Background- Why does Enterprise Marketing Management- EMM matter to a mid-marketer?

Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) can mean different things to different people.

But to misunderstand EMM as a gargantuan odyssey that’s “only for big companies” or, worse, to dismiss it an indefinable buzzword akin to “Web 2.0″ is to make a grave marketing misstep.

That’s because EMM holds the ticket to marketing playing a greater - or even a leading - role in the future growth of any mid-sized company. And the first step to harnessing the power of Enterprise Marketing Management is to accurately understand just what on earth it is.

To do this let’s quickly look at what each word means on its own:

Enterprise -

This word conjures up the image of a vast multi-national company, with offices in 40 countries around the world and a sales force that’s larger than the population of your hometown.

But in fact, Oxford Dictionary defines “enterprise” as “a business or company”. That’s it! So, first understand that you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to be an enterprise. Your company is an enterprise.

Marketing -

In this context, “marketing” means all the marketing vehicles, tools and campaigns that your company uses to find prospects and convert them into customers. Including your web site, e-newsletters, direct mail, print ads, brochures and everything else.

Management -

To manage anything (or anyone for that matter) you need to understand how it’s performing. Management then becomes the activity of making decisions that sustain or improve performance level.
Putting this all together… any business that understands how well its marketing vehicles are performing, and uses this understanding to improve those performance levels has the makings of an Enterprise Marketing Management system.

Where the “magic” of EMM comes in is in taking an integrated approach to planning, measuring and managing your marketing vehicles. (You may have heard the term Integrated Campaign Management, or Integrated Marketing Management. Essentially, these terms have evolved into EMM.)

When you view your individual projects and campaigns not as separate entities, but as a family of entities that are integrated (i.e. connected to one another, in some way) a world of opportunities opens up. As soon as you recognize this, the next step is to use technology to help you plan, measure and manage the performance of each vehicle automatically, with little effort on your part.

When you have the technologies in place, what you end up with is a “dashboard” (literally, that you can actually look at on your desktop screen) that shows you all of your marketing efforts and how they are performing. Not to get ahead of ourselves though, let’s quickly look at WHY you should care about EMM.

A Few Reasons Why You Should Care About EMM

• Company owners and executive management are expecting more marketing accountability and continue to push for greater marketing effectiveness. Mid-marketers are being held to account for any campaigns, and there is a growing need to measure success or failure- no matter how many campaigns are going on at any point in time.

• Data is increasing and comes from different places - customer and prospect activity data is the centerpiece, but third party overlay data (phones, email addresses and more) as well as prospect data are integral to compete in the marketplace. Unless you have processes and means to measure what you’re collecting, it’s all useless.

• Your customer expects every message from you to be as personal as possible - without personalization, you’re missing the boat.

• Applying a small amount of effort to EMM can vastly increase the effectiveness of your marketing and accountability to your management. Start by simply connecting some basic customer analysis and segmentation and then “acting” with a targeted campaign. This effort will produce more leads and sales opportunities with stronger overall results.

• EMM greatly enhances your ability to communicate to management, your staff, or outside resources, so you can all have a better view of what’s going on, where success is occurring, and where focus and priorities should be set.

Let Go of These Three (False) Fears Surrounding EMM

1. Doesn’t EMM take forever to implement?

Absolutely not. Many EMM providers and their partners offer systems with quick-start programs. It’s possible to be up and running in as little as a few weeks.

2. Won’t it cost more than my entire marketing budget!?

In fact, any investment in EMM can quickly start to generate new sales. The ROI can be very compelling and can materialize faster than you might have guessed.

3. Won’t the “system” be too complex and hard to manage?

There is EMM technology and systems that are pre-configured to be specific to your industry or business objectives (e.g. acquisition, onboarding, activation, cross-sell, retention) and easily configurable to your company’s needs. Most of these “turnkey systems are ready to deploy, affording accelerated ROI.