DIGITAS PERSPECTIVE
November
2011
The Three Tenets Of New CRM
Call it what you want. Customer Relationship Management. Trust Relationship Management.Experiential based marketing. Brand Advocacy. CRM is about delivering relevant experiencesthrough interactions that sense and respond to the many ways customers want to engage andbuy today. Yes, CRM has been around for a while. But the CRM as we know it no longer exists.Why? Because today we’re in an environment where customers have a greater voice in how thebrand is communicated and where potential relationships reside in a highly distributedenvironment.CRM today is completely different. Different in how marketing strategy is crafted. Differentbecause now the customer experience is the essence of the messaging and content strategy, aswell as longitudinal program design. The data platforms (because after all, sensing thecustomers’ needs must be grounded in relevant data) are starting to link identifiable data tounstructured digital data to aggregated market level and competitive level data.Just as marketers are focusing on the evolution of social and mobile and what it means for theircampaigns, we must now take a look at the evolution of CRM, and what it means for our brands.Without a “true” customer experience strategy, actionable data, and a campaign managementlayer that integrates across search, site, database, mobile, and social, you will miss out on theopportunity to connect and understand at every touch point. Here’s what you need to do:
Embrace customer centricity
CRM isn’t about hyper targeting and it’s not just about value-based segmentation. Typically, whenwe think about segmentation, we think about customers in terms of their
lifetime value to the brand or propensity to do something for the brand
. That no longer works – instead, you have tostart thinking about how to position the brand
to provide value to the customers
.CRM is about insight that determines the most important messages, the content, and the offersthat move different customers along their individual journeys. As marketers, we’re so used todealing with aggregates; generalized profiles and personas and customer journeys that map outkey moments throughout the buying cycle. It is not that easy. Why? Because today, customersare in the driver’s seat; they determine when they want to talk to you and who they want to speakwith. Marketers must embrace customer centricity. If your marketing isn’t meeting customers’expectations, they’ll simply go elsewhere, whether it’s to a company that’s on Twitter or a websitethat’s mobile optimized.
Treat your customers like people, not targets
The challenging part of CRM is that is that your brand is attempting to build relationships withpeople that you’ve never met. When asked about their customers, many marketers will lookthrough their database and give you a name, location, and how long they’ve been a target. Butsuperior CRM means going beyond basic demographic information and insights that have beengleamed from the past (such as the past lifetime value of a customer). It means analyzing insightsfrom what consumers are doing now, in this moment: what they’re talking about, what they’resharing with one another, and how they’re sharing it. You may call it real-time, but I call it reality.
Get outside your database
When most people think about CRM, they think in terms of outbound communications orinteractions with people who are in their marketing database. The challenge is that most, if not all,brand interactions that you have with consumers are not initiated in the marketing database orfrom your brand’s website. It starts with consumers searching for information on the web,discussing something with their peers (online or offline), and third-party sites. The automotivespace is a great example of this, where consumers often look to trade journals or
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Mark Miller - The Three Tenets of New CRM
Mark Miller, CRM Practice Lead at Digitas, explains what brands need to know about CRM in today's marketing landscape.
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