Digital marketing is a complex and ever-changing field. It can be difficult to keep up with the latest trends and technologies, let alone make use of them effectively. That’s where CRM comes in. The CRM market in itself is expecting double digit growth every year.
CRM can help improve the efficiency of your digital marketing campaigns and help you stay ahead of the competition. Statistics show that companies usually invest in CRM technology within their first 5 years.
In this blog post, we will discuss how CRM can help your digital marketing strategy and give some examples of companies who have benefited from its use!
What is CRM?
CRM, or customer relationship management, is a software tool that helps businesses manage their customer data. CRM systems can be used to track customer interactions, store customer information, and automate marketing tasks.
CRM software is used to optimize campaigns and build customer relationship. Separately, CRM can help create personalized experiences for your customer with all kinds of data your CRM helps collect from your customers.
How CRM Can Help Your Digital Marketing Strategy
There are many ways in which CRM can help your digital marketing strategy. CRM can help you segment your customers, target your campaigns more effectively, and measure your results accurately. In addition, CRM can automate repetitive tasks such as email marketing and social media postings, freeing up your time to focus on other aspects of your business.
CRM can help digital marketers in a number of key ways.
Start With Loyalty Programme
To connect with your customer, a loyalty programme is the easy way to start your first CRM campaign. It is not necessary to have a big data of customer to get CRM benefits. You can start with your most valuable and active customers in your loyalty programme.
The main idea behind CRM strategy is to make more intimate relationships with fewer people rather than trying to be friends with everyone. So, if you want to try a CRM for the first time, you don’t need to go to everyone at the start. Focus on your best customer and work from there.
It will also give you some important insights about how a CRM system works and what are its advantages for digital marketing strategy. Some CRM systems, like JuicyApp, offer digital stamp cards, which are relatively easy to kick start.
Customer Segmentation
CRM can help digital marketers segment their customers and create targeted marketing campaigns.
Customers are different in terms of behaviours, preferences, needs. CRM forms the backbone for customer segmentation. It helps digital marketers identify different types of customers. Marketing team is then responsible for developing targeted marketing strategies and campaigns accordingly, which are more likely to convert leads into customers. On the other hand, marketers can also save cost by only offering the most relevant offers to those customer segments.
One more point to note. Segmentation is far more complicated that just age, gender, and family income. Behavioural data has become more useful, e.g. channel of interactions, payment preferences, historical purchases. Combining behavioural data with other data sets can help marketers to understand their customers. Why do families like this product but not those teenagers? Trending of payment preferences and how they would impact the future of the company?
Campaign Management
CRM can help digital marketers manage their campaigns more effectively. By tracking customer interactions, CRM systems can provide valuable insights into which campaigns are working and which ones need to be improved. In this regard, it is also important to consider what data you want to collect from your customers. Proper disclosures are expected from a well-established company these days.
On top of data, CRM can also extend vertically into different steps of the transactions. Booking soluations are common CRM integration points for event organizers. A well-designed end-to-end customer experience will be the key to a successful digital marketing campaign.
Campaign Automation
In addition, CRM can help automate repetitive tasks such as email marketing and social media postings, freeing up your time to focus on other aspects of your business. Without all the necessary data from CRM, there is no way that your marketing team can execute modern digital marketing campaigns effectively.
Marketers nowadays also use different tools, like AI writing tools, to help create compelling contents and increase their efficiency.
Measure Results
CRM can help digital marketers measure their results more accurately. By tracking customer interactions and measuring campaign performance, CRM systems can provide valuable insights into which campaigns are working and which ones need to be improved. This allows digital marketers to adjust their strategies in real-time and ensure that they are getting the most out of their CRM investment.
More fundamentally, marketers should look into the results and understand WHY a particular campaign worked or did not work. CRM can help you understand what kind of customers will react to what kind of campaigns, copies, offers…
Wrap Up
I would say that CRM is the core of modern digital marketing. Without a CRM, you basically have no knowledge about your customers. You can only keep fighting in the dark. Of course, there are other equally important digital marketing strategies, like using SEO to drive traffic, but CRM would definitely complete the picture and complement other marketing tactics.
Author Bio
Alan S Lui is a marketing and CRM expert. He was previously Chief Marketing Officer of Fusion Bank, a digital bank Alan launched in Hong Kong. Before that he was Chief Operating Officer of Asia Miles, Asia’s leading loyalty program with 12 million members. You can find more of his insights on alanslui.com and connect with him on LinkedIn.
He is currently Director Strategy and Transformation, i-CABLE Communications Group, listed in Hong Kong.