Marketing objects

A marketing object is any work product a team develops and reuses in the course of its marketing activities. Marketing objects can represent physical items (such as a letter or banner ad) or a business component (such as a credit card offer, a target segment definition, or a rewards program definition).

You can create new marketing objects if you have permission to do so. After you create a marketing object, you can start it at any time. Starting the marketing object makes it active.

  • You define and manage marketing objects that represent all reusable work products.
  • You can perform basic operations (create, edit, change state, copy, link, and delete) on marketing objects.
  • You enter and manage all of the attributes that define a particular marketing object, such as name, owner, state/status, description.
  • You can define and manage business processes (such as projects) that produce, modify, and retire marketing objects.
  • You can construct robust projects that define multiple marketing activities by "assembling" each discrete marketing activity from existing marketing objects.

HCL® Marketing Operations marketing objects are defined in stages, and how they are defined influences how they are organized and presented to users. The following terms are important in understanding the definition and organization of marketing objects.

Marketing object type

A marketing object type is the highest-level division for marketing objects. An administrator creates marketing object types. Each marketing object type has a menu item, but the menu on which it appears depends on how the administrator configured the marketing object type.

Marketing object template

A marketing object type is broken down into one or more marketing object templates. Typically, an administrator creates a marketing object template for each significant characteristic for the marketing object type.

Marketing object instance

A marketing object instance is a single marketing object. Users with appropriate security permissions create marketing object instances from marketing object templates. Within Marketing Operations, marketing object instances are called "marketing objects".