New software from blue Martini Software Inc. and Impresse Inc. looks to bring better workflow processes to marketing programs.
Blue Martini last week said it is expanding its e-commerce suite with a campaign management application, Blue Martini Marketing.
Separately, Impresse last month released an update of its MRM (Marketing Resource Management) Solution with a new cost engine that promises to marry the management of soft marketing costs, such as design and art, with the everyday costs of running a business, such as hiring caterers for a marketing event.
Blue Martini Marketing, part of the forthcoming Blue Martini 4 suite, enables marketers to observe customer behaviors, segment and score customers based on the analysis of these behaviors, and design personalized outbound campaigns that are delivered across all channels—e-mail, Web, wireless or call center. The results of these campaigns can be analyzed to see how well they worked, and future campaigns can be designed accordingly.
Brightsage, which builds e-commerce platforms for companies looking to build business-to-consumer Web sites, plans to offer Blue Martini Marketing, along with the rest of the suite, to its customers, said Brian Dames, the Chicago companys vice president of e-commerce marketing.
“Having marketing campaign management in an all-encompassing tool, with all the data in the same place, integrated with order information and customer profiles, is very attractive,” Dames said. “It cuts down on integration time and makes it so much easier for us to leverage the data.”
“Given the youth of the product, its probably not as robust as the tools that are focused on [campaign management]. But were willing to take that hit to have it all together—campaign management, personalization, catalog management and content management,” Dames added. “Blue Martini takes care of everything.”
Blue Martini Marketing, priced $250,000 to $300,000, will be integrated with the Blue Martini suite by March, said officials in San Mateo, Calif.
Meanwhile, Impresses MRM Solution is essentially souped-up project management software. It provides marketing departments with tools for collaboration across marketing, finance and sales departments; collaborative procurement; collaborative creative execution; and cross-enterprise branding.
MRM Solution goes beyond enterprise project management tools, however, by getting suppliers (such as printers, caterers and shippers) to link into the software via a Web interface. In this way, it creates quick notification to all parties inside and outside a company when plans change, and it creates a paper trail to resolve disputes when changes are made to promotional and marketing programs, according to officials at Impresse, in Sunnyvale, Calif.