How Invesco Has Optimized Its Marketing Using a Campaign Management Platform
Getting more done with fewer resources: When investment management firm Invesco decided to introduce a campaign management tool to make its marketing more transparent for all team members, nobody would have guessed just how much time and effort it will save them.
Five years on, the marketing team has seen a significant increase in efficiency. Instead of four full-time people, there is now one person spending 50% of their time on planning and routine tasks.
Invesco, an independent investment management firm with an on-the-ground presence in 25 countries, was facing a mammoth task a few years ago: Its EMEA marketing needed to become more transparent.
The marketing team wanted to be able to keep track of costs and compare them against budgets. It also wanted to measure campaign performance more effectively to be able to make smarter investment decisions.
Using MARMIND, Invesco has managed to improve workflows and can now keep track of its marketing activities.
“Basically, MARMIND has helped our marketing arrive in the 21st century”.
Paul Carruzzo, Head of EMEA Marketing Performance at Invesco
Spreadsheet overload means campaigns cannot be managed efficiently
Like many other organizations, Invesco EMEA was relying on Excel spreadsheets to plan its marketing activities.
Spreadsheets were being used to create budgets and reports, to import data from Oracle, to create Pivot tables – you get the idea.
With nine different markets and several communication channels per market, managing all those spreadsheets soon became very difficult.
Because there were separate budgets per market, the marketing team never knew how much total spending was. Towards the end of the year, they either had to create accruals because they had been underspending or they had to reschedule or even cancel some campaigns.
Another issue was that they did not know which campaigns to invest in because it was not clear which ones were delivering the best performance.
Slowly, but surely the EMEA marketing team started to feel like they were not in control anymore.
What they needed was a software solution to make their marketing transparent for all team members and to be able to shift budgets quickly.
With so many excellent marketing software solutions available, however, how do you find the right tool for your business?
How to pick the right tool to make your marketing more transparent and efficient
Whether you use a search engine, a product review site, or your favorite blog – finding a digital tool has never been easier.
Invesco EMEA’s CMO decided to visit a trade show instead of researching tools online. That way, he could not only compare different tools but also find out more about the businesses providing them.
The following questions helped him narrow down the list of providers:
- Does the software have all the features to match my requirements?
- Can the software be customized?
- Will the software be updated regularly?
- Does the provider offer support during implementation?
- Does the provider offer consultancy?
- Can we integrate the software with existing solutions?
- What will working with the provider look like?
After the trade show, Invesco EMEA’s CMO selected a few providers for a product demo.
It soon became clear that MARMIND was the answer to everything he wanted as it had all the functionality he needed.
“MARMIND has very powerful campaign management and reporting features.”, Paul Carruzzo, Head of EMEA Marketing Performance at Invesco, explains.
Another important aspect was that MARMIND allows effective team collaboration – something that was crucial to Invesco as the marketing team is distributed across several branch offices.
The fact that it can be customized was also decisive, as Paul points out:
“Instead of buying a black box, you get a tool that can be tailored to your needs.”
Thanks to custom reporting features, the marketing team can now create automated reports with one click instead of spending hours on collecting the right data.
What is great about MARMIND is that you have custom features on the one hand and regular updates of the standard version on the other, meaning that customers benefit from each other’s feedback as it feeds into regular product enhancements.
Finding the right provider is just as important as finding the right tool
When searching for the best software, finding the right provider is just as important as finding the right tool, as Paul Carruzzo highlights:
“Who we work with really matters to us. With UPPER Network, we felt like they understood the issues we were facing. Plus, it was clear that we could build a long-term partnership with them. Everything made sense to us: their pricing structure, their account management, and their implementation methods.”
Another reason why Invesco wanted to work with UPPER Network is that they are based in Europe.
Most of the large system integrators are based elsewhere. Since Invesco EMEA’s main focus is on Europe, they were interested in working with a company that knows the regional markets and has experience working with international businesses that are present in Europe.
Support and consultancy services ensure successful implementation
When it comes to introducing new software, it is not just the solution itself that matters, but also the implementation method.
Since MARMIND was to be introduced as quickly as possible, two weekly conference calls and four workshops were scheduled to analyze Invesco’s requirements and workflows to help them digitalize their processes.
Subsequently, three implementation stages were defined. During the first stage, all must-haves were implemented to ensure the most important features were available early on.
The second stage was dedicated to essential features that were not needed as urgently.
The third stage was about implementing non-essential features that were nice to have.
“The way the project was divided into three stages meant that we had a tool we could work with, while the nice-to-have bucket was addressed at a later stage. That worked out very well.”, Paul explains.
Adoption rates are higher if features are made available step by step. If they all become available at the same time, users tend to feel overwhelmed.
Again, when it comes to why implementation was so smooth, it was the team behind MARMIND that made the difference, as Paul points out:
“Peter Ramsenthaler, UPPER Network’s Managing Director, demonstrated a lot of experience. It is very easy for a consultant to say yes to everything the customer wants. Peter did not want to make things easy for himself. He didn’t tell us what we wanted to hear but pointed out exactly what we needed to do to succeed – even if it wasn’t always easy.”
What also stood out to him was how solution-oriented UPPER Network was:
“Whenever there was an issue, the UPPER Network team came up with two or three different suggestions for a solution shortly after. This allowed us to make decisions quickly.”
One centralized marketing platform thanks to system integration
Like many other large organizations, Invesco relies on multiple software solutions.
One of the marketing team’s top priorities was integrating MARMIND with Oracle, which UPPER Network managed to do successfully.
At the moment, the project team is working on a Google Analytics integration to allow accessing the data in MARMIND.
It doesn’t stop there, however. One of the next steps is to boost campaign monitoring.
What is the ROI of a campaign? How many leads does it generate?
To be able to collect all data from on- and offline campaigns, Invesco is planning to integrate other systems, such as Salesforce, and marketing automation and social media monitoring tools.
Ultimately, the idea is to manage the whole lifecycle of a campaign using one centralized platform. Conception, planning, execution, and tracking – all under one roof.
Managing budgets and tracking campaigns effectively
When it comes to the most important features of MARMIND, Paul Carruzzo highlights a few points:
“Thanks to MARMIND, we always know how much we are spending. Being able to compare spending against our budget in real-time allows us to react quickly if needed. If an opportunity crops up, we can repurpose budget quickly. This makes us feel like we are in control. We are in control of our budget and apply good governance.”
He adds:
“That is one thing. And the other thing is that we can track campaigns now. Not only do we know how much we are spending on a specific campaign, but we can also plan campaigns much more easily using functionalities such as the asset pool and the calendar. All of this makes team collaboration much more effective.”
Down from 4 to 0,5 people: Digitalization means getting more done with fewer resources
It usually takes some time before a business can evaluate a software solution to tell if it was the right choice or if it is just another tool that employees are reluctant to use.
What is Paul’s verdict five years after MARMIND was first introduced?
“Our marketing team is so much more efficient now”, he says.
Instead of managing spreadsheets, people can focus on what truly matters: Targeting clients with the key messages, creating better campaigns, and measuring campaign performance to be able to take countermeasures if needed.
Before introducing MARMIND, there were four full-time people taking care of budgeting, measuring campaign performance, controlling spending, and addressing potential issues.
Now there is only one person spending 50% of their time on all these tasks combined.
As Paul puts it:
“Basically, MARMIND has helped our marketing arrive in the 21st century”.
