I was just reading Peter Kim’s blog, beingpeterkim discussing the idea of the online marketing suite I fully agree that the time has come for marketer’s to embrace the idea of an online marketing suite. However I think it is a mistake to represent it’s value as being primarily around collaboration and optimization. Marketing organizations are being pushed harder and harder by the rest of the enterprise to integrate marketing with sales, operations and particularly finance. There are two values of what Peter’s Forrester colleague Suresh Vittal calls the enterprise marketing platform.
First, by integrating various technology tools like analytics, campaign management and CRM, marketing organizations can begin to track relationships, capture real behavior and preferences and engage customers with meaningful dialogue.
Secondly, my integrating all these various applications, marketing will be able to elevate its reporting and analysis from campaign reporting to real business metrics that can measure ROI or ROMI from prospect (think adserving) to conversion (think ecommerce) and most importantly loyalty (CRM).
While the first will bring the most immediate benefit to members of marketing organizations, it is the second that will gain them the success and respect.
