Today’s marketing environment challenges marketers as never before. Distributed marketing is more complex. Customer and prospect data is available, but often unstructured. Marketing mediums are prolific, yet disconnected. Consumers no longer accept media messages; they expect to define and engage with them. And they expect consistent, relevant conversations with a brand, no matter when or where the conversation occurs. Corporate marketers now realize that teams of creative talent or collections of tactical technologies thrown at a task will no longer achieve sustainable results. To successfully drive sales, marketing has to fundamentally change. This guide is designed to help identify the opportunity and impact that embracing the idea of connecting with today's customers can have and provide the background on how to make this a reality. Included is information on: * A community of ones * Why current processes result in managed chaos * How connected is better * Where and how to start * Three steps to a “connected is better” game plan

1. Distributed Marketing Leadership Series
Enabling Cross-Channel
Marketing
Connecting Content Creation Processes to
Drive Integrated Communication

2. Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1. A Community of Ones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Managed Chaos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Connected is Better . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4. Where and How to Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Three Steps to a “Connected is Better” Game Plan. . 17
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
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3. Introduction
Today’s marketing environment challenges marketers
as never before. Distributed marketing is more
complex. Customer and prospect data is available, but
often unstructured. Marketing mediums are prolific,
yet disconnected. Consumers no longer accept
media messages; they expect to define and engage
with them. And they expect consistent, relevant
conversations with a brand, no matter when or where
the conversation occurs.
Corporate marketers now realize that teams of
creative talent or collections of tactical technologies
thrown at a task will no long achieve sustainable
results. To successfully drive sales, marketing has to
fundamentally change.
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4. 1
A Community of Ones
Part of the challenge for marketers today is that
“customers” can no longer be collectively defined
and segmented into perfect categories as they
once were. Today’s customers consume media
and marketing messages in very different manners.
While there certainly remain characteristics and
motivations that are common among customer
segments, in many cases marketers must deal with
thousands or even millions of segments of one
– e.g., unique individuals with unique media use
patterns and unique motivations who each want to
engage with organizations on their own terms. To
address this, marketers must be able to communicate
instantaneously, consistently, and across multiple
mediums.
Concurrently, marketing is more local than ever.
Managers of distributed marketing networks
(e.g., branch offices, chain retail stores, authorized
dealer networks, franchises, agencies and VAR
networks) have long been faced with the challenge of
making sure that corporate and local marketing
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5. messages work together harmoniously. Today, with
consumers determining when, where and who they
engage with in relation to a brand, maintaining strong
synergy between corporate and local marketers is
critical as the consumer expects a relationship that
transcends location or a single spokesperson.
Gone are the days when corporate marketers could
be extremely brand focused while local marketers
set their sights solely on driving traffic and sales.
Whether it’s a technology marketer running a channel
marketing program, a financial services marketer
addressing agent marketing compliance, a health
system marketer trying to coordinate marketing
across multiple facilities, a service industry marketer
working with authorized dealers or franchisees, or any
other manager of distributed marketing processes,
making a brand hum and a cash register ring must be
a team effort.
Clearly, this change is challenging. But it’s also good.
The marketer who embraces the idea of connecting
with today’s customers has an incredible arsenal of
resources at his disposal and an incredible opportunity
to create and foster valuable customer relationships.
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6. 2
Managed Chaos
While tremendous new opportunities exist for
marketers today, the marketer’s world is simply
chaotic. Think about it. There are:
• more mediums than ever;
• more advertising venues competing for
limited dollars;
• more customer engagement with brands and
messages;
• customers contributing to and creating brand
messages;
• a blurring number of marketing technology
providers; and
• more marketing team members and agencies
touching brand messaging as it moves forward to
the customer.
Often, it seems like a minor miracle that anyone is
able to keep brand messages consistent, timely and
relevant in this exponentially challenging environment.
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7. At a recent marketing leadership forum, audience
participants were asked for a show of hands if they
believed cross-channel messaging integration was
important. Virtually the entire audience raised a hand.
