Product overview > What's new summary > New features and functionality > What's new for business users > Management Center enhancements (business user tools)
Marketing tool
The Marketing tool in WebSphere Commerce v7 includes enhancements to features such as the Activity Builder, custom activity templates, dialog activities, and e-Marketing Spots.
- Enhanced Activity Builder gives you more options for designing winning marketing activities
The Activity Builder's drag-and-drop graphical interface has been enhanced to make it easier for you to take advantage of the latest Marketing tool features.
- Marketing activities support new trigger, target, and action elements
Take advantage of three new types of Web activities to motivate customers to make a purchase.
- Custom activity templates speed up marketing activity creation
To save time, you can now create custom activity templates to use as starting point when creating marketing activities. If you have a specific type of Web or Dialog activity that you use repeatedly, you can make a template for that activity type. You can then create new activities based on the template, making required changes, additions, or deletions to the new activity.
- Customer segment management is fully supported in Management Center
You can now create, change and delete customer segments using the Marketing tool in Management Center. This means you no longer need to manage customer segments in WebSphere Commerce Accelerator even though you are using the segments as targets in Management Center activities and promotions. There are also a few new features for building customer segments.
- Customization options extend the capabilities of the Marketing tool
If the default features of the Management Center marketing component do not meet the business needs, you can now customize the component. Supported customization scenarios cover Web and Dialog activities, e-Marketing Spots, and customer segments.
- Dialog activities deliver timely marketing messages beyond the store pages
The Marketing tool now offers a new way to market to the customers: Dialog activities. You can create Dialog activities that are triggered by a specific customer behavior or event, for example, a customer registering or placing an order. You can then respond with a planned marketing action, such as sending a relevant e-mail or text message. This interactive dialog can be ongoing as the customer's behavior on the site changes over time.
- E-Marketing Spot management is fully supported in Management Center
You can now create, change, and delete e-Marketing Spots using the Marketing tool in Management Center. In addition, you can view impression and click statistics for each e-Marketing Spot used in a Web activity to evaluate the success of the marketing efforts.
- New and enhanced marketing statistics views keep you informed
You can now view a wealth of additional statistical data about the marketing activities within the Marketing tool user interface. The statistics are updated while the activities are active, allowing you to track progress and react quickly with changes to improve results. When the activities are over, you can review the statistics to evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing strategies as input to future plans.
- Marketing migration utility lets you manage existing activities in Management Center
By migrating the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator marketing activities to Management Center, you no longer need to switch back and forth between two tools. In addition, you can take advantage of the new features of the Management Center Marketing tool in the migrated activities.
- Mobile marketing opens up a new communications channel
You can now create marketing activities that send text (SMS) messages to the customers. For example, you can text a promotion code to customers to use the next time they visit the site, or tell customers about a surprise sale this afternoon that they cannot miss. This new feature makes it easy to integrate mobile into the marketing strategy.
- Targeting capability supports behavioral targeting
The Marketing tool supports seven new targets, giving you many more options to design targeted marketing activities. The new targets include behavioral targets that detect or record what the customers do while shopping on the site. Now, based on a customer's specific behavior, you can target the customer with relevant and timely advertisements, recommendations, e-mails, and text messages using Web and Dialog activities.
- Web activities support new display options for store pages
When creating a Web activity to display marketing information in an e-Marketing Spot, you can now display promotion recommendations or a list of recently viewed items, in addition to the existing options.
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