Making the Most of Marketing Money
What CRM marketing initiatives do you have planned?
Given the immense opportunity afforded by the three initiatives I’ve just mentioned, combined with the complexity required to implement them in the most impactful way, I expect these will remain our areas of focus for the immediate future. Achieving the full potential of these initiatives will require a layered, iterative approach. I anticipate we will test certain approaches, learn from them, and build on them over time. As we get more successful at growing the customer value of certain target segments, we’ll build on this momentum by shifting our focus to other high-priority segments.
What trends have you seen emerge in CRM marketing over the past six to 12 months? How have they impacted the industry in general and your marketing efforts specifically?
Like Shutterfly, other companies are placing greater emphasis on personalization to be more relevant to the customer. In the emails I receive and the retail sites I visit, companies are putting more effort into providing smart, personalized product recommendations based on past purchase behavior, stated interests, and/or what similar customers have purchased. But for the most part, companies are still very much scratching the surface in what they’re doing versus what’s possible.
Organizations are also continuing to shift to an analytics approach whereby marketers have more direct access to customer data, thanks to more user-friendly reporting interfaces. This has allowed marketing teams to leverage real-time insights that can influence their day-to-day marketing decisions. All the while, it frees up the analytics teams to focus on the more sophisticated analyses that can help shape longer-term CRM strategies.
What future trends in CRM marketing do you anticipate, and in what ways do you expect them to impact the industry and your marketing efforts?
One is the use of predictive analytics to enable personalized consumer experiences. While this is not new for some companies, greater adoption of machine learning with more reliable predictive algorithms opens the possibility for companies to use predictive in bigger and better ways than ever before.
The other concerns the role of mobile as companies strive to create a more seamless experience across all customer channels. I expect companies to rethink how they market and serve customers who primarily interact with them via mobile channels and even rethink bigger questions, such as the role of mobile apps and how apps and traditional websites can more effectively complement each other to better serve the customer.
What advice would you give organizations looking to improve their CRM marketing initiatives?
Think big when it comes to your CRM initiatives. Map out the utopia end state you want to reach as an organization without allowing constraints to limit your initial thinking. And then work backwards to outline how you get there over time via phased approaches that parse the required work into more digestible chunks.
Remember that there are right ways and wrong ways to define your CRM strategy. Identify up front your measures of success and never lose sight of them along your journey. Your strategies should always give you confidence that you are on track to achieve success. If that’s not the case, you are probably veering off course. Your strategies should be driven by customer data and insights, not by technology considerations. Technology should support the strategy, not the other way around.
Expect to experience setbacks along the way, and don’t let them stop you from achieving your ultimate objectives. The key is taking the time to fully understand why the setback occurred and then using those learnings to correct your approach going forward.
Lastly, remember that the “C” in CRM stands for customer. Make sure you’re considering the needs of the customer in everything you do, and if you approach it with that mentality, you will greatly increase your chances of success.
Assistant Editor Sam Del Rowe can be reached at sdelrowe@infotoday.com.