Next, the presenter asked for those with two or more
channels integrated to keep their hands raised. Not
surprisingly, a majority of the hands remained up.
But when that number was raised to three, a majority
of the audience lowered their hands. Only a handful
of hands remained raised when asked about four or
more integrated mediums.
Most marketers today know what they need to
accomplish, but in the midst of an ever-changing,
overloaded marketing world, effectively meeting the
myriad of demands often seems out of reach.
Technology Band-Aids
As new mediums have emerged, corporate marketers
have turned to technology and solution providers to
help them manage and maximize the opportunity
these mediums provide. For example:
• Email communication is simplified and
compliance is maintained when working with an
email solution provider.
• Social marketing and consumer sentiment
monitoring provide excellent access to
customers while numerous social marketing
platforms help marketers manage this channel.
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8. • Landing pages, personalized or otherwise,
play a key role in consumer engagement and
numerous vendor options are available to
support these efforts.
The list could go on and on, covering every
conceivable form of interaction with prospects and
customers. Multiple outstanding solutions exist in
nearly every category or case.
Yet, as illustrated by the audience at the marketing
forum, a fundamental problem exists – individual
tactical technologies are not connected.
This is a serious issue for marketers.
Connected, these tactical marketing technology
solutions could form a powerful cross-channel platform
for corporate marketers and help bring order to
today’s marketing chaos. Disconnected, they are but
a collection of Band-Aids that effectively deal with
individual mediums but do not and cannot address
the need of marketers to deliver the right messages
to customers when, where and how each customer
wants to receive them. Ultimately these disconnected
solutions, no matter how strong they are, add to the
marketer’s chaotic world through redundant content
creation processes, marketing staff management
demands and lost cross-media effectiveness.
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9. 3
Connected is Better
Envision for a moment, how different a truly connected
marketing world would look.
Connecting all mediums – email, landing pages,
print ads, social media, banner ads, etc. – through a
single content creation platform would create efficient
marketing operations and coordinated cross-media
messaging including:
• efficient content assembly;
• delivery using each customer’s preferred
mediums;
• coordination of agencies and suppliers; and
• multi-phase, multi-medium automated
customer engagement.
Take that a step further by adding connected
customer intelligence (e.g., CRM, analytics, location
data) with dynamic content assembly to enable
real-time, trigger-based, multi-channel intelligent
messaging.
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10. This combination results in:
• more relevant messaging;
• always improving outcomes;
• stronger offer management;
• more sophisticated ROI calculation; and
• closed-loop marketing feedback.
Now envision the implications of a connected system
on the corporate marketing team…
Connecting agencies and suppliers into one platform
would result in:
• specialty expertise retained and collaboration
attained;
• elimination of redundant tasks; and
• resource sharing.
Connecting divisions, regions or other internal groups
with one another would result in:
• better continuity;
• sharing of resources;
• message consistency;
• replication of best practices;
• collaboration; and
• elimination of redundancy in campaign/
content creation.
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11. Connecting corporate and local marketers would
result in:
• more synergistic brand consistency and
messaging;
• more intelligent marketing;
• local engagement;
• effective use of resources; and
• faster speed-to-market of messages.
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12. 4
Where and How to Start
A connected marketing platform requires three
primary elements: foundational technologies,
consumer engagement points, and marketing
process enablers.
1) Foundations
To facilitate connection across all marketing processes
there are five key, fully-connected foundations that
must be in place. Foremost of these is a strong
digital asset management/enterprise content
management (DAM/ECM) repository.
A well-structured enterprise content management
system enables all internal parties and external
audiences to draw on a single content reference
point. Web pages, emails, social media posts, printed
materials and any other marketing content can be
generated from this single repository and can share
a single set of resources (such as an image or copy
block), resulting in greater integration between
mediums.
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13. A second foundational element is customer
relationship management (CRM), analytics and
other customer/prospect data repositories.
This connection is critical for meaningful customer
or prospect engagement. The data within these
repositories can be used to influence content, offers,
location-based information and more. Real-time
connectivity is also vital for driving instantaneous
content or message decisions and fulfilling
trigger-based marketing events.
