Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Guide

Streamline your organizational approach to selecting a right-sized marketing management platform.

Analyst perspective

A robustly configured and comprehensive MMS platform is a crucial ingredient to help kick-start your organization's cross-channel and multichannel marketing management initiatives.

Modern marketing management suites (MMS) are imperative given today's complex, multitiered, and often non-standardized marketing processes. Relying on isolated methods such as lead generation or email marketing techniques for executing key cross-channel and multichannel marketing initiatives is not enough to handle the complexity of contemporary marketing management activities.

Organizations need to invest in highly customizable and functionally extensive MMS platforms to provide value alongside the marketing value chain and a 360-degree view of the consumer's marketing journey. IT needs to be rigorously involved with the sourcing and implementation of the new MMS tool, and the necessary business units also need to own the requirements and be involved from the initial stages of software selection.

To succeed with MMS implementation, consider drafting a detailed roadmap that outlines milestone activities for configuration, security, points of integration, and data migration capabilities and provides for ongoing application maintenance and support.

Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Customer Experience Strategy
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive summary

Your Challenge

• Many organizations struggle with taking a systematic and structured approach to selecting a right-sized marketing management suite (MMS) – an indispensable part of managing an organization's specific and nuanced marketing management needs.
• Organizations must define a clear-cut strategic approach to investing in a new MMS platform. Exercising the appropriate selection and implementation rigor for a right-sized MMS tool is a critical step in delivering concrete business value to sustain various marketing value chains across the organization.

Common Obstacles

• An MMS vendor that is not well aligned to marketing requirements wastes resources and causes an endless cascade of end-user frustration.
• The MMS market is rapidly evolving, making it difficult for vendors to retain a competitive foothold in the space.
• IT managers and/or marketing professionals often find themselves in the unenviable position of taking the fall for MMS platforms that fail to deliver on the promise of the overarching marketing management strategy.

Info-Tech's Approach

• MMS platform selection must be driven by your overall marketing management strategy. Email marketing techniques, social marketing, and/or lead management strategies are often not enough to satisfy the more sophisticated use cases demanded by increasingly complex customer segmentation levels.
• For organizations with a large audience or varied product offerings, a well-integrated MMS platform enables the management of various complex campaigns across many channels, product lines, customer segments, and marketing groups throughout the enterprise.

Info-Tech Insight

IT must collaborate with marketing professionals and other key stakeholder groups to define a unified vision and holistic outlook for a right-sized MMS platform.

Info-Tech's methodology for selecting a right-sized marketing management suite platform

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

The MMS procurement process should be broken into segments:

1. Create a vendor shortlist using this buyer's guide.
2. Define a structured approach to selection.
3. Review the contract.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

What are marketing management suite platforms?

Our Definition: Marketing management suite (MMS) platforms are core enterprise applications that provide a unified set of marketing processes for a given organization and, typically, the capability to coordinate key cross-channel marketing initiatives.

Key product capabilities for sophisticated MMS platforms include but are not limited to:

• Email marketing
• Lead nurturing
• Social media management
• Content curation and distribution
• Marketing reporting and analytics
• Consistent brand messaging

Using a robust and comprehensive MMS platform equips marketers with the appropriate tools needed to make more informed decisions around campaign execution, resulting in better targeting, acquisition, and customer retention initiatives. Moreover, such tools can help bolster effective revenue generation and ensure more viable growth initiatives for future marketing growth enablement strategies.

Info-Tech Insight

Feature sets are rapidly evolving over time as MMS offerings continue to proliferate in this market space. Ensure that you focus on core components such as customer conversion rates and new lead captures through maintaining well- integrated multichannel campaigns.

Marketing Management Suite Software Selection Buyer's Guide

Info-Tech Insight

A right-sized MMS software selection and procurement decision should involve comprehensive requirements and needs analysis by not just Marketing but also other organizational units such as IT, in conjunction with input suppled from the internal vendor procurement team.

Phase 1

Understand Core MMS Features

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Level-set an understanding of MMS technology.
• Define which MMS features are table stakes (standard) and which are key differentiating functionalities.
• Identify the art of the possible in a modern MMS platform from sales, marketing, and service lenses.

This phase involves the following participants:

• CMO
• Digital Marketing Project Manager
• Marketing Data Analytics Analyst
• Marketing Management Executive

What are marketing management suite platforms?

Our Definition: Marketing management suite (MMS) platforms are core enterprise applications that provide a unified set of marketing processes for a given organization and, typically, the capability to coordinate key cross-channel marketing initiatives.

