by Lee Dussinger
The most exciting and multifaceted marketing campaigns all start in the same place: a plan. Whether it’s an omnichannel content push or a DTC eComm blitz, it all begins as just a plan. The marketing leaders who create these all-important plans have never had a dedicated strategy/planning platform…until now. Introducing Opal’s Campaign Planner, the best marketing planning software platform.
Despite the critical importance of getting marketing strategy planning right, there was no purpose-built solution available. Countless high-level marketing leaders were doing some of their most important work in Google Sheets and Excel documents—and they didn’t love that experience.
That’s why we spent over two years researching this challenge and learning from 100+ enterprise marketing leaders to build Campaign Planner.
Explore the unique features that make for the best marketing planning software…
Essential Features of the Best Marketing Strategy Software
While Campaign Planner is already replacing spreadsheets for marketing planning, it needed to offer more marketing-specific features than spreadsheets. Campaign Planner needed to be the best marketing strategy software by truly improving the experience of marketing planning.
Here’s how creating marketing strategies in Campaign Planner works:
- Create a Plan – Name and create your new plan, bringing up a blank canvas.
- Set the Foundation – Note key dates and set the types of big-picture campaigns you’ll be running in swimlanes.
- Import Data – Bring in and format the most important KPIs to reference while planning.
- Place & Arrange Campaign Blocks – Organize your campaign blocks to represent your initiatives.
- Fill Out Briefs – Click into the campaign blocks to provide details or instructions for each of your initiatives.
- Edit & Add Work – As work begins on the campaigns, you’ll edit your plans. You can even connect finished content or work-in-progress content to the campaign blocks.
To explore the differences behind our product, we’re showcasing the exclusive features of Campaign Planner and why it’s the best marketing strategy software.
1. Key Data at Hand
Your marketing strategy software is, of course, a place to create new ideas. However, records of what happened in the past are a key part of that. That’s why embedding KPIs along with the planning space is such a critical component of Campaign Planner. This feature enables users to import and format key data points in the planning space, with that key data then plotted as a graph in swimlanes across the top of the planning area.
Why It Matters: Your plans can be informed and influenced by the most relevant KPIs. For annual marketing planning, for example, these KPIs often include the prior years total numbers of leads, engagements or impressions. While this feature doesn’t include every point of data possible, it allows you to curate the data you need while creating your plans for what’s next. The outcome is that your plans become smarter and more data-informed from the very beginning.
2. Depth for Details
One of the biggest flaws of marketing planning in a spreadsheet is that you’re forced to cram complicated ideas into minuscule cells. The nuances of your plans are often forced to live in another document—or worse, be truncated into meaninglessness. Opal’s Campaign Planner solves this by allowing every Campaign Block to open up into a detailed view.
Why It Matters: Marketing is complex. You cannot convey the specifics of a campaign in a tiny cell in an Excel sheet. By having a detail view for every block, you can share the full context of each campaign in the planning space. This means you have one source of truth for all campaign materials, complete with details for each campaign.
3. Visual Format
Marketing is an inherently visual discipline. Spreadsheets are built for data, making them less visual. The best marketing strategy software must have a visual layout to provide information and context. In the Opal Campaign Planner, this visual nature means that users can see a wealth of information about their plans at a glance. For example, users can identify when campaigns overlap, when they begin and end, key dates for the brand, the creative concepts that accompany each campaign, and much more.
Why It Matters: Ultimately, a visual platform ensures that users truly understand the strategy. This is one of the reasons why visual marketing planning software is superior. You can see the interplay between campaigns and messaging, ensuring that you’re planning the right messages for the market.
4. Intuitive Controls
Compared to planning in a spreadsheet, a marketing strategy software should feel like a significant upgrade. The Opal Campaign Planner makes representing any type of marketing plan intuitive. This is accomplished through easy drag-and-drop controls, layouts that adapt as other blocks move, simple block resizing, easy groupings, color coding, and more.
Why It Matters: Your efforts should focus on generating great strategic ideas—not battling to make a spreadsheet work for you. That’s why simple and intuitive controls are crucial for marketing planning software. You’ll save yourself headaches and be able to do the work that matters. Particularly for something like your annual marketing planning documents—where revisions are likely—you’ll want edits to be easy.
5. Privacy & Sharing
Your dedicated marketing strategy software will serve as the repository for your organization’s most sensitive high-level plans. The ability to keep those plans secure while inviting in collaborators is crucial. In Opal Campaign Planner, all plans are private by default but can take advantage of Opal’s permissions system.
Why It Matters: This feature is important because you want to include the right people for collaboration without risking exposure to the wrong individuals. Advanced privacy functions allow entire groups or functions to collaborate on strategy without making it available organization-wide.
6. Connections to Content
One element that makes Campaign Planner the best marketing strategy software is how it provides context for every campaign. While that context often appears as a written brief, it can also include real-life content. Opal users can embed finished or work-in-progress content into their strategies.
Why It Matters: This creates strategic alignment by demonstrating how campaign ideas are supported by actual finished work.
Stop Planning Your Marketing in Spreadsheets
Given that the martech ecosystem is extraordinarily crowded in 2024, you might expect a category of products dedicated to high-level marketing planning. Surprisingly, that’s not the case.
From our research, the vast majority of marketing planning occurs in spreadsheets. This trend holds true from mid-sized brands to multiple Fortune 10 companies…
The most important marketing plans in the world are being executed in Excel documents and Google Sheets.
Here’s why that’s a problem and why Campaign Planner is such a significant upgrade:
Spreadsheets Lack Detail & Context – To gain more information on any aspect of your plan in a spreadsheet, you must leave that spreadsheet. You end up with a web of different briefs all linked to your plan—not a single source of truth for strategy.
Spreadsheets Aren’t Visual – Transitioning from a dull platform built for numbers to a visual one designed for marketing elevates your planning.
Spreadsheets Have No Version Control – By adopting a central marketing strategy platform, you have one up-to-date source of truth. In contrast, with random strategy spreadsheets, you can never be 100% confident you’re looking at the right version or the most current iteration.
Spreadsheets Get Lost – In an organization that produces numerous spreadsheets and strategy documents, losing the most important ones is certainly possible. However, when everyone builds strategies in a central platform, you always know where to find your annual marketing plan or other guiding strategic documents.
Spreadsheets are Tedious to Edit – Plans almost always change—that’s a reality of marketing. The best marketing planning software needs to be easy to edit when plans shift. Spreadsheets are notoriously frustrating to reconfigure.
Use Case: Annual Marketing Planning
To understand why we say Campaign Planner is the best marketing strategy software, see how it handles a common use case: annual marketing planning.
What to Notice:
- Quarterly format
- Three tier 1 campaigns mapped out
- Key dates noted that might impact campaigns noted
- Graphed KPIs (Impressions, Shares & Engagement)
- Images for each campaign
Demo Opal’s Dedicated Marketing Planning Solution Today
Ready to discover the best marketing planning platform? Our team would love to give you a tour of the product!