Dynamic cross media content assembly is a third
critical foundational component. While fixed content
will always play a role in marketing communications,
in today’s digitally driven world dynamically
generated, personalized content is quickly becoming
the norm. Only real-time content assembly across all
channels can ensure focused, consistent and
engaging messaging.
A fourth foundation for a connected marketing
platform is marketing fulfillment automation.
Marketing automation ensures that marketing and
customer engagement processes run smoothly with
very minimal human involvement. It is essential for
message fulfillment and, while largely unnoticed,
serves to eliminate costs, reduce errors and rapidly
deliver marketing content.
Finally, a fifth key foundation for a connected
marketing platform is role-based system access,
which ensures that the users of the connected
marketing platform experience the solution through
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14. Foundational
Technologies
their unique role. This not only makes a robust
system easy to navigate and use but also ensures
that all corporate marketers, agencies, suppliers and
consumers only have access and exposure to the
information appropriate to them for their
interaction needs.
2) Consumer Engagement Points
With the foundations in place, connected marketing
communications can now occur. Whether it is an email,
web page, banner ad, print ad, social network or any
other medium, each communication is dynamically
generated using content from the common marketing
asset repository, which may include images, logos,
templates, etc. The marketing vehicle is created using
content assembly rules from the asset repository and
content selection guidance from the CRM/analytics
repositories. The piece is then assembled dynamically
and processed via marketing fulfillment automation.
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15. For example, a web banner ad would be generated
with the proper location, offer and image.
While multiple agencies might have participated in
the content creation, multiple vendors might have
been used for fulfillment while multiple corporate
marketers might have assisted in campaign set up and
design, managing content creation and marketing
fulfillment. Because all of the involved parties used
the same platform for content creation, the corporate
marketer is assured that brand graphic standards
are consistently applied, that brand messaging is
uniform across all channels and that message delivery
timelines and cadence across the various channels are
coordinated.
Additionally, by connecting content creation in one
environment, fully integrated cross-media campaigns
are enabled. A landing page, for example, can be
connected to multiple mediums so that a prospect’s
path leads him to a common web page regardless of
which medium prompted his response. In addition,
trigger-based, follow-up communication can be
dynamically generated and delivered to the medium
of his choice.
Finally, by organizing content creation through a
connected platform, the corporate marketer can easily
enable others to version (e.g., customize) content.
While content can be generated based on customer
data and rule sets, it can also be versioned within a
tightly controlled framework using point-and-click
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16. Consumer
Engagement
Points
web interaction. Local marketers, for example, might
be given the ability to version marketing materials for
use within their own local market such as adding a
timely, locally relevant special offer. For example, a car
dealership might choose to promote an all-wheel drive
vehicle during a snowy winter.
By using a single, connected platform, brand
compliance is protected while local intuition is used to
create effective, relevant market messaging. So too,
customers might be given access to use the system to
generate content for viral marketing applications.
3) Marketing Process Enablers
The foundations and cross-media communications
of a connected marketing platform cannot function
optimally without the organizing presence of
marketing process enablers. These connectors include
marketing operations management functions such
as campaign management, budget management,
measurement reporting and marketing workflow.
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17. To be fully optimized, however, a connected
marketing platform should also facilitate the creative
interactions of the different users of the system.
Knowledge sharing is key to ensuring that best
practice campaigns and marketing collateral are
highlighted and used. Collaborative communications
help ensure that marketers are connected not only at
the system level, but also at the purpose and mission
level.
Finally, management of distributed/local marketers
and marketing processes should be viewed as a
key element in any connected marketing platform.
Without coordination between local marketers and
the corporate marketing department, the timely and
relevant, yet consistent communications customers
expect cannot be possible.
