It’s time to prove your value, CRM Manager!
Effective use of customer data is key to grow business revenue. Yet the businesses that can combine good customer insights with an innovative approach to CRM data will become industry leaders.
CRM managers have a critical role to play in understanding customer insights and using the latest marketing technology to measure, collect and analyse data about their customers. Many businesses have fallen far behind, continuing to utilise simple, traditional marketing approaches to an ever-increasing digital challenge. It’s when you focus on your CRM activities you can start to see how much value your commercial teams are creating.
If you’re a CRM champion within your company you probably know the significant value you’re generating to your company. However, you’re not alone if you feel like the job you’re doing isn’t recognised, and the value you create is overlooked.
According to the CRM Barometer 2017 report, conducted by Wiraya and partners like Wunderman, Salesforce, and Accenture, 30% of all CRM leaders say they have little support from their wider team. At the same time, the research showed that the companies that make data-driven decisions increasingly reach their goals. They also recognise the importance of CRM for total business profits and have the greatest support from management.
So as a CRM Manager how do you actually prove your financial value across your organization, and how do you become better at making data-driven decisions?
A first step is to create a comprehensive view of the customer journey, starting with a customer development program consisting of the following steps;
1. Increase knowledge and optimize customer data
2. Segment the customer base – e.g. what characterizes a valuable customer
3. Identify, quantify and automate the customer communication flow throughout the customer lifecycle
4. Integrate a loyalty program or RM Strategy
5. Calculate and increase lifetime revenue (CLV)
6. Improve the customer experience – it’s your most important competitive advantage
7. Identify your most valuable customers
8. Pick out unprofitable and high-risk customers
9. Prevent your customers from churning – investing in predictive churn models
10. Pricing strategy – select product offerings that drive CLV
11. Monitor and track your competitors
These are all important but how do you actually measure the CRM work?
Firstly, don’t start measuring everything at once. Simply select a channel where you have the most data accessible. Start by thinking about the outcome of activity and what is the specific goal. Compare the outcome against the costs incurred in that particular channel. As you start to become more advanced, start to compare these statistics against additional channels, and identify links as you move towards more complex relationships.
8 essential areas to prove your real value to the business;
– Agree on a CRM strategy: as important as marketing and sales strategy
– Analyse customer data: the key to a successful approach
– Communication: focus on relevance and personalization
– Technology: allows you to control the communication of individual customer journeys.
– Communicate internally: highlight customer insights to the entire organization.
– Measure: the full ROI that shows the value of your CRM efforts
– Report: the tangible results across different business units.
– Utilise: the findings to directly increase revenues and deliver rapid growth.
Good luck!
