What is cross-channel campaign management (CCCM)?

Learn about the capabilities and advantages of cross-channel campaign management (CCCM) systems and marketing automation for enterprise brands.

4 minute read

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CHAPTER 1

Why marketers need cross-channel campaign management

In a world that’s exploding with new ways for brands to reach audiences, well planned marketing campaigns have incredible potential to engage customers through cohesive outreach efforts. But the results only come if campaigns are clearly thought out in advance. They must cover all available channels, offering relevant and consistent experiences for each, address questions that arise, and offer a clear path toward specific actions, sites, and experiences.

The expectation is clear, but how does an organization accomplish it in practice? This challenge has given rise to an approach known as cross channel campaign management. Done well, this provides the visibility and marketing automation that brands need to execute at scale.

Chapter 2

What is cross-channel campaign management?

When it comes to managing cross-channel campaigns, two aspects stand out — strategy and tools.

Cross-channel campaign management strategy

We already mentioned the overarching strategy above — a holistic campaign that spans channels and drives prospects and customers to conversions. But what does this look like in practice? Here are five considerations:

1. User personas and individual profiles

Understanding your audience is essential for CCCM, just as it is in all marketing today. You likely have developed comprehensive customer profiles, and you can use these both to plan campaigns and to bucket customers as they enter those campaigns. But don’t keep your personas static.

Instead, use personal data, obtained from first-party cookies, to continually update both individual profiles and your personas. You also can use the insight gleaned from this data to improve future journeys and, if you have the right technology, even update the user’s experience in real time.

2. Data-driven

Data-driven marketing has become a buzzword today, and for good reason. Marketers have access to abundant customer data. When managing cross-channel campaigns, you’ll want to know which customers are engaging where, and what they’re trying to accomplish on each channel. You’ll also want to see what channels and actions are driving conversions.

It’s critical to keep a pulse on the market. Customers will compare their experiences with your brand to the best experiences they’ve had with other brands. Everybody may be talking about the Metaverse (insert flashy new tool of the day), but if customers aren’t using it (or similar channels) to do anything today, it may be better to invest in something more urgent, even if less sexy.

3. Get clear on leadership

Cross-channel campaigns are inherently complex. Is the messaging clear and coherent across channels? Is the journey leading somewhere pertinent? Which of the team’s original assumptions and plans are working and which ones need to be tweaked?

While executing a cross-channel campaign requires numerous people, those managing it need to have the big picture in mind. This is as true for planning as it is for rollout and determining success.

Make sure that you clearly define a leader early on. This person assigns responsibilities and roles, serving as the go-to for questions. If your leader is not the CMO, they'll be the one who directly reports to the C-suite.

4. Get clear on metrics

Each campaign will be effective in some areas and less effective in others. The same holds for each channel. It’s also true that each campaign affects performance of the others. Someone who converts via email may only have done so after looking at an Instagram ad twice. (This goes back to the ability to understand journeys at the individual level and not only collect but also connect and understand the data.)

When determining what your KPIs will be, it’s important to consider how the entire campaign interacts with each piece. In the email/Instagram example above, it may not look like Instagram is performing, even if it's essential part of the journey. It's always possible for a channel to be essential even if it doesn’t seem to be performing. If your KPIs are simply “conversions by channel” you might miss something critical.

5. Stay nimble

As with all marketing in the digital-first era, cross-channel campaigns require an agile approach. Gone are the days where you created a campaign, clicked the switch to start, sat back, and watched (if they ever existed). Today’s marketing is all about getting something to market and then testing and iterating, testing and iterating, testing and… you get the point.

While this isn’t an excuse to throw out half-backed campaigns, it should take some of the launch pressure off while also keeping you on your toes throughout the entirety of the program. If something isn’t working, you have the opportunity to tweak it endlessly, until it succeeds.

Of course, whether iterating on a campaign or collecting and aggregating cross-channel customer engagement data, your cross-channel campaign is only going to be as good as the tools you have for managing it.

Cross-channel campaign management tools

Forrester defines cross-channel campaign management as a type of solution; namely, as enterprise marketing technology that supports customer data management, analytics, segmentation, and workflow tools for designing, executing, and measuring campaigns for digital and offline channels.

Given this definition, CCCM solutions should accomplish three main functions for your marketing organization:

  1. Customer insight: Leverage customer data to help you understand audiences at a deeper level.
  2. Campaign orchestration: Deliver relevant customer experiences efficiently across many channels, measure campaign performance, and learn from the results.
  3. CX innovation: Support advanced personalization and the development of unique customer experiences that move the journey forward and nurture long-term relationships.

Ideally, a single technology platform would cover all three of these functions; however, some companies do manage to integrate three different point solutions to gain the equivalent of one CCCM solution.

By making customer data and campaign results available across the entire marketing organization, CCCM systems also play an important role in keeping marketing intelligence, PR, sales, online, and other teams aligned on campaign components, forward progress, and working toward shared goals.

CCCM vs. CDP

CCCM systems are closely related to — but different from — your customer data platform (CDP). While a CDP provides a unified view of each customer, a CCCM solution (or solutions) adds in the abilities to deliver personalized experiences at scale, as well as to execute and monitor campaigns across channels.
Chapter 3

Benefits of cross-channel campaign management

A thoughtful approach to cross-channel campaign management helps a brand strike the right balance in customer interactions, helping it avoid fragmented conversations while also respecting privacy.

CCCM technology facilitates campaign content delivery across channels while also providing insights into how the campaign is performing across those same channels. With this insight, you can see exactly how customers are moving through the journey or sales funnel.

With CCCM technology in place, you’ll be able to nurture relevant interactions consistently in ways that are more meaningful for customers, as well as empowering for marketers. For example, when someone responds to content on a certain channel, the marketer now knows it’s a good place to publish content in the future for that particular customer.

CCCM technology also highlights what types of content or assets are converting and which ones are not. The CCCM solution gathers insights on consumer preferences, and then marketers can update campaigns as needed for optimal performance. This kind of strategic marketing automation leads to higher engagement, faster conversions, and priceless customer loyalty. Learn why the Sitecore Digital Experience Platform is the platform of choice for cross-channel campaign management for organizations across the globe.