Tool: 10 steps to choose your campaign management tool

There are many platforms available on the market and it is not always easy to find the solution compatible with your needs.

When choosing a tool, many companies continue to compare the functional richness of the tools and the costs. To do so is to risk being dazzled by the performance of a seasoned salesperson, but to forget the main thing... Meet your needs, serve your strategy and above all, serve your customers !

Here are the steps not to be missed to choose your tool and be satisfied!

The preparation...

Step 1: Define your needs.

This is the most important step! The idea is to interview all the people who are closely involved (or a little less close) by your marketing campaigns. This can involve those who create the messages, those who set up the campaigns, those who are in charge of marketing strategy client, those who manage deliverabilityThose who set up the segmentation, those who manage the flows, those who manage the information systems...
The idea is to get to the bottom of your needs by asking yourself lots and lots of questions!

Start at the beginning:

  • What are your marketing objectives? to sell? to build loyalty? to optimize deliverability? to automate the relationship? Rank them in terms of priority.
  • Why do you need to change your tool? What are the limitations of your current tool?

2. Question yourself around your DATA needs:

  • What customer data do you need for your strategy?
  • How is the database fed? Are there any particular tools that interconnect with your database? (DMP, connectors, transaction tools...) What are your future needs?
  • What types of targeting or segments do you need most?
  • Do you have any particular constraints in terms of security?
  • ...

3. Question yourself around your campaign ACTIVATION needs:

  • Which activation channels do you use? only email ? or SMS, forms, surveys, display, social networks social networks, onsite personalization...
  • What are your needs in terms of customization needs? To what level of detail?
  • What automated scenarios would you like to to deploy?
  • Do you have particular needs around commercial pressure?
  • ...

4. Around your STATISTICS needs:

  • What are the KPIs for measuring your marketing strategy ?
  • What level of aggregation of campaign statistics do you need? by target? by campaign type? by scenario? by month? all at once?
  • Do you need dashboards to feed a COMEX or a CODIR?

This list of needs can go on and on. They can be specific needs around deliverabilityuser management, profile scoring...

5. Question your needs for SELF-RELIANCE:

How independent do you need to be in handling the tool? Do you need to be autonomous in creation of emails ? in setting up a scenario ? in adding a user ? in adding a data table ? in setting up an automatic import or export ?

Step 2: Synthesis of interviews and definition of needs

The idea here is to list your priority needs that the tool must absolutely meet. You will then list the less decisive criteria or even purely optional criteria that will be a plus without being essential.
Make a nice power point and share it with those you interviewed. This is the key to including them in the process and making a collegial choice of tool. The collegial choice is the key for the tool to be adopted by all.

Step 3: Writing the specifications

In your specifications, you should try to challenge the solution providers. They should not simply answer yes or no to a series of yes or no to a series of questions. By asking closed-ended questions, you will will get almost 100% of "Yes it can be done". Instead, present one or two use cases related to your most important needs, and ask the to present a solution to these, either in writing or during the demonstration. during the demonstration.

Because not all "yeses" mean the same thing!
Example: When asked "Do you manage sales pressure?" there are actually several ways to manage it:

  • In segmentation, by capturing a number of messages per individual over a given period
  • By giving more weight to the email: an editorial newsletter will be "normally" counted while a commercial email will be "double" counted...
  • Excluding email triggers
  • By channel
  • In a scenario
  • Via a priority engine between emailings and scenarios

So stopping at a "yes" does not doesn't reveal all these important differences. So your questions must be detailed enough to detailed enough to detect the true from the false.

In your specifications, do not forget to to indicate :

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  • the delay of the answers for possible questions.
  • the deadline for written responses to the tender.

Step 4: Create an evaluation grid

This grid (designed as a good old Excel document is more than enough!)This information will be used when analyzing the responses to the specifications.
- Online, list all the criteria you need. The list is often long. So, think of markers by writing in red (or any other color, we don't care ;-)) priority needs / features.
- In the column, put the names of the service providers to whom you will send the specifications.

During the analysis phase, you will only have to read the answers and fill in the boxes.
In this grid, feel free to add other criteria outside of the features such as :

  • The accompaniment 
  • Customer support responsiveness
  • The main sectors of activity
  • Main types of customers
  • The composition of the teams
  • The box's DNA
  • Geographic implementation
  • The economic model: it can vary from one provider to another. To summarize, there are 3 types of economic models: invoicing by the number of emails sent, invoicing by the number of contacts hosted in the database (capped) + to the number of emails sent or even billing only to the number of contacts hosted in the database. To this, you must add the first year set-up fees (setting up flows to implement your CRM/Datamart Marketing database) and training. Some of them also offer paying options to contact the support, to be accompanied by a Customer Success Manager or to monitor your deliverability.

The evaluation...

Step 5: Selection of 3 or 4 service providers likely to meet the to the specifications.

3 or 4 providers are enough. This step is not obvious because most tools offer the same thing on paper. Don't hesitate to ask for our advice!

Step n°6 : Sending the specifications

It is better to send it by email to privileged contacts rather than through the contact form on their website. In the email, remember who the written responses should be sent to and the deadlines.

Step 7: Receipt, analysis of responses and selection of providers shortlisted

Fill in the evaluation grid based on the answers obtained.
Do not hesitate to mention when the written answer obtained is unclear for you. You will have to come back to it during the interviews/demos.
Discard providers that do not meet your priority criteria. Meet with the others.

Step 8: Schedule Interview/Demo Meetings

When planning the demonstrations, don't hesitate to ask them to show you different different use cases. These are the most frequently used use cases. frequently performed.

By For example:

  • Make this type of segment very precisely.
  • Create a message from A to Z including such specificities of personalization for example for example
  • Create a welcome scenario

What you must be able to do after the demos is toidentify the specificities of the tools, where they are most comfortable and where they are less so. To know if a feature is mastered, don't hesitate to ask these questions:

  • Is the functionality native to the platform or provided by a third party?
  • Is the functionality ready to use or does it require development?
  • Can this task be done in total autonomy or must we systematically go through the support service?

Step 9: Fill out the grid and decide together!

After each demo (as long as everything is fresh in your mind)Fill in the evaluation grid. You can 'score' the answers. The idea is to get a score at the end for each provider.
Share the completed grid internally and decide collegially!

Step 10: Negotiate the contract &. migrate to the new solution!

That's another story! We could do an article on the steps of the migration because it is a delicate moment not to be botched! But that's also in our domain and we can accompany you without any problem during this phase.

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