In case you missed it, our Now Tech report on cross-channel campaign management (CCCM) in Asia Pacific is out, which covers 27 key CCCM players in the region.

Contextual, relevant, and personalized are the three words that every customer longs for and every marketer strives for. The pace of consumer behavior change has mutated this year as a result of COVID-19. Today, consumers are attached to their devices, drowning in content, and conditioned to seamless experiences. They’re savvy, quick to adapt to change, and expect brands that they engage with to be in lockstep with them. That’s where a CCCM solution comes in.

Forrester defines cross-channel campaign management 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.” It’s a crucial piece of the marketing technology stack that firms should invest in, as it helps deliver contextually relevant, personalized customer experiences. CCCM also helps marketers interact with consumers in moments that occur throughout the customer lifecycle and across the full spectrum of physical and digital experiences, devices, and consumer- and/or brand-initiated engagement.

CCCM Is Unfolding A Different Story In Asia Pacific

Marketers in Asia Pacific (APAC) are trying to unlock this value. According to the Forrester Analytics Business Technographics® Marketing Survey, 2020, 62% of B2C marketing decision-makers in APAC have already implemented CCCM; one-fourth of them are even expanding it further.

However, a CCCM solution with strong capabilities in email marketing and PC-centric engagement is not enough for B2C marketers in APAC, who require sophisticated mobile engagement across mobile touchpoints, such as messaging apps like Line and WeChat, and deep integration with local digital ecosystems, such as e-commerce marketplaces Lazada, Shopee, and Tmall. Marketers should evaluate vendors based on their ability to help:

  • Build deep understanding throughout the customer journey. The ability to track a single customer throughout their journey is the basis of deep customer understanding. Effective CCCM solutions use customer data integration and transformation and cross-channel identity resolution to build and maintain customer profiles for analytics and segmentation.
  • Orchestrate outbound interactions across touchpoints. Marketers use various tactics and touchpoints to drive brand awareness, consideration, retention, and enrichment. Good CCCM solutions help orchestrate these outbound interactions across online and offline touchpoints with marketer-friendly workflows for campaign planning, design, and execution.
  • Deliver mobile-first, market-relevant experiences. To address mobile-first consumers in APAC, B2C marketers adopt mobile-centric marketing approaches and aggressively invest in social, messaging apps, and e-commerce marketing. Effective CCCM solutions activate data across key local mobile and digital platforms that marketers use daily to engage customers.

The competition among Western, regional, and local CCCM players is on. To get the best value from their CCCM investment, marketers in APAC should use the analysis of 15 functional capabilities to select the vendors that can best support their key omnichannel, moments-based customer engagement needs. Forrester clients can access the full Now Tech report.

In addition, we’ve identified the most significant CCCM players in the region and are currently analyzing them using the Forrester Wave™ evaluation framework. This report will be published in May. Stay tuned! For questions about CCCM or marketing technology strategy in APAC, please schedule an inquiry with me.

(coauthored with Sukriti Dangi, senior research associate)