What is campaign management?

5 min read

If you want to keep track of your goals and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns, then you need to actively manage your marketing activities. By carrying out this process, you can boost ROI, surpass your objectives, and reduce both internal and external pressures. 

In this guide, we’ll delve into the complex world of campaign management, so you can see what the process involves and how it can improve your activities. We’ll start by providing a campaign management definition and then discuss why the process is so important. Following this, we’ll conclude by showing you why campaign management tools like ours can make the process simpler and more powerful. 

Campaign management definition

Before we discuss what campaign management involves and how the process can help you, we first need to define ‘campaign management’.

Put simply, campaign management is the planning, execution, tracking, and analysis of a marketing initiative or campaign.  

Why do you need marketing campaign management?

Whether you’re looking to attract new customers, establish a brand image, improve your customer retention rates, or increase sales, campaign management makes your goal more achievable. 

Although some marketing campaigns may only run on one channel or will target customers in a single city for a short period of time, the majority of modern marketing campaigns now run on multiple channels simultaneously. As a result, tracking the progress of these campaigns can quickly become tricky and time consuming. Ultimately, this means that opportunities and key insights can be missed.

Remember, the success of a marketing campaign isn’t determined by the amount of money you spend. Instead, the success of your campaign is actually determined by how well it’s created, implemented, and assessed. For this reason, by using a campaign management strategy, you can ensure that you correctly identify the target audience, promote the campaign on the correct channels, and implement your plan properly.

In addition, the best marketing campaigns are monitored and improved as they move along. This is because, in marketing, agility is important. After all, no matter how well you plan your campaigns, they sometimes don’t achieve the results you expect. Due to this, you need to know when a campaign is performing poorly, so you can keep everything on track and make the required improvements.

As part of this, you also need to remember that the landscape you’re operating in is constantly evolving and changing. Even if you create a great campaign, you may find that the tastes of your customers change or the goals of your company shift during the execution phase of the campaign. In situations like this, active management is vital. It allows you to spot either of these changes and respond accordingly so that you can still maximise ROI. If you fail to react, your campaign will be ineffective and you’ll waste your budget.

On top of this, marketing campaign management brings structures and order to your marketing activities. It will move you away from creating ad hoc promotions and will ensure that you’re always focusing your messaging so that you meet a specific business objective. Plus, it will also make sure that you’re targeting the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Finally, because high quality campaign management involves monitoring progress at all stages, it makes the process of tracking the overall performance of the campaign easier. As a result, it also improves your understanding of how the campaign has performed and improves your reporting abilities.

What does a marketing campaign manager do?

A marketing manager is primarily responsible for planning and executing marketing activities. Their main responsibilities include:

• Overseeing and scheduling all aspects of the marketing campaign
• Ensuring that the marketing campaign meets the goals and needs of the marketing team
• Reporting results to external stakeholders

Although a marketing campaign manager will likely work with a team of marketers, they will have the final say on decisions relating to the campaign, such as the idea, the budget, and the assets that need to be created. They will also be responsible for briefing those who are creating assets.

On top of this, a marketing campaign manager will usually work closely with sales, sales ops, and external agencies to execute marketing campaigns. They are also responsible for reporting the results to external stakeholders and using these results to inform future campaigns.

How can marketing campaign management tools help?

Although it’s incredibly useful, the process of managing a campaign can be extremely time consuming and laborious if it’s conducted manually. As a result, in order to effectively manage complex campaigns, you need to use campaign management tools.

After all, automating much of the planning and execution of your marketing campaigns can help speed up the process of rolling out and managing a campaign. It can also help keep costs down and ensure you’re maximising your ROI. 

Plus, when using campaign management tools, you can also create repeatable processes and implement workflows that support them. This is invaluable if multiple members of the marketing team have responsibility for managing and implementing campaigns.

Similarly, using marketing campaign management tools also helps marketing teams collaborate and avoid mistakes and delays. This is because these tools can help break down campaign planning and execution into much smaller tasks. All of these tasks can then be assigned to the right team member and the campaign can be monitored throughout.

The powerful role of campaign automation

Managing a campaign can be an exhausting process; particularly if that campaign exists on multiple channels. Thankfully, if you’re managing vast, multi-stage campaigns, then automation software is incredibly useful.

Depending on the exact features it supports, automation software can improve your campaign in a number of ways. It can help you:

• Identify your audience
• Identify suitable distribution methods
• Optimise your workflows
• Analyse metrics
• Reduce your workload

Automation software can help you streamline your processes at all stages of the campaign, including tracking, delivery, and reporting. Plus, during the campaign analysis phase, it can make sure that you don’t miss any key insights.

By using automation software, you can also ensure that your campaigns are optimised. By tracking your campaigns across all channels, you’ll always know what’s working and what isn’t, so you can discontinue some activities and maximise ROI by investing your resources appropriately.

How Apteco’s campaign automation software can help

At Apteco, our campaign management and automation solutions can take your campaigns to the next level. Our software allows you to create, manage, and automate multi-channel, multi-stage, event-driven marketing communications and personalised campaigns. Plus, it also makes it easy for you to share insights and reports in a simple and visual online format.

With our best-in-class software, you can ensure that every piece of marketing is relevant, targeted, and personal. Whether you want to target your customers more effectively, automate your campaigns, segment your customers, or transform your data into actionable insights, you can achieve your goals in a matter of seconds. You’ll never miss an insight and you’ll save both time and money, maximising your ROI in the process.

Interested in learning more about how we can help you? Book a personalised demo. Alternatively, try the software for yourself today.