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Internet Strategy Forum Summit – Evolution of CRM

Presented by David Placier, VP of Marketing, Disney.com

Definition of CRM – Customer Relationship Marketing

  • Differentiating marketing treatment and/or service level for an individual or group
  • Differentiating in order to optimize customer value to company
  • ROI based
  • Targeted effort, not mass

Customer value = income you receive from an individual – expenses acquiring, servicing and marketing to individual

When CRM started isn’t clear – Local shops use CRM by giving you different suggestions and service depending on what they know about you from past purchases and visits.

Direct mail credit card acquisitions change their offer based on your credit score, your assets, your zip code, public data about you.  They change their investment and marketing treatments based on this information.

Airline customer loyalty programs give premium seats and have separate lines for their best customers.

Online

Advertising – display location – where you surf may define which treatment group you get, but site experience is not differentiated by customer value or characteristics.

Search advertising is differentiated by treatment group – what you are saying, where you are landing, what you are searching for.

Product recommendations are characterized by previous choices, but maybe not by value and this experience is available to anyone.

With social media, find opinion leaders to treat differently and they will buy more, say more and influence more.

Future of CRM

  • Personalization
  • Optimization
  • Addressability
  • Commonly available data
  • Cross device/platform continuity

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Internet Strategy Forum Summit – Internet Marketing by the Numbers

Presented by Mike Moran, Distinguished IBM Engineer

Yes, an engineer talking to you about marketing.

You need to watch what your customers are doing so you know what to do next.  While there are a lot of things out there that you can’t measure – there are about 20% that you can measure that lead to a sale.

You have a website out there which probably eventually leads to a sale.  What things do you do that lead to that sale?  What things does the customer do that leads to that sale?

Measure ROI in terms of (Gain – cost)/cost. For transactional ROI look at how many transactions you have.  What was the ROI for everything you had to do to make that transaction happen.  For relational ROI, how much did it cost you to acquire this new customer.

Take a look a direct marketers. They understand what works and doesn’t.  How?  They create multiple versions of every marketing piece and analyze the results.  They test the responses to multiple designs and adjust everything based on those results.

Apply this to your website. Define numeric objectives.  Try different approaches.  Get real feedback and constantly look at performance to see what’s working.

For example, you want to increase sales.  For your website there may be two ways to accomplish this – get more people to come or to persuade more of the people that do come to buy.  Measure based on the increase in traffic or the increase in conversions.

Sometimes it’s not clear what metric to use, so just choose one and stick with it.  You’re looking for a trend so just consistently measure the same thing.

Conclusion – Respond to your customers. Change things until you see something start to work.  Do it quickly.  Instead of trying to figure out what to do, just do something.  Let the market tell you what works and what doesn’t.

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Internet Strategy Forum Summit – Creating a Social Strategy That Will Work

Presented by Charlene Li, VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

The ease of posting anything on the Internet means that negative messages about your company may be higher in the search results than your own messages (ex. comcast technician sleeping on my couch – see YouTube).  This gives individuals enormous power, but it also means individuals help each other.

What can companies do about this?  Should this be something to fear?  It’s important for companies to have clear objectives about what they’re trying to achieve by using social media.  Think about relationships instead of technologies.

In the book, Groundswell, the following methodology is recommended:

  • P – People – Who is your audience? What are they doing online? How do they do it and when?
  • O – Objectives – What are you trying to accomplish for your business?
  • S – Strategy – Plan for how relationships with your customers will change.
  • T – Technology – Once all the other steps have been examined, take a look at what tools make sense to accomplish your goals.

People – Different types of people have different levels of online participation.  You can profile your customers at groundswell.forrester.com to see where they are on the participation ladder: inactives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, creators.  Age is a major driver of participation, but as more content becomes available online, there has been more participation.

Objectives – Different departments in your company will have different objectives for social media:

  • Market Research – Listening
  • Marketing – Talking (have open-ended conversations)
  • Sales – Energizing (activating your most passionate customers)
  • Support – Supporting (your customers can help support each other)
  • Development – Embracing (customer ideas and feedback can speed up and provide higher quality development which better meets the market needs)

Strategy – Start small because you will make lots of mistakes.  Think big about how this can transform your organization.  Control is an illusion – the conversations about your brand will happen whether or not you participate.  Understand what motivates people to participate – very rarely is monetary – they want to help, make a difference, be heard, and be part of a community.

Technology – This will depend on where the people you want to reach are already.  It may make more sense to participate in an existing community than to start your own.

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