View Point: When Marketing Meets Content Management

By Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler

When marketing meets content management, good things can happen. I’ve worked on web-based marketing projects with innovative marketing pros who understand the relationship between content management and marketing. It’s about relationships. They “get it” because it makes sense. Delivering the right information, to the right people, at the right time, in the right format is what marketing is all about. Sure, marketing is still about selling a brand, a message or making an attractive offer. But when marketing is married to content management, the effort and response is measurable. In short, content management allows marketers to take relationship marketing to the next level.

Babcock and Jenkins gets this concept. Their Web Profiler technology is built upon a “connected marketing” strategy that provides dynamically generated, personalized marketing content to web site visitors based on their personal interests (user profile).

Of course, marketers are often ahead of the game when it comes to leveraging content management technologies. Personalized content is fast becoming a hot business topic. It’s the focus of this year’s Content Management Professionals (CM Pros) Fall CM Summit. Content management professionals from around the globe will discuss the role taxonomies, content models, and metadata play when using a content management system to deliver personalized content on demand. If you’re not a member of CM Pros already, consider joining today. Membership is a steal at $50 annually.

Marketing and content management are natural allies. In fact, marketing is often the driver for content management adoption in many organizations. Earlier this year I was a judge in the e-Content Institute’s 2005 e-Content Product Awards. Hot Banana was the clear winner in the Content Management Software/System category. Selecting them was easy—they “got it”. They understand the need to deliver concise, consistent, relevant information to their target audiences on demand.

It’s no surprise to see Hot Banana teaming up with the email marketing gurus at ExactTarget. This Indianapolis-based firm delivers on-demand email permission-based email marketing services to The Home Depot, General Mills, Scotts, Bristol-Myers Squibb and thousands of other organizations. They’re a perfect partner for Hot Banana.

According to a press release from Hot Banana, the deal will produce “a complete and integrated Web Content Management Suite and Active Marketing Solution…ExactTarget’s permission-based email marketing campaigns drive qualified visitors to Web sites that are not always optimized for eMarketing. Hot Banana solves that problem,” says Chris Baggott, chief marketing officer and co-founder of ExactTarget. 

The success of the partnership remains to be seen. But, from my vantage point, it’s good news for the marketing industry and another step forward for content management.