Key product capabilities for sophisticated MMS platforms include but are not limited to:

• Email marketing
• Lead nurturing
• Social media management
• Content curation and distribution
• Marketing reporting and analytics
• Consistent brand messaging

Using a robust and comprehensive MMS platform equips marketers with the appropriate tools needed to make more informed decisions around campaign execution, resulting in better targeting, acquisition, and customer retention initiatives. Moreover, such tools can help bolster effective revenue generation and ensure more viable growth initiatives for future marketing growth enablement strategies.

Info-Tech Insight

Feature sets are rapidly evolving over time as MMS offerings continue to proliferate in this market space. Ensure that you focus on core components such as customer conversion rates and new lead captures through maintaining well- integrated multichannel campaigns.

Marketing through the ages

Tracing the foundational origins of marketing management practices

Initial traction for marketing management strategies began with the need to holistically understand the effects of advertising efforts and how the media mix could be best optimized.

Where it's going: the future state of marketing management

1. Increasing Complexity Driving Consumer Purchasing Decisions
   • "The main complexity is dealing with the increasing product variety and changing consumer demands, which is forcing marketers to abandon undifferentiated marketing strategies and even niche marketing strategies and to adopt a mass customization process interacting one-to-one with their customers." – Complexity, 2019
2. Consumers Seeking More Tailored Brand Personalization
   • Financial Services marketers lead all other industries in AI application adoption, with 37% currently using them (Salesforce, 2019).
3. The Inclusion of More AI-Enabled Marketing Strategies
   • According to a 2022 Nostro report, 70% of consumers say it is important that brands continue to offer personalized consumer experiences.
4. Green Marketing
   • Recent studies have shown that up to 80% of all consumers are interested in green marketing strategies (Marketing Schools, 2020).

Marketing management by the numbers

Key trends

Understand MMS table stakes features

Organizations can expect nearly all MMS vendors to provide the following functionality

Identify differentiating MMS features

While not always deemed must-have functionality, these features may be the deciding factor when choosing between two MMS-focused vendors.

Ensure you understand the art of the possible across the MMS landscape

Understanding the trending feature sets that encompass the broader MMS vendor landscape will best equip your organization with the knowledge needed to effectively match today's MMS platforms with your organization's marketing requirements.

Holistically examine the potential of any MMS solution through three main lenses:

Art of the possible: data-driven digital advertising

CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING INTELLIGENCE

Are you curious about the measures needed to boost engagement among your client base and other primary target audience groups? Conversational marketing intelligence metrics can help collect and disseminate key descriptive data points across a broader range of audience information.

AI-DRIVEN CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING DEVICES

Certain social media channels (e.g. LinkedIn and Facebook) like to take advantage of click-to-Messenger-style applications to help drive meaningful conversations with customers and learn more about their buying preferences. In addition, AI-driven chatbot applications can help the organization glean important information about the customer's persona by asking probing questions about their marketing purchase behaviors and preferences.

METAVERSE- DRIVEN BRANDING AND ADVERTISING

One of the newest phenomena in data-driven marketing technology and digital advertising techniques is the metaverse, where users can represent themselves and their brand via virtual avatars to further gamify their marketing strategies. Moreover, brands can create immersive experiences and engage with influencers and established communities and collect a wealth of information about their audience that can help drive customer retention and loyalty.

Case study

Metaverse marketing extends the potential for commercial brand development and representation: a deep dive into Gucci's metaverse practice

INDUSTRY: Luxury Goods Apparel
SOURCE: Vogue Business

Challenge

Beginning with a small, family-owned leather shop known as House of Gucci in Florence, Italy, businessman and fashion designer Guccio Gucci sold saddles, leather bags, and other accessories to horsemen during the 1920s. Over the years, Gucci's offerings have grown to include various other personal luxury goods.

As consumer preferences have evolved over time, particularly with the younger generation, Gucci's professional marketing teams looked to invest in virtual technology environments to help build and sustain better brand awareness among younger consumer audiences.

Solution

In response to the increasing presence of metaverse-savvy gamers on the internet, Gucci began investing in developing its online metaverse presence to bolster its commercial marketing brand there.

A recent collaboration with Roblox, an online gaming platform that offers virtual experiences, provided Gucci the means to showcase its fashion items using the Gucci Garden – a virtual art installation project for Generation Z consumers, powered by Roblox's VR technology. The Gucci Garden virtual system featured a French-styled garden environment where players could try on and buy Gucci virtual fashion items to dress up their blank avatars.

