How often do you scan your email inbox and notice many of the emails aren’t relevant to you or interests? Campaign management systems (CMS) are often used to send promotional emails to large groups of people. But those email blasts miss their mark when people don’t want or need the product or service, even if they “fit” into the targeted segment.
A CMS is an important tool in a marketer’s toolbox. But by itself, a CMS has limited potential to improve customer experience (CX).
What Is a CMS?
A campaign management system is a software application that helps businesses plan, execute and track the effect of multichannel marketing campaigns. A CMS typically includes tools for creating and sending email campaigns, managing social media posts and tracking website traffic.
A CMS delivers emails to a large, segmented group of people, often based on demographics. For example, a bank may send recent high school graduates an email encouraging them to apply for a credit card to help them establish a credit history.
CMS Limitations
A CMS is useful for reaching a large, wide audience. However, when it’s used by itself, a CMS has limited impact on CX. Marketers often use campaign funnels to outline the most straightforward path customers take from awareness and consideration to purchasing the product or service. Marketing funnels are frameworks that help marketers engage with customers during the purchase journey.
But a campaign funnel is not the same thing as a customer journey. Customer journeys are rarely straightforward and linear, and they occur after the sale as well as leading up to it. Customers may not see an ad, go directly to the store, and purchase the product right away. Instead, they may take many varied steps (that often loop back on each other) between awareness and purchase. In an example of the telecommunications industry, consumers may view social media ads, examine service pricing and bundles on your company’s website , browse other companies’ websites, abandon purchase, complete the purchase a few days later, call in to support with help for activation, and later call in that month with questions about their bill.
A campaign management system:
Focuses on the sale, not what comes afterward
A CMS does not consider/accommodate the many journeys taken throughout the customer lifecycle. A CMS typically focuses on getting people to purchase a product or service by sending a series of emails with calls to action (“click here to learn about our wireless/internet bundles,” “click here to take advantage of a special introductory rate”). A CMS doesn’t pay attention to customers’ post-purchase interactions with the brand, such as contacting their internet provider regarding a billing problem or service outage. Yet customer experience isn’t just about the point of sale.
Doesn’t use individual customer data to personalize experiences
A CMS-generated email may address someone by name or offer a free dessert on their birthday, but that’s usually the extent of the personalization. A CMS sends emails to customer segments based on probabilities (e.g., a recent grad who moved into a new apartment) instead of predicting what each customer needs based on purchase/browsing history and previous interactions with other departments (e.g., billing or customer service). Campaign management systems also don’t leverage a real-time customer data profile to send a message addressing an individual customer’s needs or preferences, at the right time. For example, it might not notice that someone’s cable TV contract is about to expire and send a message promoting relevant packages based on the customer’s viewing history (e.g., sports or movie channels).
Related Blog: Boost CRM Systems to Drive Insight and Action
Needs a decisioning engine
Sending a series of emails to thousands of consumers doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get people to act—or that you’ll improve CX and loyalty. To make your marketing campaigns more impactful, you need a decisioning engine—a customer journey management (CJM) platform that detects context and intent, predicts customer needs, and sends the right messages at the right time.
Better Together: Benefits of Connecting a CJM System to Your CMS
Businesses can use a CMS to send a series of marketing emails to promote a new product. The CMS tracks the open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates of the email campaigns. As customers progress through their journeys, a journey orchestration platform uses real-time data from the campaign management system, combined with other contextual data, to make intelligent decisions on the next best action or message for each customer.
Pairing CJM with CMS leads to:
Improved targeting
A CJM system helps marketers understand the customer journey, allowing them to target their marketing campaigns more effectively. A CJM system acts like an air traffic controller, directing which communication(s) are sent to each customer at what time. Someone who is in the middle of a customer support journey (complaining about a billing error) probably isn’t currently interested in renewing their cable TV contract for two more years (at a higher rate after the introductory rate expires). A CJM prevents the CMS from sending a “renew your contract now!” message to that unhappy customer.
Increased personalization
A CJM platform uses real-time customer data to create personalized marketing campaigns that are tailored to each customer’s individual needs. This can help improve customer engagement, satisfaction, and lifetime value. For example, if a customer frequently exceeds their data limit, CJM can automatically send a notification suggesting a data plan upgrade or a data usage optimization tip.
Better business insights that drive optimization
By tracking the results of marketing campaigns, businesses can see what‘s working and what‘s not. This information can then be used to improve future campaigns. CJM tracks customer interactions, campaign performance and conversion rates. The collected data is analyzed to measure the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns and to optimize future journeys. Insights gained are used to refine customer segments, improve messaging and enhance overall personalization efforts.
Related Report: Turn Customer Experience Into Your Retention Strategy
CSG Xponent Integrates With Your CMS for Fast Results
CSG Xponent, our customer engagement solution, is purpose-built with a customer data platform, journey management, journey analytics, and real-time decisioning at the core of the technology. Xponent sends the right personalized messages at the right time via each customer’s preferred engagement channel. Xponent integrates with your existing systems—CMS, CRM, billing, personalization platforms and others—for quick CX improvement. You won’t need to purchase multiple systems to personalize your marketing campaigns and deliver exceptional CX.