A top best practice in tough times is fiercely protecting your loyal customers, making Customer Retention Marketing more important today than ever. Put your customers at the heart of your business, and you build a competitive advantage that continues to grow after the economy recovers. Unfortunately, many marketers limit themselves to an outdated, simplistic, and less effective CRM approach. It’s time to usher in a 21st Century CRM that utilizes the most powerful strategies and tools available, and achieves great success in a weak marketplace.

Out with the Old CRM Approach

Too often CRM programs consist only of outbound e-mail or direct mail. As more consumers become engaged with alternative communication channels, and less with e-mail, now is the time to upgrade CRM. For example, young people seldom use e-mail unless they have to, instead relying on social media (e.g., Facebook), text messaging or IM. (“You sent me an e-mail? I never check my e-mail,” say my teenage and college-age daughters.)

Keep the CRM mainstays — e-mail and direct mail — that have worked well, but augment your efforts by exploiting digital and social marketing opportunities, like digital tools (IM, widgets, etc.), mobile, and social media. The new CRM mix has many concurrent elements, such as social communities needing an e-mail blast to update members, or some e-mail requiring a social media approach that engages more personally.
Welcome to 21st Century CRM

Here are 7 ways to seize the tremendous opportunity of 21st century CRM:

Think CMR. The term “Customer Managed Relationships (CMR)” was coined to recognize that consumers exercise more control of marketing interactions. Studies indicate the more control you cede — letting consumers select their preferred communication channels, content they want, how frequently they hear from you — the more likely they will opt in, interact, engage, etc.
Example: Centrum Healthy Habits lets consumers select the frequency of communications they receive.

Detach & distribute. Don’t limit consumer interaction with your brand to one channel. Provide portable content, tools and experiences that are multi-channel and travel with consumers wherever they go (e.g., mobile). Place your content and tools on 3rd party sites. Develop communications across e-mail, mobile, social, etc. that let consumers subscribe in multiple ways.
Example: Kraft Foods’ iPhone application provides mobile recipes and tips.

Practice “Marketing as Service”.  Deliver content and tools that consumers see as providing real value and relevance. Communicate with a helpful, customer-centric voice to deliver content or tools that deeply engage, provide a tangible value-add, and build an ongoing relationship.
Example: Hallmark Crown Rewards offers calendar reminders for most occasions.

Be “social,” a “community organizer”. Create community areas on your site and on social media destinations (e.g., Facebook) where your target congregates, to facilitate connections sharing with one another. Actively participate through community content and interactions, like engaging customers in product discussions. Enrich the experience by creating a dialogue inviting feedback or input.

Example: Nestle Very Best Baking allows bakers to share recipes.

Measure more than 1 to 1. Continue comparing sales of a control group of customers that don’t receive your CRM program with those who do to quantify the incremental value of the program. But also track the Word of Mouth, Viral and Advocacy effect, through quantitative social media measurement tools and qualitative surveys.

Example: Nuts Online tracked the impact of a 2007 viral campaign that saved the CBS Show Jericho.

Beyond Customers. Expand CRM to incorporate key constituencies — employees, distributors, retailers, professional gatekeepers (e.g., physicians for pharma). Create programs that build stronger relationships with your organization’s important groups, and link them to increase CRM’s performance, such as when a retail consumer receives your CRM and subsequently sees a related in-store display.

Example: Royal Caribbean offers programs to both travel agents and consumers.

Identify Advocacy Potential. Identify your most valuable and loyal customers via your database or during opt-in registration. Treat your most valuable customers like VIPs. Invite loyals to be advocates or ask their propensity for word-of-mouth. Identify influentials in social media discussions and empower them as potential advocates, too. Time your CRM contacts for when customers are most passionate about your products.

Example: Karmaloop enlisted customers in its “Street Team” with unique rep codes to pass along to friends — the customer got a discount, the rep a commission, and the company over $700M in sales.

In this challenging marketing environment, these 7 opportunities will elevate your CRM to a 21st Century caliber, and ensure you achieve the best results possible.

Expresss your opinion, comment below.

“(This) will be a year of continued fragmentation in the digital space. Technologies will provide consumers with increased control over the content they receive and force marketers to work harder and smarter to engage consumers with relevant messages where, when and how they wish to receive them.

The ascent of the digerati-empowered Obama administration would suggest a period of rocketing investment in the digital investment led by the government. But, the impact of the worst economy since the Great Depression will have a major balancing effect, curbing experimentation in deference to the known in order to make it through these times.

Indeed, between the election and the economic meltdown, fall 2008 was a kind of fracture point – setting in motion a dynamic “push me, pull you” tension for 2009 with digital right at the middle. We’ll examine these two events, and how they will effect the digital space moving forward.

The Election

Like Kennedy before him, President-elect Barack Obama understands the power of technology. The Obama campaign leveraged text messaging, web based fund raising and online organization in an unprecedented way that was a decisive factor in his victory. By appointing a CTO, President-elect Obama created a role that has never before existed in the White House administration. The CTO will be in charge of updating and maintaining the “E-Government” by exploring emerging technologies, upgrading technological infrastructure, improving federal agency communication, and finding overarching solutions to federal or general technological obstacles.

So what does this mean for 2009? It means federal money is going to be heavily invested into digital infrastructure projects. Call it the New Digital Deal. Digital jobs will be created by this overhaul, from job postings in advertising to content management.

In additional to new positions, there are new regulations on the horizon. Case in point, President-elect Obama has mentioned regulating direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharma advertisements, as well as requiring pharma companies to report advertising expenses to the SEC. At this time, it is unlikely that pharmaceutical advertisers will be adversely affected by this new administration. Even if these regulations change the nature of DTC marketing, it will likely favor digital marketing investment, given the opt-in nature of the channel and recognizing that audiences are already in an information seeking mindset. But, they are regulations to be aware of, nonetheless.

The Recession

At the same time, the recession will have wide-ranging impact on the digital space. Companies will focus on projects with greater ROI potential. Profitability, now more important than ever, will need to be proven quantitatively and digital analytics experts will be increasingly sought after to help companies measure and understand where money should be allotted.

However, we’re unlikely to see the kind of costly experimentation that can lead to breakthrough innovations and entirely new technologies. The answer to this innovation question may be found, surprisingly, in Wall Street. Jobs will be scarce in the financial sector, driving a lot of former financial advisers to tangential careers in engineering and technology sectors, spurring investment and excitement in these areas.

In an effort to do more with less, new forms of digital advertising will encourage consumer participation and deliver direct communication through virals, CPC ads, or streaming content. As a result, there will be more interaction between businesses, clients, and consumers to redefine what marketing is. The brand emphasis will shift from “parent” (“You must buy this, you must go here…”) to “friend” (“Check this out, you might like this…”), creating a greater emphasis on user generated content and company voice.

The attention to the bottom line will push companies to explore more closely numerous existing underutilized technologies in order to more effectively reach their consumers, though the channel though.

Overall, these two overarching trends will play a major roll in 2009. Their influence will trickle down into more specific areas of digital marketing, from social networking to mobile marketing. How these specific areas will take shape is best saved for a future article… and another look into an even more fractured crystal ball.”

– Express your opinion, comment below.