Results

Gucci's disruptive, innovative metaverse marketing campaign project with Roblox is proof of its commitment to tapping new marketing growth channels to showcase the brand to engage new and prospective consumers (e.g. Roblox's player base) across more unique sandboxed/simulation environments.

The freedom and flexibility in the metaverse environments allows brands such as Gucci to execute a more flexible digital marketing approach and enables them to take advantage of innovative metaverse-driven technologies in the market to further drive their data-driven digital marketing campaigns.

Art of the possible: next best action marketing (NBAM)

NEXT BEST ACTION PREDICTIVE MODELING

To improve conversion propensity, next best action techniques can use predictive modeling methods to help build a dynamic overview of the customer journey. With information sourced from actionable marketing intelligence data, MMS platforms can use NBAM techniques to identify customer needs based on their buying behavior, social media interactions, and other insights to determine what unique set of actions should be taken for each customer.

MACHINE LEARNING–BASED RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS

Rules-based recommender systems can help assign probabilities of purchasing behaviors based on the patterns in touchpoints of a customer's journey and interaction with your brand. For instance, a large grocery chain company such as Walmart or Whole Foods will use ML-based recommender systems to decide what coupons they should offer to their customers based on their purchasing history.

Art of the possible: AI-driven customer segmentation

MACHINE/DEEP LEARNING (ML/DL) ALGORITHMS

The inclusion of AI in data analytics helps make customer targeting more accurate
and meaningful. Organizations can analyze customer data more thoroughly and generate in-depth contextual and descriptive information about the targeted segments. In addition, they can use this information to automate the personalization of marketing campaigns for a specific target audience group.

UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER SENTIMENTS

To greatly benefit from AI-powered customer segmentation, organizations must deploy specialized custom AI solutions to help organize qualitative comments into quantitative data. This approach requires companies to use custom AI models and tools that will analyze customer sentiments and experiences based on data extracted from various touchpoints (e.g. CRM systems, emails, chatbot logs).

Phase 2

Build the Business Case and Streamline Requirements

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Define and build the business case for the selection of a right-sized MMS platform.
• Elicit and prioritize granular requirements for your MMS platform.

This phase involves the following participants:

• CMO
• Technical Marketing Analyst
• Digital Marketing Project Manager
• Marketing Data Analytics Analyst
• Marketing Management Executive

Software Selection Engagement

5 Advisory Calls over a 5-Week Period to Accelerate Your Selection Process

Expert analyst guidance over 5 weeks on average to select software and negotiate with the vendor.

Save money, align stakeholders, speed up the process and make better decisions.

Use a repeatable, formal methodology to improve your application selection process.

Better, faster results, guaranteed, included in your membership.

CLICK HERE to book your Selection Engagement

Elicit and prioritize granular requirements for your marketing management suite (MMS) platform

Understanding business needs through requirements gathering is the key to defining everything you need from your software. However, it is an area where people often make critical mistakes.

Info-Tech Insight
Poor requirements are the number one reason projects fail. Review Info-Tech's Improve Requirements Gathering blueprint to learn how to improve your requirements analysis and get results that truly satisfy stakeholder needs.

Info-Tech's approach

Develop an inclusive and thorough approach to the RFP process

Info-Tech Insight

Review Info-Tech's process and understand how you can prevent your organization from leaking negotiation leverage while preventing vendors from taking control of your RFP.

The Info-Tech difference:

1. The secret to managing an RFP is to make it as manageable and as thorough as possible. The RFP process should be like any other aspect of business – by developing a standard process. With a process in place, you are better able to handle whatever comes your way, because you know the steps you need to follow to produce a top-notch RFP.
2. The business then identifies the need for more information about a product/service or determines that a purchase is required.
3. A team of stakeholders from each area impacted gather all business, technical, legal, and risk requirements. What are the expectations of the vendor relationship post-RFP? How will the vendors be evaluated?
4. Based on the predetermined requirements, either an RFI or an RFP is issued to vendors with a due date.

Leverage Info-Tech's Contract Review Service to level the playing field with your shortlisted vendors

You may be faced with multiple products, services, master service agreements, licensing models, service agreements, and more.
Use Info-Tech's Contract Review Service to gain insights on your agreements:

1. Are all key terms included?
2. Are they applicable to your business?
3. Can you trust that results will be delivered?
4. What questions should you be asking from an IT perspective?

