“Did you bring your passport?”

As you were travelling this holiday break. Inevitably, you would have asked/been asked this question before you head to the airport. Despite the endless hours of packing, the only one thing you really need for your trip, is your passport (or ID).

What’s the equivalent for marketing campaigns?

When you really narrow down your plans for your marketing campaigns for 2010. What is the one thing that you really need for successful campaigns? We say, it’s technology, campaign technology in particular.

Why? When used effectively, technology can make your campaigns more:

1. Interactive
   Technology makes it easy for you to add interactivity to your campaigns without help from your IT department. This interactivity can include refer-a-friend functions, individually customized applications, social applications and integration across multiple marketing channels.Freeing yourself from often limited IT resources, allows you to come up with applications that increase sales.
2. Novel
   Chances are, whatever offer, or campaign theme you come up with, has already been done. If you are just sending out an email campaign personalized to the recipient’s first name, your message is not going to stand out much.Add something that your recipients have likely not seen before; integration with social media, an application worth sharing with their friends, personalization based on their responses…
3. Response-inducing
   Let’s face it, campaigns cost money and in 2010, budgets are still going to be some concern. So the campaigns that you send out, whether email, direct mail, online/print ads, TV or radio are going to have to convert and bring in more business.The effective use of technology allows you to score your leads and direct marketing spend to the customers most likely to buy, track leads throughout the sales cycle, better segment your potential customers and keep customers buying from you.

   All good marketing goals to have for any business in 2010.

Happy Hunting…