How Deutsche Telekom Uses MARMIND to Transform Its Marketing
With its SMARTMARKETING initiative, Europe’s leading telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom set out some time ago to boost its digital marketing.
Besides a set of other tools, MARMIND was introduced to plan, monitor, and manage marketing campaigns.
As a result, workflows have become more transparent and collaboration with both team members and external contributors is much easier.
Best mobile network, best customer service, and one of the best fixed networks in Germany – a recent customer survey carried out by Connect left no doubt as to why Deutsche Telekom is Europe’s leading telecommunications company.
Besides mobile, television, and smart home products, the portfolio also includes MagentaTV – Germany’s most comprehensive television offering, which was rated outstanding in Connect’s IPTV test.
“Some of my co-workers have told me that MARMIND helps them complete projects much faster.”
Frank Friese, MARMIND Subproject Manager at Deutsche Telekom
Outdated Tools Hinder Marketing Optimization and Efficiency Increases
Before launching the SMARTMARKETING digitization initiative, Deutsche Telekom was relying on traditional tools such as e-mail, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides to plan, implement, and track its marketing activities – despite the organization’s size and complexity.
Consisting of several hundred people, the marketing team was getting by with these outdated tools. However, they were struggling to optimize campaigns and increase efficiency. The Office suite just did not offer enough flexibility, especially when it came to being able to react to changes quickly.
The fact that the marketing team was not using the right tools did not only affect planning and implementation but also campaign monitoring and management.
If somebody wanted to give a concise overview of the relevant KPIs from different sources, they had to put in tremendous effort, as Niklas Pfützenreuter, Media Analyst at Deutsche Telekom, explains:
“We had many different KPIs from different systems. However, there wasn’t something such as a central dashboard. We couldn’t see all our KPIs at a glance.”
If someone wanted to measure campaign performance, they had to find the right data, consolidate them, and prepare a report. Because analysis often only took place after a campaign had ended, ongoing campaigns could not be adjusted.
SMARTMARKETING: Different Tools, All Combined into One Central Marketing Portal
When Deutsche Telekom’s SMARTMARKETING digitization initiative kicked off, one of the first steps was to find suitable tools that could be combined into a central marketing portal.
During a pilot project, MARMIND proved to be the best tool for planning, implementing, tracking, and managing marketing campaigns.
Apart from its features, it was mainly the people behind MARMIND that made the difference, as Wolfgang Gröning, Program Director of the SMARTMARKETING project, highlights:
“To us, it was very important who we are going to work with. A vendor needs to understand our needs. We didn’t want to work with someone who will tell us what their product can and cannot do. We were looking for a vendor that will always find a way to implement our requirements.”
Quick Wins: Using MARMIND, Projects Can Be Completed Much Faster than Before
With all that in mind, Deutsche Telekom found MARMIND to be the best fit for them.
Once they had found the right software, they wanted to start implementing it quickly. The implementation process – one of the decisive stages when introducing a new tool – turned out to be rather smooth.
Deutsche Telekom has been using MARMIND for about six months now. Even though the marketing team is still getting used to the new tool, they are excited about all the options it offers:
“Of course people have to change the way they work and that takes time. Yet, there are so many aha moments where someone goes ‘Wow, amazing, it just works so well!’, Frank says.
What many people are also realizing now is how much time and effort they were putting in before, as Frank explains: “Some of my co-workers have told me that MARMIND helps them complete projects much faster.”
Building Accountable and Transparent Workflows
Even though Deutsche Telekom has only been using MARMIND for a few months, they have already noticed how much the tool helps them when it comes to structuring and professionalizing workflows.
Here are the main gains:
- No more versioning chaos: Central file storage means that content is easy to find. Thanks to automated versioning, all team members know which version is the most recent.
- Efficient project management: To-do lists with deadlines allow all team members to see what the status of a project is.
- Collaboration with team members and external agencies: Instead of sending e-mails, communication takes place directly in a file, a to-do, a campaign, etc.
- Standardized terminology: Naming conventions ensure clear structures.
When it comes to the main advantage of using MARMIND, however, it is not an individual feature that makes that difference – what makes the tool really stand out is the way it integrates different process steps.
Instead of being separate processes, campaign planning, monitoring, and management are now intertwined, as Niklas explains:
“The idea is to use the insights gained from monitoring to manage ongoing campaigns and to plan future activities. Up until now, we didn’t have a central dashboard to help us make informed decisions quickly.”
Now that they are using MARMIND, everyone on the marketing team feels like there is much more accountability and transparency than before.
Plans for the Future: MARMIND as an App and Smarter Decisions with Machine Learning
Although Deutsche Telekom’s journey with MARMIND has only started, there are already some ideas on how they could use the tool in the future:
“It would be great if there was a MARMIND smartphone app. That way, you could add to-dos on the go or quickly check the status of a project.”, Frank says, adding that he has already started discussing such an app with the MARMIND team.
Wolfgang is convinced that machine learning will be the next big thing in marketing:
“In the future, machine learning will help us automate repetitive tasks and take routine decisions based on automated forecasts.”, he says.
Taking digital transformation to the next level – that is how you could sum up Deutsche Telekom’s approach to digitization.
To them, digitization is not just about introducing modern tools. It’s about combining digital tools, allowing them to interact with each other.
Ultimately, it’s about professionalizing workflows and – you’ve guessed it – about doing marketing the smart way.
About SMARTMARKETING:
SMARTMARKETING is the title of a large-scale transformation project aiming to digitize Deutsche Telekom’s marketing. The idea is not only to introduce new tools, but to fundamentally change workflows.
Instead of co-existing, software solutions are combined into a central portal. Covering two out of four areas in marketing, MARMIND is used to plan, manage and monitor all marketing activities in Germany.