Marketing
Process
Enablers
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18. 5
Three Steps to a
“Connected is Better”
Game Plan
Step 1:
Create an Inventory of Your Current Systems
Most corporate marketers are surprised to learn how
many different systems and solution providers are
being used across their organization. First, using the
Customer Engagement Points and Process Enablers
graphics introduced in the Where and How to Start
section, create a quick inventory of the marketing
systems used by your organization or by entities on
behalf of your organization. Using Worksheet 1, list the
function of the system, and how, when and why it is
used.
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19. Worksheet #1
Current Marketing Systems
System/Provider Functions/Purpose Use Case Example
Step 2:
Identify Opportunities for Connecting Systems
Once you have completed Worksheet 1, use
Worksheet 2 to identify redundant tasks, inefficient
processes, disconnected communications and missed
opportunities. Pay particular attention to the
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20. foundational technologies and keep in mind that you
don’t have to replace all of your existing technologies
in order to connect them.
Worksheet #2
System Connections
Grade yourself. Look at the common effectiveness robbers that
most corporate marketers face and assess how you are
performing.
Task Grade
My campaigns are integrated across
multiple mediums.
My ads across all media direct the
consumer to an interaction page.
My local and corporate messaging
are in sync.
I create content once and apply it
cross media.
I automate repeatable tasks.
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21. Step 3:
Design a Connected is Better Program
Using the knowledge gained from Worksheets 1 and
2, create an outline in Worksheet 3 for preparing your
marketing organization to meet the demands of an
engagement-based marketing world. Start by simply
identifying three actions you can take now that will
make an impact on your organization’s marketing
performance. Then set a target date for completion of
a full “Connected is Better” program outline.
Worksheet #3
My Starting Point
The most impactful change I can
make now is:
The first two processes/mediums I
want to connect are:
An obvious inefficiency that I can
resolve is:
I will complete my Connected is Better
program plan by:
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22. Summary
Envision for a moment, how different a connected
marketing world would look.
For example, connecting all mediums – email, landing
pages, print ads, social media, banner ads, etc. –
through a single content creation platform would
mean efficient marketing operations and coordinated
cross-media messaging. Take that a step further by
connecting customer intelligence (e.g., CRM, analytics,
location data) with Dynamic Content Assembly
to enable real-time, trigger-based, multi-channel
intelligent messaging.
Now envision the implications of a connected system
on the corporate marketing team.
Every technology addressed above as a foundation, a
customer engagement point or a marketing process
enabler is available from multiple technology firms
or marketing services agencies. Many outstanding
solutions exist. But they are all missing a fundamentally
important need that marketers must urgently soon
address. They’re not connected. As a result, assets
must be in redundant systems.
Marketing staffers have to coordinate scheduling
between multiple vendors to fulfill a single campaign
21

23. that spans multiple mediums. Often, message synergy
from one agency to another is loosely connected, if
at all. Meanwhile, social media might drive customers
to one landing page while search marketing or email
campaigns drive them to others. Print may have no
destination at all. The list goes on and on.
Sometimes you can have all of the right things in
place – really great vendors, really good software, and
sometimes even strong siloed results. But ultimately,
the current structure will result in disconnected,
inefficient, frustrating, costly and fragmented
marketing. Until you have all of your external and
internal activities working together to create the
right environment for your target customer, you will
be unable to meet the demands of customers and
prospects in an engagement-based marketing world.
And if that happens, there will be another marketer
from another organization ready to give your customer
the experience they want and they will inevitably take
your place.
Today’s marketing environment, while at times
challenging, is immensely exciting. Never before have
corporate marketers had so many resources and tools
at their disposal. Connect them, and you and your
organization will thrive.
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24. About Saepio
Saepio empowers marketers to plan and execute
meaningful and engaging marketing campaigns across
distributed networks and around the globe – ensuring
local relevance, brand consistency, speed to market
and significant cost savings. The world’s best known
brands turn to Saepio’s powerful software platform and
extensive portfolio of support services to automate the
marketing process, eliminate redundancy and ensure
that all marketers connected to the brand – whether
global, distributed, franchise, VAR or chain store
marketers – have the assets and tools they need to
quickly customize and execute campaigns.
For more information, visit
www.saepio.com
or call +1 816-777-2100.
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