This document provides an overview of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) systems. MRM systems manage the administrative processes that support marketing programs, distinguishing them from marketing execution systems that deliver marketing messages. The document outlines the main components and functions of MRM systems, including program planning and scheduling, budgets and costs, and task management. It also discusses how MRM systems are used by companies of various sizes to more efficiently manage increasingly complex marketing programs.

1. How-To Guide
Marketing Resource Management
By David Raab, CEO at Raab Associates
December 2013
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Marketing Resource Management (MRM) systems control the
administrative processes that support customer-facing marketing
programs. This distinguishes MRM from marketing execution systems
that store customer databases and deliver marketing messages through
email, Web ads, and other channels. MRM may be sold independently
or as a component of comprehensive marketing management systems
which also provides execution.
MRM functions fall into two primary clusters. The first involves
functions related to company-level marketing management, including
program planning, scheduling, budgeting, and cost reporting. The
other cluster relates to program management, including task lists,
purchasing media and materials, and content creation, approvals,
storage, and distribution. Some MRM systems specialize in a few of
these functions. Others specialize in additional functions such as
customizing content for local offices or dealers or in marketing
reporting and analysis. Systems may also be tailored to specific
industries or companies of a certain size.
Companies buy MRM systems when their marketing programs become
too complicated to run in a less systematic fashion. This, along with the
systems’ high cost, originally meant that MRM was used almost
exclusively by large marketing organizations with hundreds of
marketers in multiple offices. More recently, the growth of digital
marketing has meant that even small marketing organizations need to
manage many different programs and content versions across multiple
© 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

2. How-To Guide
channels, and to introduce new versions more quickly. This expanded
complexity has rarely been accompanied by a corresponding expansion
of staff, adding to the pressure for more efficient operations. At the
same time, costs have decreased as MRM capabilities were added to
integrated marketing suites and as stand-alone MRM products became
available as vendor-hosted services (Software as a Service, or SaaS). The
result has been increased use of MRM systems among companies of all
sizes.
MRM COMPONENTS
Here is a closer look at the main features found in MRM systems.
 Program Planning and Scheduling – Users are able to set up a
list of marketing programs or campaigns, often building a multilevel hierarchy such as multiple campaigns within a program and
multiple events within a campaign. Programs are often assigned
to categories based on purpose (acquisition, retention, cross-sell,
etc.), brand, product line, region, and other attributes. These
categories used for reporting roll-ups and to limit access to the
people responsible for a particular type of program. Programs or
their components typically have other attributes such as start and
end dates, budgets for cost and response, and owners. Most
MRM systems let users define these attributes and their labels,
making it easier to adapt the system to their particular
organization. Nearly all systems can produce a marketing
calendar showing programs and their dates, often with options to
display the calendar in different formats and to filter which
programs are included.
 Budgets and Actual Costs – Budgeting options can range from
a single value per program to detailed estimates by cost category
and time period. Some systems can calculate program cost based
on user-entered quantities and cost per unit. This approach may
extend to standard assumptions, such as postage cost per piece,
that are applied to all programs automatically. Beyond cost
budgets, the system may allow users to enter other estimated
values such as number of messages sent (direct mail pieces,
emails, telephone calls, ad impressions, etc.) and responses
received. Actual costs and other values may be entered manually
by the user or posted automatically from accounting and
customer management systems. Some systems let users enter
over-all budgets for program categories, which can then be
compared with budgets for specific programs to see how much of
the total budget has been spent or allocated.
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3. How-To Guide
 Task Management – Some systems provide project management
features to track the development of individual programs. These
can be anything from simple checklists to templates that
automatically create a project schedule based on the start date
and number of work days between tasks. An advanced system
could include dependencies of one task on others, standard cost
and labor hours, automatic task assignments to roles or
individuals, notification of new tasks to the assigned person or
department head, posting of actual labor time and task status,
workload analysis, notification of completed tasks, approval
tracking, and alerts for tasks that are overdue. The system
might be linked to corporate human resources and security
systems to automatically update roles and responsibilities.
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© 2013 Demand Metric Research Corporation. All Rights Reserved.