Understanding media codes and bxp

1 Overview

For the marketing arm of any company, they have a limited budget. So where is the company's money best placed in order to get new customers? In order to know this, the sales department needs to record, "where did you hear about us?"

A "media code" as All n One refer to it, can be called many different names.

• Advertising code
• UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) code
• Discount code
• Marketing code
• Tracking code

In its broadest sense it is a code placed on or in marketing activity to help uniquely identify how the person getting in touch with the company heard / saw the advertisement.

The usual list of a sources when building a marketing campaign would be:

• Saw it on tv
• Heard it on the radio
• Read it in a newspaper, magazine, leaflet in the door
• Clicked the link in an email
• Clicked the link on a website
• Scanned the QR code
• Heard it from a friend
• In-shop / instore promotions

The overhead that is required to properly track these sources can get complicated.

• A friend recommends the company, and the person actually goes through the website to sign up.
• You read it in the paper and see an ad on tv, then the person scans a QR code, so which actually was the source?

It is accepted in marketing terms that there are two different approaches. General advertising and targetted advertising.

• General advertising: Bank Of Ireland's sponsorship of the Leinster rugby team. Everyone sees the BOI logo on the Leinster rugby team shirts and around the grounds.

• Targetted marketing: where a specific subset of people are advertised to Wikipedia article

What would be ideal for the marketing team is to be able to generate a report at the end of a spend (usually referred to as a campaign) and have the following metrics.

• Amount invested: €500,000
• Advertising type: Targetted
• Target audience: xxx
• Total amount of inbound contact: 1,500,000 contacts
• Breakdown of contacts by type:
  • Website: X
  • Phone calls: X
  • Emails: X
  • Texts (SMS) : X
• Total amount of sales in the period:
• Usual amount of sales in the period:
• Total amount of sales attributable to the campaign:
• Total value of attributable sales:
• Total lifetime value of attributable sales:

• Breakdown of sales by Media Code
  • TV ads
    • BBC 1 ad
    • BBC 2 ad
  • Radio ads
    • Radio 1 ad
    • Radio 2 ad
    • Radio 3 ad
  • Online advertising
    • Google advertising
    • Facebook advertising
    • LinkedIn advertising
  • Leaflets / Door drops
  • Instore promotions

Even when the campaign is finished there will be people who get in touch later on. The general awareness of the company / product is raised, which will have an impact for the lifetime of the company / product. So precise metrics are not possible however good general indications are available.

If radio ads generate more sales than online advertising, for the next campaign of a similar product / project, where would the bulk of your budget be allocated? For this reason being able to attribute sales to particular types of advertising is vital information to the marketing department. It is possible to run General Advertising campaigns but there is no way to justify the budgets allocated, you spend your money and hope you make sales. With bxp, end to end reporting on media through to attributable sales is possible.

Due to the precise nature of how advertising can be done online, more and more companies turn to online advertising as the tracking of "clicks" is far easier to monitor, manage and track. Google Analytics for example provides very in-depth reporting on how advertising spend is being picked up by end users.

2 Operational challenges

Marketing can be running many campaigns yet it is sales who need to capture the vital details. Let's use a worked example.

2.1 Challenge 1 : Delayed allocation

January through March (1-3) marketing put out a targetted campaign with the code code001. April through June (4-6), they put out a different targetted campaign to a different group. They use code002. The sales process takes 2 months to complete. Someone signs up in March, but the sale completes in May. How will the reporting differentiate the sales as attributable to the correct campaign.

2.2 Challenge 2 : Proper allocation

A phone call comes into the sales team in April, with a straggler from the 1-3 campaign. How does the sales person know which campaign to attribute the sale to?

2.3 Challenge 3 : Numerous marketing campaigns

Larger companies have larger budgets and larger teams in marketing and sales. It is not uncommon for medium sized businesses to have anything up to 30 different targetted advertising campaigns on the go. Larger company also means larger sales teams. They have to be trained on what campaign is using what advertising. For this reason, a lot of companies have break downs between marketing and sales. The overhead on sales to accurately capture which sale started with which campaign, often lead to breakdowns in proper data capture.

2.4 Challenge 4 : Timing

For business process outsourcers and sales teams that use tv and radio advertising, burst contact is a real challenge. A tv add goes at 19:30 in the middle of evening viewing. There is a flood of calls into the contact centre. Staffing for burst activity is very difficult to coordinate as with teams in house and outsourced, the marketing department needs to coordinate with sales to make sure there are staff there. This is further complicated when broadcasters don't stick to schedules or for pricing reasons timed schedules are moved slightly. So imagine the same ad goes out 30 minutes late. The staffing was fine for 19:30 but at 20:00 there is normal / minimal staffing. All the calls go on hold or worse the calling customers are left waiting so long they hang up.

2.5 Challenge 5 : Speed of metrics

The speed of getting information back to the marketing teams can often be slow. This lack of speed can result in lots of lost revenue and options. For example if an ad doesn't go out on radio, unless marketing are watching all the radio ads, they won't know if it happened or not. If a tv campaign is not generating any interest without the sales data, they won't know whether to continue or pull the advertising. The old adage of if you're going to fail, fail fast and fail cheap.

