Keen Planning Module Overview
The Keen Planning Module is a standalone planning and optimization tool that lets you build data-informed marketing plans without needing to load your own historical data first. By describing your business, your marketing mix, and your goals, you get a forecast and an optimized plan in minutes — powered by Keen's Marketing Elasticity Engine (MEE).
This makes the Planning Module the fastest way to start planning in Keen, and a powerful tool for exploring scenarios, evaluating new tactics, and building defensible plans when a full model isn't yet available.
How It's Different from Keen Professional
Keen offers two approaches to marketing planning, and it's important to understand which one you're working in:
| Planning Module | Keen Professional |
|---|---|---|
Data required | No historical data upload needed | Requires historical sales and investment data |
How it works | Draws on MEE network priors from 400+ brands and $16B in annual media investment | Custom-fits a statistical model to your specific historical time series |
Best for | Fast planning, new clients, thin-data situations, scenario exploration | Deep measurement, precise ROI attribution, ongoing optimization |
Precision | Probability ranges informed by industry patterns | Tighter ranges calibrated to your actual data |
You can upgrade from the Planning Module to Keen Professional at any time, your existing plans and settings carry over, talk with your Account Direction for more information on upgrading.
What You Can Do with the Planning Module
Build a plan fast — Define your business scope, marketing mix, financials, and objectives, and get a fully optimized media plan in under an hour
Pitch with confidence — Generate defensible, risk-adjusted forecasts for new clients or prospects without waiting on a data lift
Explore new tactics — Model the expected return on channels you haven't run before, using MEE's cross-industry patterns
Compare scenarios — Run multiple plans side by side with different budgets, objectives, or constraints to find the best path forward
Optimize current accounts — Get an optimization recommendation against your existing mix without building a full MMM
How It Works
The Planning Module is powered by Keen's Engine — a patent-pending, dynamic network of connected marketing performance patterns built from real brand data. When you describe your business (industry, scale, tactics, seasonality), you activate the relevant nodes in that network. Keen then assembles a performance structure specific to your context and runs 1,000 simulated outcomes to produce probability-based forecasts.
Rather than optimizing to historical average ROAS, Keen optimizes to marginal ROI (mROI) — the forecasted profit return on your next dollar of spend, accounting for diminishing returns, long-term effects, seasonality, and operating margin. This means every dollar in your plan is placed where it will do the most good.
For a deeper explanation, see How it Works.
Getting Started
New to the Planning Module? Follow the step-by-step guide to build your first plan:
Define Your Scope — Describe your business segment
Set Your Financials — Define revenue, margin, and KPIs
Add Your Tactics — List the marketing channels to plan against
Set Your Business Environment — Account for seasonality and external factors
Set Plan Objectives — Define the "what if" scenarios to explore
Apply Constraints — Add real-world budget and timing rules
Review Results — See forecasts and optimization recommendations
Or start with the full Step-by-Step Guide for a single walkthrough.