Data-Driven CRM Allows Marketers to Reclaim Agility, Dexterity and Control
Whether you’re running a small business that can’t afford a multi-department marketing operation or a big organization that can no longer suffer customer marketing driven by pre-millennium marketing ideas, it’s time to start looking at the next-generation of CRM solutions.
Why is it that some startups can be so agile, so creative and so downright effective in customer marketing in comparison to many larger, more established businesses? Part of the secret lies purely in their size: starting out small means that a small team—usually the core founders—have a hands-on understanding of all the company’s key issues and policies and can get things done without having to work through layers of approval and bureaucracy. Significantly, because everyone is involved in practically every aspect of the company, essential knowledge and experience are not siloed in separate departments. However, as the company grows, there becomes much more specialization, with many tasks fragmented across numerous staff or divisions. Agility and creativity are usually the first to take the hit.
Designing and executing customer marketing campaigns is a good case in point. In most large businesses, this is a multi-departmental mission, demanding the participation of various company functions. It typically starts with someone in the Marketing department defining a campaign brief and sending it out to individual campaign managers. The campaign managers then define a query designed to select the appropriate customer groups, and yet someone else needs to manually upload the customer lists. It is then up to the creative team to come up with the right artwork. After the campaign is executed, it is the analytics team’s turn to step in and analyze the results so that they can come up with meaningful insights.
By this time, Marketing might already be sorry for coming up with the campaign idea in the first place: so many people are involved—with their demanding schedules and competing priorities—that weeks may transpire before a campaign is in the air. The slow execution cycle inevitably results in a stunted ideation cycle and, most importantly, customers who are chronically underwhelmed.
But the demand to move the needle doesn’t let up, and so Marketing is constantly scrambling to create campaigns that deliver some sort of meaningful impact. They recognize many segments that are vying for marketing moves, but the cumbersome workflow kills in their tracks all initiatives that don’t promise significant results. And so Marketing is left seeking the “Big Campaign,” which always lacks in true personalization, and thus in relevance and effectiveness. It’s too little, too late, and too similar to what everyone else in the relevant ecosystem is shooting out.
Self-possessed marketing
Enter the new generation of data-driven CRM solutions. These automated platforms allow businesses to manage hundreds of distinct customer groups and ensure that each one receives the most relevant and effective campaign possible, often in realtime. This personalized approach, which works across every stage of each customer’s journey, maximizes customer satisfaction, engagement and revenue. Leveraging a customer-centric outlook, these technologies rely on deep segmentation capabilities that allow marketers to coordinate myriad personalized campaigns. With robust data and predictive analytical capabilities, these marketing tools are positioned to deliver agility, dexterity and control to marketing teams.
This new paradigm enables small, integrated CRM A-teams to manage workflows and execute campaigns from start to finish, without the need to outsource campaign components to a host of other departments. The CRM operator defines the brief and queries the appropriate segments accordingly (and since she has immediate insight into each segment’s behavior data, she’s able to perfect her targeting in real time). Her team then develops the creative, executes the campaign, and analyzes the results—thereby creating a learning loop that promotes increasingly better results over time. So, rather than the inter-departmental, heavy-duty operation that it often is, customer marketing becomes the agile, effective, creative and responsive powerhouse that it can and should be.
But the benefits don’t end there: the CRM software’s analytical capabilities allow the CRM team to execute campaigns against a control group, offering scientific measurement of each campaign’s success, as well as ways to improve its effectiveness. No longer does Marketing need to rely on pseudo-scientific success rates such as email open or click rates.
Enhanced customer relationships
The most significant upside of this encapsulated approach is the enhanced relationship between marketers and their customers, made possible by consistently personal, spot-on interactions. Such intimate, one-to-one communication endows brands with an aura of emotional intelligence, sensitivity and customer-centricity that wins over customers’ hearts. It is in this sense that advanced, data-driven CRM is geared at generating a strategic uplift for your business.
Whether you’re running a small business that can’t afford a multi-department marketing operation or a big organization that can no longer suffer customer marketing driven by pre-millennium marketing ideas, it’s time to start looking at the next-generation of CRM solutions. It’s about changing the way you operate, getting more from your data, and streamlining your customer marketing campaigns. But more than anything, it’s about making your customers happier through personalized, highly relevant engagements.
It’s also about bringing agility, dexterity and control back to your marketing team.
Pini co-founded Optimove in 2012 and has led the company, as its CEO, since its inception. With two decades of experience in analytics-driven customer marketing, business consulting and sales, he is the driving force behind Optimove. His passion for innovative and empowering technologies is what keeps Optimove ahead of the curve. He holds an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management from Tel Aviv University.
