CRM and Direct Marketing
By Geffri Rasip – July 2005
The new black
CRM in its various forms is making a comeback. Where previously it was the byword for over-blown budgets and long drawn-out projects, CRM is the new-black.
More people have come to realise that, contrary to the marketing hype, CRM is not software. CRM is a discipline or methodology that defines how you relate to your customers. It should be pervasive throughout your organisation and CRM software will merely assist you in managing and tracking your customer interactions more efficiently.
No longer the purview of the large software vendors, CRM has shifted focus from being a financial-based system to a truly relationship management application (though not obvious to all vendors). Thanks to competitiveness and the lucrative SMB market, good CRM solutions can now be had at reasonable prices, so why don't you check some out.
When all you've got is a hammer, everything starts looking like nails
Don't let your CRM drive your DM. CRM by definition and common conception covers a number of areas. It is generally believed to consist of software that enables you to:
- manage your contacts, and/or
- manage your sales teams, and/or
- send bulk emails, and/or
- build a customer database, and/or
- perform some kind of Analytics or Business Intelligence, and/or
- etc (the list goes on)
By today's definition, CRM software does any or all of the functions listed above. If you were considering communicating through 3 channels; Email, SMS and Mail, then a CRM system that only did Contact Management may only partially meet your needs. You might implement new software to solve this problem but if you remember the primary objective of software: "It's there to make your life easier", then having multiple systems to maintain and talk to each other does not fall under the title of "making life easier".
It is vital that your DM campaign does not get hamstrung by poor CRM and there are 2 ways to approach this; If your CRM system does not meet your needs, rethink your DM, otherwise get a system that does.
Horses for courses
Having a holistic view of your DM campaign is essential to leveraging maximum benefit from your CRM system. Even before you consider the details like the channels, or the message, look at the campaign and determine the responsibilities or touch-points. The primary reason for this is KPI or Key Performance Indicators (or the other buzz-word, ROI – Return On Investment). A clear idea of success or failure and total cost will help you fine-tune or abort an approach completely.
The touch-points for a campaign may include external fulfilment houses, or SMS systems, or other service providers. Imagine the efficiency gains if all parties used your CRM system.
Who, what, where, when, how?
As Direct- or Targeted Marketing comprises communicating to a known audience, your CRM system must hold as much information about your customers as possible. This might sound like overkill but imagine how creative you message can be is you knew where a person liked to holiday, or their favourite football team.
Aside from these traits, other customer information that is useful includes preferred contact method, gender, age or age range, income bracket, suppression types (more on this later), previous campaigns, fulfilment history and how long they've been a customer.
If you use external lists, allow your list vendor to access your CRM. This will ensure you have the most up-to-date data at hand. If you use a fulfilment house let them update fulfilment details directly. These 2 factors alone can help ensure your customer data is clean and de-duplicated and ready for your next campaign.
Finally, reporting – knowing what you've spent, how many prospects converted, how many people responded or just customer segmentation reports, will ensure you do not waste resources on fruitless activities. The best data in the world is useless unless you can interrogate and report on it.
A short note on suppressions - the Privacy Act and SPAM legislation has made it imperative that customers do not get contacted unless explicit permission is given. However being able to capture preferences like "Email - unsubscribe" or "Phone - wrong number" ensures that you aren't excluding prospective customers due to knock-backs from one channel alone. That said, be sure to also capture "Total suppression" as an option.
And-they-lived-happily-ever-after (phew)
CRM should allow you track the success and costs of one or more activities, use a single database to manage internal and external lists, filter your customers to arrive at your target list, communicate with them via their preferred channel, capture fulfilments either in-house or through a 3rd party, generate analytical and ROI reports, and finally, allow you to do the same thing over and over again.
You will find with a methodical and consistent approach that a CRM system can bring, your marketing message will benefit again and again.
But above all else, REMEMBER, it's your DM campaign and only you know what you really need. An all-singing-all-dancing CRM system will not guarantee a successful DM campaign.