Validate that a contract meets IT's and the business' needs by looking beyond the legal terminology. Use a practical set of questions, rules, and guidance to improve your value for dollar spent.

CLICK to BOOK The Contract Review Service

CLICK to DOWNLOAD Master Contract Review and Negotiation for Software Agreements

Phase 3

Discover the MMS Market Space and Prepare for Implementation

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• Dive into the key players of the MMS vendor landscape.
• Understand best practices for building a vendor shortlist.
• Understand key implementation considerations for MMS.

This phase involves the following participants:

• CMO
• Marketing Management Executive
• Applications Manager
• Digital Marketing Project Manager
• Sales Executive
• Vendor Outreach and Partnerships Manager

Review your use cases to start your shortlist

Your Info-Tech analysts can help you narrow down the list of vendors that will meet your requirements.

Next steps will include:

1. Reviewing your requirements.
2. Checking out SoftwareReviews.
3. Shortlisting your vendors.
4. Conducting demos and detailed proposal reviews.
5. Selecting and contracting with a finalist!

Get to know the key players in the MMS landscape

The following slides provide a top-level overview of the popular players you will encounter in your MMS shortlisting process.

Evaluate software category leaders through vendor rankings and awards

SoftwareReviews

	The Data Quadrant is a thorough evaluation and ranking of all software in an individual category to compare platforms across multiple dimensions. Vendors are ranked by their Composite Score, based on individual feature evaluations, user satisfaction rankings, vendor capability comparisons, and likeliness to recommend the platform.
	The Emotional Footprint is a powerful indicator of overall user sentiment toward the relationship with the vendor, capturing data across five dimensions. Vendors are ranked by their Customer Experience (CX) Score, which combines the overall Emotional Footprint rating with a measure of the value delivered by the solution.

Speak with category experts to dive deeper into the vendor landscape

SoftwareReviews

• Fact-based reviews of business software from IT professionals.
• Product and category reports with state-of-the-art data visualization.
• Top-tier data quality backed by a rigorous quality assurance process.
• User-experience insight that reveals the intangibles of working with a vendor.

SoftwareReviews is powered by Info-Tech

Technology coverage is a priority for Info-Tech, and SoftwareReviews provides the most comprehensive unbiased data on today's technology. Combined with the insight of our expert analysts, our members receive unparalleled support in their buying journey.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Advanced Campaign Management
• Email Marketing Automation
• Multichannel Integration

Areas to Improve:

• Mobile Marketing Management
• Advanced Data Segmentation
• Pricing Sensitivity and Implementation Support Model

history

"Adobe Experience Cloud (AEC), formerly Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC), provides a host of innovative multichannel analytics, social, advertising, media optimization, and content management products (just to name a few). The Adobe Marketing Cloud package allows users with valid subscriptions to download the entire collection and use it directly on their computer with open access to online updates. Organizations that have a deeply ingrained Adobe footprint and have already reaped the benefits of Adobe's existing portfolio of cloud services products (e.g. Adobe Creative Cloud) will find the AEC suite a functionally robust and scalable fit for their marketing management and marketing automation needs.

However, it is important to note that AEC's pricing model is expensive when compared to other competitors in the space (e.g. Sugar Market) and, therefore, is not as affordable for smaller or mid-sized organizations. Moreover, there is the expectation of a learning curve with the AEC platform. Newly onboarded users will need to spend some time learning how to navigate and work comfortably with AEC's marketing automaton modules. "
- Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

Adobe Experience Cloud Platform pricing is opaque.
Request a demo.*

*Info-Tech recommends reaching out to the vendor's internal sales management team for explicit details on individual pricing plans for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Marketing Workflow Management
• Advanced Data Segmentation
• Marketing Operations Management

Areas to Improve:

• Email Marketing Automation
• Marketing Asset Management
• Process of Creating and/or Managing Marketing Lists

history

"Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing remains a viable option for organizations that require a range of innovative MMS tools that can provide a wealth of functional capabilities (e.g. AI-powered analytics to create targeted segments, A/B testing, personalizing engagement for each customer). Moreover, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing offers trial options to sandbox their platform for free for 30 days to help users familiarize themselves with the software before buying into the product suite.

