and multichannel data capture are paramount.

2. Determine Your Desired Method to Fulfill the Need

It’s vital to remember that implementing every tool or being active across all channels isn’t always mandatory. Companies often adopt solutions simply because “everyone else is doing it.” The crucial question here is: what does your recipient truly want?

If you’re reporting internally, your audience likely expects information in a fixed format and at a consistent frequency. This is vastly different from trying to engage an external recipient and encourage them to absorb information you deem appropriate.

Your audience dictates the channels you must use. Their preferences will determine frequency, format, design flexibility, timing, overall experience, tone of voice, and more. If this means incorporating both online and offline channels, then so be it. Today’s customers still appreciate traditional (and often anonymous) channels like physical stores or door-to-door leaflets. Simultaneously, accessing a consumer’s private mobile or social space requires careful planning, as perceived intrusiveness can easily backfire.

3. Identify the Right Marketing Software Supplier Type for Your Needs

Now that you understand your specific needs and how you want to address them, the next step is to find the best suppliers. While the current abundance of marketing software suppliers might seem chaotic, you can use these general rules of thumb (a simplified model, of course) to navigate the landscape:

• If the term “Data warehouse” is frequently used, a supplier is typically adept at meeting the needs of IT departments or controllers. Their main applications focus on integrating internal data for reporting purposes. Most Big Data initiatives also fall within IT’s purview, though only a small fraction of Big Data applications are directly marketing-related.
• Tools that include terms like CRM, marketing automation, sales enablement, or lead management are designed for processes where individual staff members (e.g., sales, implementation, back-office) are expected to have individual contacts with individual customers. The core requirement here is the ability for staff to view and modify specific customer data.
• If a tool’s name contains a specific communication channel (e.g., email, app, social, display, video, community, game), it’s generally software developed for marketers responsible for marketing execution, communication, and distribution. This can involve triggered campaigns to individuals or mass communications. Increasingly, these tools need to support interactive contacts and personalized communication managed or delivered by the tool itself rather than a person.
• A Marketing Database is where marketing data, analytics, modeling, predictions, and the determination and implementation of business rules (to be relevant at the right time with the right message through the right channels) all converge. This is squarely within the marketer’s domain. A marketing database can monitor the effectiveness of campaigns over time, providing insights to optimize future programs. By definition, this is a highly flexible environment designed to support external communication processes.
• Business analytics, dashboarding, and data visualization tools are specifically designed to meet internal communication needs, often within a reporting context. These tools are most frequently the domain of financial or business controllers.

Sifting Through the Marketing Software Landscape

The marketing software landscape indeed appears to grow more complex by the month. However, by differentiating communication needs along the dimensions of internal/external and 1:1/N:N, you gain a highly efficient way to simplify the playing field. Matching suppliers to your specific business needs and preferred methods using these dimensions makes selecting the right type of provider significantly easier. With strategic choices for both methods and tools, you can achieve rapid progress in implementing your marketing vision, regardless of your marketing budget size.