Administering marketing

To support marketing features in the , there are a number of administration tasks that you might need to perform. Use the Marketing tool in the to create and manage marketing campaigns and other store content, excluding catalog content. You can use the extensive precision marketing features in the tool to deliver targeted marketing messages to customers.

About this task

Important: For the Marketing component to function correctly in a clustered environment. Use the HCL Cache with Redis.

The following screen capture provides a quick look at some of the Marketing tool capabilities:

The left pane, called the explorer view, lists the types of marketing objects you can create and manage by using the Marketing tool.
The right pane shows an example of how you can set up a web activity to display a targeted ad on a store page by using a graphical editor that is called the Activity Builder.

What to do next

Here is a summary of tasks you can perform in the marketing tool:


Tasks	Details	For more information
Display marketing information and other store content on your store pages	Manage e-Marketing Spots, which are the spaces on your store pages that are reserved for marketing information and other store content. Create web activities to display information in e-Marketing Spots. Web activities can display: Marketing images Recommendations for categories and products, including cross-sells and up-sells A list of a customer's recently viewed products or categories Lists of best-selling or top-browsed products Personalize the marketing information that is displayed in e-Marketing Spots by adding targets to web activities. You can target specific customers that are based on factors such as: The customer segment to which they belong Their shopping cart contents or purchase history Their behavior while shopping on your site, for example, their catalog browsing or searching behavior	Managing e-Marketing Spots Creating a web activity Targets in marketing activities
Manage the support material that is created for your campaigns	Create marketing content to contain your marketing images, mobile text messages, and other images and text for display in e-Marketing Spots. You can specify click actions for marketing content, if required. You can create marketing image content that contains an image map. An image map can be associated with image content to provide multiple click actions within a single image. If Commerce Lab is integrated with an external content management system such as IBM Web Content Manager, you can retrieve content from this external system for use as marketing content.	Managing marketing content Manage content externally for use in the Commerce Lab Creating marketing content to display on store pages
Create email marketing campaigns	Create email activities to send targeted emails to specific customer segments. Create email templates with dynamic content that changes according to who receives the email message. If Commerce Lab is integrated with IBM Marketing Center, you can use IBM Marketing Center to create marketing campaigns and send personalized (email) communications to target specific customers. You can send customers information about Commerce+ promotions and deliver promotion codes that are exported from Commerce Lab to the customers.	Managing email activities Managing email templates Creating campaigns in IBM Marketing Center for promotions
Create marketing activities that are triggered by specific customer behavior or events	Create dialog activities to wait for a specific customer behavior or event, and then respond to the customer with timely and relevant marketing messages. For example: When a customer registers, send the customer a thank you email message that contains some promotional advertisements. When a customer abandons a shopping cart for 3 days, send the customer an email message as a reminder of their recent shopping visit. Issue the customer a coupon for 20% off their order. Target specific customers that are based on factors such as: The customer segment to which they belong Their shopping cart contents or purchase history Their behavior while shopping on your site, for example, their catalog browsing or searching behavior	Creating a dialog activity Targets in marketing activities
Experiment with your web activities	Perform A/B and multivariate testing to maximize the effectiveness of your web activities. For example, for web activities, you can experiment with different content, different locations on store pages, different customer segments, or different targets. Then, choose the best option to use going forward.	Managing marketing experiments
Create customer segments	Define customer segments by selecting a group of customer attributes that are relevant to your marketing strategy. The Marketing tool supports various attributes that cover demographic data, registration status, purchase history, and so on. You also can build customer segments that are based on specific customer behavior, such as catalog browsing or search behavior. You can then use these customer segments as targets for advertising, promotions, and suggestive selling. As a Marketing Manager, Seller, or Marketing Director, you can export customer segment information into a file, such as the email addresses of all customers in a segment. Only a Marketing Director can download the customer segment export file to a local file system.	Managing customer segments Action: Add To or Remove From Customer Segment Exporting customer segment information
Organize and manage marketing campaigns	Create campaigns to organize related marketing activities. Manage the scheduling of marketing activities in a calendar tool. If Commerce Lab is integrated with IBM Marketing Center, you can use IBM Marketing Center to create marketing campaigns and send personalized communications to target specific customers. You can send customers information about Commerce+ promotions and deliver promotion codes that are exported from Commerce Lab to the customers.	Managing campaigns Browsing for activities using lists and calendars Creating campaigns in IBM Marketing Center for promotions
Organize marketing objects into folders	Create and use marketing folders to group references to e-Marketing Spots, marketing activities, marketing content, and customer segments. With marketing folders, you can improve browsing for, and managing your marketing objects.	Organizing marketing objects with folders
View statistics that are related to marketing activities	Analyze the progress and results of your marketing activities by viewing statistical data, such as impressions and click-through rates.	Managing activity statistics
Preview marketing information about store pages	View your marketing changes on your storefront before you publish the changes to your live store. Options include previewing your store: At a virtual date and time As a specific customer, for example, a customer who belongs to a specific customer segment or who exhibits a target online behavior You can also use the store preview to see the names and locations of e-Marketing Spots on each store page.	Previewing a store Testing web activities
Create templates for marketing activities that you use repeatedly	To save time, create templates of your marketing activities. Then, you can use the templates as starting points.	Managing custom activity templates
Search	Search for your campaigns, activities, templates, e-Marketing Spots, marketing content, and customer segments.	Finding objects in Commerce Lab

See Marketing Tool for more information.