However, ensure that you have the time to effectively train users on implementing the MS Dynamics 365 platform. The platform does not score high on customizability in SoftwareReviews reports. Developers have only a limited ability to modify the core UI, so organizations need to be fully equipped with the knowledge needed to successfully navigate MS-based applications to take full advantage of the platform. For organizations deep in the Microsoft stack, D365 Marketing is a compelling option."
Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

* Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts. See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Marketing Analytics
• Marketing Workflow Management
• Lead Nurturing

Areas to Improve:

• Advanced Campaign Management
• Email Marketing Automation
• Marketing Segmentation

history

"HubSpot's Marketing Hub software ranks consistently high in scores across SoftwareReviews reports and remains a strong choice for organizations that want to run successful inbound marketing campaigns that make customers interested and engaged with their business. HubSpot Marketing Hub employs comprehensive feature sets, including the option to streamline ad tracking and management, perform various audience segmentation techniques, and build personalized and automated marketing campaigns.

However, SoftwareReviews reports indicate end users are concerned that HubSpot Marketing Hub's platform may be slightly overpriced in recent years and not cost effective for smaller and mid-sized companies that are working with a limited budget. Moreover, when it comes to mobile user accessibility reports, HubSpot's Marketing Hub does not directly offer data usage reports in relation to how mobile users navigate various web pages on the customer's website."
Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

*Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Email Marketing Automation
• Customer Journey Mapping
• Contacts Management

Areas to Improve:

• Pricing Model Flexibility
• Integrational API Support
• Antiquated UI/CX Design Elements

history

*Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.
See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Advanced Data Segmentation
• Marketing Analytics
• Multichannel Integration

Areas to Improve:

• Marketing Operations
  Management
• Marketing Asset Management
• Community Marketing Management

history

"Oracle Marketing Cloud offers a comprehensive interwoven and integrated marketing management solution that can help end users launch cross-channel marketing programs and unify all prospect and customer marketing signals within one singular view. Oracle Marketing Cloud ranks consistently high across our SoftwareReviews reports and sustains top scores in overall customer experience rankings at a factor of 9.0. The emotional sentiment of users interacting with Oracle Marketing Cloud is also highly favorable, with Oracle's Emotional Footprint score at +93.

Users should be aware that some of the reporting mechanisms and report-generation capabilities may not be as mature as those of some of its competitors in the MMS space (e.g. Salesforce, Adobe). Data exportability also presents a challenge in Oracle Marketing Cloud and requires a lot of internal tweaking between end users of the system to function properly. Finally, pricing sensitivity may be a concern for small and mid-sized organizations who may find Oracle's higher-tiered pricing plans to be out of reach. "
Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

*Info-Tech recommends reaching out to the vendor's internal sales management team for explicit details on individual pricing plans for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Marketing Analytics
• Advanced Campaign Management
• Email Marketing Automation
• Social Media Marketing Management

Areas to Improve:

• Community Marketing Management
• Marketing Operations Management
• Pricing Sensitivity and Vendor Support Model

history

"Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a long-term juggernaut of the marketing management software space and is the subject of many Info-Tech member inquiries. It retains strong composite and customer experience (CX) scores in our SoftwareReviews reports. Some standout features of the platform include marketing analytics, advanced campaign management functionalities, email marketing automation, and customer journey management capabilities. In recent years Salesforce has made great strides in improving the overall user experience by investing in new product functionalities such as the Einstein What-If Analyzer, which helps test how your next email campaign will impact overall customer engagement, triggers personalized campaign messages based on an individual user's behavior, and uses powerful real-time segmentation and sophisticated AI to deliver contextually relevant experiences that inspire customers to act.

On the downside, we commonly see Salesforce's solutions as costlier than competitors' offerings, and its commercial/sales teams tend to be overly aggressive in marketing its solutions without a distinct link to overarching business requirements. "
Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

*Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts. See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Email Marketing Automation
• Marketing Workflow Management
• Marketing Analytics

Areas to Improve:

• Mobile Marketing Management
• Marketing Operations Management
• Advanced Data Segmentation

history

"Over the years, SAP has positioned itself as one of the usual suspects across the enterprise applications market. While SAP has a broad range of capabilities within the CRM and customer experience space, it consistently underperforms in many of our user-driven SoftwareReviews reports for MMS and adjacent areas, ranking lower in MMS product feature capabilities such as email marketing automation and advanced campaign management than other mainstream MMS vendors, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud. The SAP Customer Engagement Marketing platform seems decidedly a secondary focus for SAP, behind its more compelling presence across the enterprise resource planning space.

If you are approaching an MMS selection from a greenfield lens and with no legacy vendor baggage for SAP elsewhere, experience suggests that your needs will be better served by a vendor that places greater primacy on the MMS aspect of their portfolio."
Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

*Info-Tech recommends reaching out to the vendor's internal sales management team for explicit details on individual pricing plans for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite.