2.6 Challenge 6 : Dark art of marketing

Marketing for the complexity in manipulating customers into interest can lead it sometimes be refereed to as a dark art. Even putting an ad on tv doesn't guarantee that people will call. Here is a fascinating look at product research and how through the use of data clustering marketing is able to focus on groups. Targetted advertising uses the same principles. http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce Another fascinating view of how marketing impact works through advertising. http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread

2.7 Challenge 7 : Data preparation

There is often a lot of data captured during the sales process. Often quite sensitive data. Whilst marketers need as much information and metrics as possible, data protection must be adhered to. This adds an overhead of data preparation and can slow up the information coming back from sales to marketing departments. If an external media management company is used, the data has to also be filtered to ensure that no potential customer information is leaked outside the organisation.

3 How bxp delivers proper media management

3.1 Setup

bxp has a unique structure designed to help address all the above challenges. Every record in bxp (called a CDA) can have multiple contacts associated with it (CCL). CC-1-3_Introduction_to_the_Blended_Form_Structure

So lets build our scenario of what needs doing. We create in bxp a form to capture prospects. A simple form with some primary details.

• Name
• Contact details
• Product they're interested in

In the advanced settings of the form, we use the Media Management section.

• Use Media Code Field:
• Force Media Code Selection:
• Show Media Schedule:
• Time : History
• Time : Upcoming

This results in some changes in the form immediately

There are a number of things to note.

• At the top is a new system controlled field called Media Code.
• You are not able to save any outcome, unless you've filled in the media code.
• At the bottom of the form the media schedule is available

4 Addressing the challenges

4.1 Solution 1 : Delayed allocation

As the contents of the list is managed by the Media Management module, the marketing team can add, edit and remove media codes as they need. The rules for allocation can change with no overhead to the sales or operations teams. As codes can be considered "dead" or "no longer relevant" they can be removed without stopping the sales process. Where a customer is delayed the agents can be pushed to classify the leads as "historic campaign" or leave the historic campaigns available for selection. The reporting capabilities of bxp allow marketing to see the long slow tail end of campaign responses.

To learn more about media code management Media_codes_and_their_management

4.2 Solution 2 : Proper allocation

As the media code is listed at the top of the page, the contents of the drop down list are managed through the Media Management module. No matter the source of the contact, intelligence is easily added to the form to auto set the media code appropriately.

• If it's a call then the IVR or the number that was dialled can be used to auto set the code. Ad says, code001 is to call in on 1800 111 111, code002 is to call in on 1800 222 222. bxp can then use the number dialled (DDI Direct Dial In), to set the appropriate code.
• If it's an email, keywords in the email (subject or body or TO address), can be identified and used to set the code.
• As social media can be integrated through the BEmail engine, the same rules for email above can be applied to social media for tracking.
• The drop down list is left open and can be worked into the script to allow agents to ask the customer where they heard about the ad, and then provide a manual update. This change can also be recorded and reported on.
• If a website or QR code is used the bxp API can be used to automatically accept the lead and set the media code appropriately.

This approach means that no matter the source of the advertising, all leads can be in one area with proper data tagging of the media code.

To learn more about the setup and configuration of this ability Configuring_media_code_management_by_source_type

4.3 Solution 3 : Numerous marketing campaigns

In combination with eCourse, marketing codes can be allocated their own training pages. This allows the marketing team to develop supporting and training materials for the campaign and the medium providing the sales and operations team easy reference and support for every campaign the marketing team deem to be live.

To learn more about how this tool works and is set up Media_eCourse_management

4.4 Solution 4 : Timing

The media schedule at the bottom of the screen, provides a rolling timed window of the upcoming ad schedule. It allows permanent and small time window items to be displayed equally. This allows marketing teams to warn operations and sales teams when ads are going out so they can plan and staff accordingly. This level of support allows team leads to make decisions in real time about how to manage available staff. If through experience a team knows Ad 1 generates a lot of contact and Ad 2 doesn't, scheduling breaks and training sessions around this enables the highest availability of staff.

To learn more about this tool and its operation Media_schedule_management

4.5 Solution 5 : Speed of metrics

Media code reporting is real time. This allows the marketing department to view the response to advertising in real time as data is captured. No more waiting for data reports or feedback, like online advertising all the platforms can be watched in real time from the Media Manager reporting suite.

To learn more about the reporting and analysis capabilities of Media Manager try this article Media management reporting and analysis

4.6 Solution 6 : Dark art of marketing

Whilst bxp definitely cannot predict what people want, the metric capture, measurement and cluster techniques used by data scientists to provide intelligence to marketing campaigns from a post event perspective is available through Media Manager data reports and application of a number of tools such as R, which the All n One team have vast experience supporting.

As more focused clustering and target groups are required, the addition of marketing information can be added to the form to allow for more informed decision making. Age? Gender? Location? Budget? all these fields can be added to the form to be worked into the sales pitch.

Adding in fields such as "potential value of sale" and "sale amount" to the form will complete the fields required to provide all the key data for the primary marketing report detailed above.

To learn more about the reporting and analysis capabilities of Media Manager try this article Media management reporting and analysis

4.7 Solution 7 : Data preparation

Data protection in bxp is a massive consideration. The reporting in Media Manager ensures that no fields of Personally Identifiable Information are displayed to marketing teams. This limiting of operational data but still giving real time access to records and reporting, allows marketing teams to react in real time with no operational overhead on sales or ops to generate reports.

To learn more about the reporting and analysis capabilities of Media Manager try this article Media management reporting and analysis

5 Get in touch

bxp is a perfect tool for augmenting operational capabilities of marketing and sales teams. Please don't hesitate to contact us on +353 1 429 4000 or email us at sales@bxpsoftware.com to see how we can help you build your perfectly managed media solution.