Consumers say they are bombarded by advertising, but measuring ROI from today’s multi-level campaigns is no easy feat for marketers, either. Which consumers are buying products? Who’s joining loyalty programs? Are online promotions prompting purchases? Is text messaging integrated properly?
80/20 Solutions has the answer to these questions and more.

80/20’s MCC platform enables marketers to execute and manage multi-channel campaigns while tracking consumer behavior—all from one platform.

“We’re really the only tool that has mobile (tracking and reporting) combined with online,” – Andrew Muroff, COO.

The pain of integrated campaigns

Today’s marketing campaigns often use different vendors for different mediums. For large campaigns, companies can expect to deal with e-mail service providers, mobile vendors, web designers, and analytics agents.

“The problem is, from a consumer’s standpoint, that (the campaign) looks disjointed. There’s no fluid experience. Your profile is stored in five different databases, they don’t communicate with each other in real time. So you’ll get a mobile message two days after you signed up for a program via email, and that’s because that’s the earliest those two systems could sync together,” CEO Steve Irvine says.

“Sales, HR and finance all have really good processes in place, from a technical [software] perspective. Marketers don’t really have that level of software assistance,” – Steve Irvine

80/20’s solution is attracting big league attention. Industry leaders, including Pepsi-Cola Canada Ltd. and Hershey Canada Inc., have used it in high-profile campaigns. Proximity Canada, named Marketing Magazine’s “Digital Agency of the Year” in 2006, and many others applaud the platform.

Tie-ins that actually tie-in (to a database)

The MCC platform allows user differentiation on multiple variables, including custom attributes such as a preference for diet vs regular pop. The MCC can be configured to automatically send personalized text messages and emails to customers based on their actions. If ‘Bobby’ text messages a product PIN to an MCC client, the platform can automatically send him a coupon via e-mail in real time.

“You [have] to make sure that all the campaigns you’re running—the mobile, online campaigns and each advertisement that you’re doing—[are] integrated and connected so that you can get one single view of your consumer and you can track consumers’ experiences across all your channels,” explains Irvine.

“The idea is to create a platform on the backend that can manage all the touch points with your consumers,”

Putting the 80/20 rule into practice

The 80 per cent / 20 per cent metric is a familiar one in marketing circles, but 80/20 adds a little bit more ooomph to the idea.

“The concept behind the name is two-fold. First, there’s the 80/20 rule: twenty per cent of your customers usually represent 80 per cent of your revenue,” explains Irvine. “What we wanted was to help companies identify who those top customers were so that they could market to them differently. The other side is that 80 per cent of (MCC’s) functionality, from a technical standpoint, is the same, and 20 percent is customization.”

Their template-based platform has been a success. In the three years since Irvine and Shane Sincich (both in their mid-twenties) started the company it’s grown considerably. They now boast 17 employees, a Geneva office, a new and expansive office in the Davisville area and are poised to open a sales office in New York City.

Sometimes frustration is the greatest muse

Their company almost never was. 80/20 Solutions was originally a division of the now-defunct Motion Media Interactive (MMI). “MCC stemmed [from] a project we were working on for a big client. We were getting a lot of deadlines and pressure from the client. We reached this point where we felt helpless,” says Irvine. “It was a crystallization of the thought that ‘we shouldn’t be middlemen here. We should be able to put this in the hands of our clients and let them do it themselves. That’s where it all started.”

Empowering non-technical marketers with the ability to control their content wasn’t easy. “The biggest challenge for us was to make a steady process that still enables marketing companies to do the creative things they want,” starts Chief Usability Officer, Shane Sincich. Muroff is quick to finish his thought: “The challenge was to create a workflow that marketers find friendly.”

And they have. MCC users don’t need to know code, nor are they constrained by a technical maze. The interface uses coloured boxes and menus to separate the different functionalities and stages of a campaign, from campaign management to analytics. Customer support is always available, but users tend to master the platform after a short workshop. “It’s kind of like paint-by-numbers and you end up with a Mona Lisa,” says Irvine.

80/20 = 4 close-knit executives

Customer feedback and quarterly software updates enable 80/20 to deliver exactly what their customers want. But a wealth of industry experience doesn’t hurt either. Muroff, the elder of the company’s executive foursome, started his own ISP company while studying law at Michigan State. He opted to stick with technology, eventually packing his bags and moving to Toronto, where he was the President of SoftQuad Software Ltd.

Roland Lopes, in his mid-thirties, runs the back end of the MCC. 80/20’s Chief Technical Officer, he’s been working in IT and consulting for over a decade. Sincich, the man in charge of the user experience, studied multimedia design production at Humber College, where he graduated at the top of his class. Irvine, the lone ‘suit’, started his career as a technology analyst in venture capital companies, later founding MMI.

An aura of genuine friendship surrounds the four, and it’s a camaraderie they try to cultivate with all staff. “We really try to build a culture where people are happy here, that they’re happy to come in every morning,” starts Irvine. “The four of us are all involved in the hiring process, to make sure there’s a personality fit with the new people coming in. Make the environment fun and you’ll get more results out of your employees.”

A gym facility will be installed soon, perhaps to burn off some of the calories from their regular terrace bar-b-ques and monthly dinners. They operate on flextime, and borrowing from the retail and service sectors, there is a coveted “employee of the month” award.

Muroff smiles. “We work hard, we play hard.”

With a product that melds online, mobile and traditional campaigns and a cohesive, upbeat work environment, 80/20 seems to have found a formula for turning integration into art.