Six Sigma Marketing...Made Simple

An interesting insight from Sam Decker, who is a Senior Manager of Marketing & eBusiness for Dell, on Six Sigma marketing. We breaks it down really well into 4 principles to apply Six Sigma, or business process improvement, to the marketing organization: 1. First, realize there are three sources of revenue for your company: a. Adding new customers b. Getting existing customers buying more c. Getting existing customers buying more frequently 2. Identify the processes you do within your company to effect each of the above sources of revenue. Keep an eye out... every day employees make a choice to start a new process vs. improve an existing one. 3. Break down these processes into steps. (See Workback Waterfall). Identify the variables that effect the quality (output) of each step. In marketing, sometime quality is a subjective thing…but if you’re measuring your marketing results for each step and the end result (ex: response rate), than quality can be quantified. 4. Now, choose a problem or process to improve and go at it using the DMAICR framework. “Define” and “Measure” the problem or process, “Analyze” why it’s performing poorly, “Improve” it based on your analysis, and “Control” the process to sustain results.