We hear about analytics solutions on an almost daily basis. Businesses are expected to invest increasingly in these solutions over the next three years, so the competition among solution makers is fierce.
Established brands have looked to extend features so that their analytics include applications and data alongside websites. Those features can also add planning complexity for marketers, needing a playbook more extensive than an NFL team. That complexity is the price paid for planning advanced marketing strategies. eMarketer noted spending on programmatic advertising will increase, with multichannel measurement at the center of the strategy. Yet over the last year, surveys have indicated that marketers struggle with implementing multichannel marketing strategies.
Fortunately a few firms are starting to devise better channel management. One of those is CampaignChain, a Germany-based company with offices in the US. The firm offers an open-source campaign management software for monitoring digital marketing campaigns across multiple communication channels. The suite covers channels ranging from social media such as Twitter and Facebook to third-party CMS, e-commerce and CRM tools.
If this integrated feature set sounds a bit like an enterprise analytics solution, you’d be right on the money. Enterprise solutions such as Adobe Analytics and Webtrends have been refining their reporting to include more channels. But such solutions are proprietary and require extensive training, aspects that don’t fit every marketing team. CampaignChain, however, includes open source capabilities, drawing developers to build on the value to the software. That aids marketers looking for a flexible channel management tool, as well as those who find themselves priced out of the enterprise solutions market.
I spoke with CampaignChain founder and chief developer, Sandro Groganz. Like many other tech startup founders who pursued start up dreams, Groganz–who has been programming since 2000–left his university studies to grow his business prowess. As marketing manager for an agency dealing with open source, he became aware of the benefits of open source development. That led in turn to seeking tools that could automate channels. Ultimately, it led to CampaignChain.”CampaignChain is an open source solution that in essence blends an executive’s timeline with a campaign calendar. The software allows for optimization that fits a marketing campaign with a team’s need to respond. So it determines if Tuesday is a hot day for a campaign or if Sunday is a cold day.”
“As a marketing hub,” Groganz explained, “CampaignChain was designed to ease creating modules that can incorporate a channel into the reporting. So many open source components are out there. We offer a cloud solution more tailored to leverage those components to meet customer needs.”
Groganz believes his technology experience in Europe inspires his approach to privacy. He recognizes privacy as a growing concern among analytics solution providers. “Privacy is a delicate line to walk,” he says. “Spending time in Germany provided me with a sensitivity and sensibility to privacy issues. We plan to make our offering US-biased, understanding a European perspective, while taking the best advantage of privacy rights available.”
For 2016, CampaignChain will continue to expand its roster of PR agency clients, as well as adding an improved Google Analytics Integration Report. The report lets analyst correlate Website traffic with metrics of activities such as Facebook likes or comments. To try this and other aspects of the solution, check out the free private beta trial being offered until the end of January.
