All You Need to Know: CRM as a Digital Marketing Tool
Is customer relationship management (CRM) a tech thing? or marketing or customer servicing thing?
According to textbook definitions marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) are two related concepts that involve managing and improving the interactions and relationships with customers and potential customers. While marketing is the process of creating, delivering, and communicating value to customers, CRM is the technology that supports this process by collecting, analyzing, and using customer data for marketing leaders to base their strategies on. The data and information allow marketers to create more effective and targeted campaigns across different channels, particularly digital ones.
Marketing and CRM have different but complementary goals and functions. Marketing aims to attract, engage, and retain customers by understanding their needs, preferences, and behavior, and offering them relevant and personalized products, services, and experiences. CRM helps marketing achieve these goals by providing tools and features, such as:
Contact management:
A CRM system allows marketers to efficiently store and organize customer and prospect contact information in a centralized database. This includes names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses, which can be accessed and updated by anyone within the organization.
Putting into practice:
A marketer can use a CRM system to store and organize customer contact information, allowing them to easily access and update details like names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses.
With CRM, a sales team can have a centralized database where they can track and manage customer interactions, ensuring that everyone in the organization has accurate and up-to-date contact information.
Lead generation and nurturing:
CRM aids marketers in identifying and qualifying potential customers, as well as guiding them through the sales funnel. Through methods like web forms, landing pages, email campaigns, and social media marketing, CRM helps nurture leads and convert them into loyal customers.
Putting into practice:
A marketer can create a web form on their website that captures visitor information, such as name and email address, and automatically adds those leads to the CRM system. These leads can then be nurtured through targeted email campaigns and personalized content.
Social media marketing campaigns can be integrated with CRM, allowing marketers to capture leads directly from social media platforms and nurture them with relevant content based on their interests and engagement.
Campaign management and analytics:
With CRM, marketers can plan, execute, and measure the performance and effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. They can utilize metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and return on investment (ROI) to optimize marketing strategies and allocate budgets more effectively.
Putting into practice:
By using a CRM system, marketers can plan and execute marketing campaigns, track the performance of each campaign, and measure key metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and ROI. This data helps them understand which campaigns are most effective and make data-driven decisions for future campaigns.
CRM analytics can provide insights into customer behavior and engagement, allowing marketers to optimize campaigns by tailoring messages to specific customer segments and refining targeting strategies.
Customer segmentation and personalization:
CRM enables marketers to segment their customer base using criteria like demographics, psychographics, behavior, and purchase history. By tailoring marketing messages and offers to each segment, marketers can enhance customer satisfaction and foster loyalty.
Putting into practice:
A marketer can segment their customer base using CRM data, such as demographics, psychographics, behavior, and purchase history. This segmentation allows for targeted marketing efforts, such as sending personalized emails with relevant product recommendations based on past purchases or preferences.
CRM can help identify loyal customers who have made multiple purchases, allowing marketers to create exclusive offers or loyalty programs specifically for this segment.
Customer feedback and satisfaction:
CRM empowers marketers to gather and analyze customer feedback, including reviews, ratings, surveys, and testimonials. Additionally, CRM provides tools like net promoter score, customer satisfaction score, and customer effort score to monitor and improve overall customer satisfaction.
Putting into practice:
A CRM system can integrate customer feedback tools, such as surveys or review platforms, allowing marketers to collect and analyze feedback from customers. This feedback helps identify areas for improvement and can be used to enhance customer satisfaction.
By monitoring customer satisfaction scores within the CRM system, marketers can identify dissatisfied customers and take proactive measures to address their concerns, improving overall customer experience and loyalty.
By leveraging CRM functionalities, marketers can streamline their processes, enhance customer relationships, and drive better results in their marketing efforts.
