CRM & Relationship Marketing, the terms are often interchangeable. I receive numerous invitations to meet prospective clients or speak at events to talk CRM. But what do they mean?
As I see it, there are five approaches:
1) Transactional Sales driven CRM - this generally involves SAP or Siebel or some other expensive operational CRM system. It costs a fortune, rarely pays back and generally delivers about half of the original project scope. But if you are a sales driven organisation, that manages a large number of leads (someone like Yell for example), you need one.
2) Next generation CRM - think of this as a smarter, more integrated version of Transactional CRM. It probably involves a global database, but the key is to add some automated processes and tools for registration, measurement, campaign management and similar operations. This is smarter and more marketing friendly. Still a huge investment, but at least it helps you measure what you are doing and create a learning organisation. Microsoft’s internal Global Marketing Platform is a great example of this.
3) Event Driven CRM - extremely customer focused, but still automated and process driven. The focus is on reacting to changes in customer behaviour and circumstances. Think of a mobile telco sending you a note to suggest changing tariffs when you increase your overseas calling or a frequent flyer program that recognises that you have just achieved silver. The key here is to develop the rules that drive the system that are driven by genuine customer insights.
4) RM programs. FMCG brands don’t really do CRM. They do Relationship Marketing, some (like Diageo) do it really well. You don’t need a huge SAP system. All you need is great content, a marketing database and genuine consumer insight to help you to segment audiences and deliver a personal experience. If you get the content right and enough high value consumers love your brand, then you can build a large scale program that delivers ROI.
5) Community RM - this is the coming force. Forget one way beamed communication from brand to consumer, think two way engaging content co-creation. Allow loyal consumers to be advocates. Let them re-publish and share your content for free. Let them create content for your site. Let them share the experience with whoever they think will appreciate it. We’re working on a number of these sites right now - watch this space