Interesting article by Ian Lovatt, CEO, Blue Sheep
As marketers we need to make the most out of any technology we’ve invested in, not lease during a time of economic slowdown. You may have invested time and funds into a CRM system, so it’s vital to be able to use the tools you have, to their best effect. So how can you and your business use CRM in order to communicate effectively with each and every customer, to deliver a substantial return on investment?
The Challenge
We all should be aware of the problems which often arise with CRM systems. The difficulties lay with co-ordinating customer-facing activities across several interaction points for each customer segment. All organisations need to invest time and efforts into CRM systems in order to put a solid strategy in place for customer servicing, selling and marketing to different customers, dependent on their value.
Understand your CRM insight to unlock its true potential
It’s crucial for all brands to adopt a thorough approach to their current CRM strategy and be able to clearly identify the different value levels for each customer segment. This ensures that as a business you recognise your high value customers and are able to provide all customers with the right service through their desired channels and differentiate service levels based on the importance of each customer to you overall business.
Use your insight to drive more spend
Once organisations have grasped and fully understand their marketing data, businesses are at an advantage of using this insight and applying this knowledge by optimising cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. This allows us, as marketers to send the right marketing message and the right offers to the right customers through the right channels at the right times. This approach will allow brands to develop key relationships with their customers, a powerful tool for any business.
Identify unprofitable customers
Once you are communicating effectively to all appropriate customer segments (yes, it may well be that you choose not to proactively communicate to some loss-making segments with little or no future potential), your business will be in a strong position to leverage diverse products and services into “bundles” that meet the specific requirements for each and every high value customer at various points within the life stages. Low value customers can also be managed in a more effective and timely manner. As an organisation, you will be in a position to determine which low value customers are not profitable and will eventually need to be managed out of the business.
Keep your customers
Once you get to grips with your CRM strategy, opportunities won’t be missed to increase share of wallet. Customer attrition can be significantly reduced and the right balance can be addressed with under and over investing to all customers ensuring each and every customer gets the right amount of attention as and when is needed.
Everyone is different
As a marketer it’s vital to know that every customer is truly different. No longer can we treat customers in a uniform manner without damaging our brands reputation. Companies that fail to take into account the importance of a particular customer (or group of customers) are probably under-investing in CRM projects that benefit the most profitable customers, and over-investing in CRM projects that benefit less profitable customers. Also if you do not differentiate between the specific needs, preferences and expectations of individual customers then you risk missing revenue opportunities and losing valued customers to major competitors.
