A person sees thousands of advertisements a day. Standing out in such a flow is not easy: you need to know the needs and behavior of the customer and create personalized offers. This is impossible to do without collecting the necessary data. CRM-marketing helps businesses with this. How it works and what companies need, we will talk in this article.
What is CRM marketing?
CRM is a business strategy to learn more about customer behavior and needs, to create a long-term relationship with your customers. Messages are not just sent out to the base, but are analyzed beforehand. For example, it doesn’t make sense to communicate promotions to a customer who spends large amounts on new collections.
CRM helps companies track and manage customer interactions. It’s a database that stores information: name, last name, email address, and a log of meetings with your company.
How CRM marketing works
A CRM system solves a company’s engagement, awareness, sales, repeat sales or subscription renewals. All of the data that users leave via website forms and incoming calls goes into the CRM. The information is then segmented according to preset parameters. For each type, an individual mailing script is developed with a certain number of messages. Scenarios are run through synchronization with third-party platforms and feedback is built.
These steps are present in any CRM package, but the most modern ones have add-ons and extensions.
How it differs from other types of marketing
To successfully guide a customer through the entire sales funnel, it’s best to prepare a technology trio: CRM, email marketing and automated marketing. The main differences between the tools lie in the tasks they accomplish:
- Automated marketing, like CRM, tracks customer actions, collects and analyzes information and simplifies communication. But this tool is more focused on managing marketing tasks, while CRM is focused on customer interaction. You can automate email-texting, phone calls. Some companies combine CRM and automated marketing into one service because they work more effectively together.
- The task of email marketing is to inform about offers. CRM marketing works primarily with customer data.
Tools in CRM marketing
CRM has many tools for different users:
- marketing analytics – tracking and analyzing business activity;
- personalized messages and targeted advertising;
- email marketing – promotion through emails;
- Mobile marketing – promotion through cellular communication;
- trade marketing – offers based on a broad analysis of customer preferences;
- event marketing – business promotion through public events;
- Loyalty programs – discounts, promotions, seasonal offers, bonus cards.
Pros and cons
Despite the complexity of integrating CRM, there are many reasons in its favor.
Consider the pros:
- Data organization. CRM helps to collect and organize information about old and potential customers. Clear and automated accounting system for each incoming application helps to spend the advertising budget in a useful way.
- Convenient communication. Thanks to the integration of CRM with other services, marketing and sales departments can track processes and interact with clients in one system. The company will have a complete view of every point of contact with the client.
- Business efficiency. Customer base analysis, audience segmentation and loyalty program development are features of CRM that builds effective communication with customers. You create a strategy based on unique user information and understand what to offer, to whom and when.
Additional effects from the platform implementation:
- Easy access to customer interaction history;
- movement through the marketing or sales funnel;
- Time and cost savings due to maximum productivity;
- recording of all the data of potential customers;
- control of the employees’ progress;
- attracting new customers.
One of the disadvantages – in order to implement and optimize CRM for the company, you will need a specialist, and this is an additional cost. In addition, you will not be able to see the effect immediately, because profit and productivity are growing gradually.
There are services with a similar set of functions, but a simple interface and basic marketing tools.
What kind of business requires CRM-marketing
CRM marketing is necessary for companies at the first sale and repeat purchase stage, for example:
- Insurance companies. A driver buys insurance and needs a new one a year from now. The company reminds them ahead of time so the customer doesn’t leave for another organization.
- An online clothing store. A user went to the website of an appliance store and asked the consultant for details about the product, but didn’t buy anything. The system records the customer’s phone number, site visit and product categories of interest. After a while the consultant calls him back and tells him about the sale or discounts.
- Auto repair shops. Drivers regularly go to auto repair shops to have their car serviced. If you collect the frequency of visits, you can send an offer with a personal discount for a service that the customer will need soon.
How to implement CRM marketing
CRM marketing is a competent combination of planning, business analytics and work with the customer base and communication channels. In order for this complex to have an effect, you need to work through each stage in turn.
Choosing the right CRM system
When choosing a CRM, pay attention to whether its features meet your needs:
- Ease of use – A good CRM should be intuitive and easy to use.
- Extensive tracking of a campaign’s marketing effectiveness. It’s important to track which methods are most effective in attracting customers, and which channels and devices within those campaigns work best.
- Analytics. Choose a system with the ability to create reports – so you can benchmark and see the difference in data compared to the previous period.
- Integration. Make sure your CRM is compatible with other technologies, and assess how complex the integration will be.
- Scalability. Consider whether CRM features and pricing plans can easily scale with your business and, conversely, whether there are flexible options for upgrading to an earlier version or saving resources.
- Communication tools. By integrating with email, social media and messengers, you’ll be able to receive notifications of requests and send messages directly from the CRM.
Audience segmentation
Customer profiles in the system vary because not all customers are equally profitable to the business. Companies need to segment their customers based on the value or profit criteria they bring in. A more profitable customer is a high value customer and a less profitable customer is a low value customer.
An organization’s CRM system should reflect the tastes, preferences, behavior, lifestyle, age, education, cultural background, physical and psychological characteristics of customers. After dividing customers by profitability and other characteristics, it will become easier to customize services and offers to maximize the overall value of their customer portfolio.
Setting goals, objectives and KPIs
To make goals measurable, key performance indicators (KPIs) must be assigned. This is a quantitative metric that a company uses to determine the effectiveness of achieving goals. It is the KPI that will show the workability of the CRM strategy.
The main goal of CRM is to retain a customer because it is cheaper than finding a new one.
What else CRM marketing tasks include:
- Collect the necessary customer data;
- build a strategy to attract new customers and retain old ones;
- implement the delivery of personalized messages through the most effective communication channel;
- analyze the effectiveness of the work;
- optimize the strategy.
Gathering a database of contacts and customer data
It is important to get consent to send messages, otherwise the letters will be automatically sent to spam. Ways to collect information about customers can be different: filling out questionnaires offline or on the site through special forms, analysis of customer calls by phone or in person. There are basic and additional information that companies collect for the database. The main ones are full name, date of birth, phone number, e-mail. But you may also need, for example, make of car, hobbies, clothing size – the kind of data your business needs.
Selecting and setting up communication channels
Direct channels are used for communication: e-mail, SMS, robot call, push notifications, messenger messages, social media messages, pop-up, chat widget on the site.
It’s not necessary to choose only one channel. They can and should be combined. That way you’ll increase your effectiveness and your chances of reaching customers who prefer a certain method of communication.
Where problems can arise
One of the main challenges is the investment required to maintain a customer database. But beyond that, there are other challenges:
- Lack of resources. If you start implementing CRM and at any stage to reduce the budget, it will affect the quality of the result. It is better to assess your capabilities in advance.
- Inappropriate metrics. The wrong method of measurement and implementation is one of the main reasons for the ineffectiveness of CRM. Different metrics should be used to calculate different goals.
- Additional training. CRM packages are complex and contain many subtleties, so employees will have to be trained.
- Slow payback. Do not expect a quick return on investment in CRM-marketing – the first results will appear at least several months later.
Most CRM problems can be eliminated. You need to focus on your business needs, choose the right CRM, put the right resources in place, and adopt the right metrics.
Implementing CRM is a strategic business approach that integrates technology, internal processes, employees and data management across the organization to attract and retain customers. The system opens the door to working with more data with which to build a competent sales strategy.