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Social Media Automation
• Email Marketing Automation
• Marketing Analytics

Areas to Improve:

• Ease of Data Integration
• Breadth of Features
• Marketing Workflow Management

b

SoftwareReviews' Enterprise MMS Rankings

Strengths:

• Campaign Management
• Segmentation
• Email Delivery

Areas to Improve:

• Mobile Optimization
• A/B Testing
• Content Authoring

history

"Zoho maintains a long-running repertoire of end-to-end software solutions for business development purposes. In addition to its flagship CRM product, the company also offers Zoho Campaigns, which is an email marketing software platform that enables contextually driven marketing techniques via dynamic personalization, email interactivity, A/B testing, etc. For organizations that already maintain a deep imprint of Zoho solutions, Zoho Campaigns will be a natural extension to their immediate software environment.

Zoho Campaigns is a great ecosystem play in environments that have a material Zoho footprint. In the absence of an existing Zoho environment, it's prudent to consider other affordable products as well."
Yaz Palanichamy
Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group

*Pricing correct as of October 2022. Listed in USD and absent discounts.

See pricing on vendor's website for latest information.

Leverage Info-Tech's research to plan and execute your MMS implementation

Use Info-Tech's three-phase implementation process to guide your planning:

Download Info-Tech's Governance and Management of Enterprise Software Implementation
Establish and execute an end-to-end, agile framework to succeed with the implementation of a major enterprise application.

Ensure your implementation team has a high degree of trust and communication

If external partners are needed, dedicate an internal resource to managing the vendor and partner relationships.

Communication

Teams must have some type of communication strategy. This can be broken into:

• Regularity: Having a set time each day to communicate progress and a set day to conduct retrospectives.
• Ceremonies: Injecting awards and continually emphasizing delivery of value to encourage relationship building and constructive motivation.
• Escalation: Voicing any concerns and having someone responsible for addressing them.

Proximity

Distributed teams create complexity as communication can break down. This can be mitigated by:

• Location: Placing teams in proximity to eliminate the barrier of geographical distance and time zone differences.
• Inclusion: Making a deliberate attempt to pull remote team members into discussions and ceremonies.
• Communication Tools: Having the right technology (e.g. video conference) to help bring teams closer together virtually.

Trust

Members should trust other members are contributing to the project and completing their required tasks on time. Trust can be developed and maintained by:

• Accountability: Having frequent quality reviews and feedback sessions. As work becomes more transparent, people become more accountable.
• Role Clarity: Having a clear definition of what everyone's role is.

Selecting a right-sized MMS platform

This selection guide allows organizations to execute a structured methodology for picking an MMS platform that aligns with their needs. This includes:

• Alignment and prioritization of key business and technology drivers for an MMS selection business case.
• Identification of key use cases and requirements for a right-sized MMS platform.
• A comprehensive market scan of key players in the MMS market space.

This formal MMS selection initiative will drive business-IT alignment, identify pivotal sales and marketing automation priorities, and thereby allow for the rollout of a streamlined MMS platform that is highly likely to satisfy all stakeholder needs.

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop

contact your account representative for more information

workshops@infotech.com

1-888-670-8889

Summary of accomplishment

Knowledge Gained

• What marketing management is
• Historical origins of marketing management
• The future of marketing management
• Key trends in marketing management suites

Processes Optimized

• Requirements gathering
• RFPs and contract reviews
• Marketing management suite vendor selection
• Marketing management platform implementation

Marketing Management

• Adobe Experience Cloud
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing
• HubSpot Marketing Hub
• Maropost Marketing Cloud
• Oracle Marketing Cloud

Vendors Analyzed

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• SAP
• Sugar Market
• Zoho Campaigns

Related Info-Tech Research

Select a Marketing Management Suite

Many organizations struggle with taking a systematic approach to selection that pairs functional requirements with specific marketing workflows, and as a result they choose a marketing management suite (MMS) that is not well aligned to their needs, wasting resources and causing end-user frustration.

Get the Most Out of Your CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) application portfolios are often messy,
with multiple integration points, distributed data, and limited ongoing end-user training. A properly optimized CRM ecosystem will reduce costs and increase productivity.

Customer Relationship Management Platform Selection Guide

Speed up the process to build your business case and select your CRM solution. Despite the importance of CRM selection and implementation, many organizations struggle to define an approach to picking the right vendor and rolling out the solution in an effective and cost-efficient manner.

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