Running a CRM Driven Organization? Think Again.

In our previous post we covered what it takes to track your CRM performance and chart the journey you want your program to take.

 

To get deeper into each of the dimensions we mentioned, we are kicking off this 5 part series which I’d like to call the “Think Again Series”. And in the first part, we will discuss the first key dimension of a successful a CRM program, Aligning your Organization.

 

Did you know, 50% of the CRM implementations fail to garner the results they are meant to? While this maybe due to a variety of reasons, but one of the main ones could be misaligned organizational objectives.

 

What I mean by misaligned organizational objectives is when your CRM exists and functions as a “nice to have” process in the organization. In the ideal CRM world, from top to bottom, the priority and resource allocation given to your CRM program should be at par with other major functions like marketing. But more often than not, we don’t see this happening.

 

In our extensive experience with countless brands around the globe, we have identified three dimensions of organizational alignment that you need to get right if you wish to see the success you meant to achieve with your CRM program. These are:

 

Functional Alignment

 

First things first. Does your organization realize the profit your CRM program can bring to the business? Does everyone – from the CX level teams to store associates – realize the gravity and importance of designing and implementing a truly customer centric program? Do you have centralized team that solely concentrates on all things CRM?

 

If your answer is a no to any of these, then your organization is not functionally aligned to support a world class CRM program.

 

Loosely put, CRM program is a process of creating lasting relationship with customers. But it actually includes other elements too – staff management at the stores, packaging products, campaign planning etc- all these will be effected from the insights you get out of your CRM program. Hence if you are not giving this function the love and attention it deserves, then you’re losing out on more than just relationships with customers.

 

Strategic Alignment

 

In many of the brands we deal with, we see that CRM behaves as a standalone team. Even though it has been given resources and budgets of its own, it does not bring the right kind of returns because it does not communicate internally with other teams.

 

Aligning your CRM objectives and plans with those of other departments like marketing is crucial to ensure your brand speaks to your customers in a single, consistent and streamlined fashion. Bombarding your customers 10 times in a month, for example, – 5 times for a marketing promo and 5 times for CRM related promos – will lead to customer fatigue and have the opposite effect to what you intended – your customers pushing themselves away from you.

 

So get your CRM teams in a room with the other related teams, and form a single, perfectly aligned strategy for your brand to help everyone hits their numbers and achieves their targets.

 

Vendor Alignment

 

As an organization, you will have multiple vendors who will be working towards meeting the objective you have set for them. But are they aware of the bigger picture? For example, does your creative agency know what goal you are trying to achieve with that video ad? Does your campaign management team know what this email campaign is meant to achieve? If your answer is anywhere between “sort of” to “no” – then you’re in trouble.

 

Making your vendors understand the bigger picture helps them perform much, much better. You will be surprised by the ideas and recommendations they come up with to help you get higher returns on every buck you spend.

 

So after your marketing and CRM team huddle, get your vendors together and share your mission with them. You will see how every team comes together to get you that sweet success of customer relationship management.

 

If you get these three attributes of your organizational readiness in a straight line, then we are confident you will be on track for a CRM program that is all set to see great results, for a long time to come.

 

Don’t forget to check out the next edition our Think Again Series – “Think you know your customers up close and personally? Think Again.

 

Think you know your customers up close and personally? Think Again.

In the previous post of our Think Again Series we covered the importance of organizational alignment in CRM strategy. Here we’ll be covering why it’s important to really know your customer.

 

As a business leader, you know the value of your customer. They form the main building block on which the success of your entire business is based. Over the past few decades, getting more information from these customers has become easy. You have multiple channels where your customers leave behind all kinds of data. But are you viewing this data in a consolidated fashion? Can you identify if the customer clicking on your Facebook Ad is the same or different from the customer who purchased from you yesterday?

 

This kind of understanding and clarity is what can set your brand sky rocketing, and we have identified 3 key attributes to assess how well you know your customers’ behaviors.

 

Identifying Customer Base

 

Like I mentioned, you have a hoard of data flowing in from every channel. But how efficiently can you identify who these data points belong to?

 

Many brands only limit themselves to capturing customer data from the store or the ecommerce site, and keeping them separate. Few brands actually have a mechanism to understand which customer visited me in-store and also came to me online – a cross channel customer tagging. And you want to be among those brand who do that.

 

Having a unique identifier for your customers, like mobile number or email address, across channels will help you make better sense of how your customer is interacting with you. This is extremely crucial in today’s omnichannel world where easily more than half of your customers would be interacting with your brand at more than one channel.

 

Single View of Customer

 

Customer data at businesses like yours do not and should not stop at just transaction data. This second attribute talks about how you need to ensure you are pooling in all kinds of data that help you build the personality of your customer. You should be able to answer questions like:

 

  • When does my customer visit me?
  • Has she responded to the SMS/Email promo I sent her the last time?
  • Which channel does she prefer to be contacted on?

 

And other such queries that really digs deep into explaining to you who your customer is.

 

A compete 360°, comprehensive view of your customer is what every brand needs to have. Achieving this will take you miles ahead of your competition.

 

Enriching Customer Data

 

Capturing your customer’s data is just step one. Following this, you need to ensure you are constantly enriching your understanding of the customer. You need to ensure you are growing with your customers in terms of their needs, their preference etc.

 

Incentivizing your customer to update their profile is a good start. However, today your customer is constantly interacting with your data on social media among other channel. Are you capturing this behavior as well? Are you able to tell how responsive your customer has become to Facebook ads today as opposed to SMSs a few months back?

 

Achieving this level of customer data enrichment will ensure your understanding of your base is up to date. This in turn will ensure every penny spent on your Customer Analytics program is giving you the right returns.

 

So that’s a snippet on getting up close and personal with your customers derived from Capillary’s 5D Framework. Hop on to the next post in our Think Again Series, “Have the best in class Analytics platform? Think Again”, to map where you stand on the analytics meter.

 

Have a best in class Analytics platform? Think Again.

In the previous post of our Think Again Series we covered the importance of really knowing your customer. Here we’ll be talking about how strong your analytics platform can be.

 

Data is everywhere. We may have said this over and over again in different ways, in many of our blogs. But it still is overwhelming – it’s just everywhere.

 

As a part of our offering, we do help set up platforms and help businesses dig deep and generate insights from this data. And when we do this, we have seen that brands often tend to get myopic when it comes to making use of their data. For example, when they are gathering transaction data from the stores, they tend to be fixated in looking at sales numbers as just numbers. % increases and ROI figures are not just numbers. They tell a story about your brand, your customers, and your industry. If you are not seeing this, then you are missing out, big time.

 

As a part of our 5-part series on demystifying the 5 dimensions that decide the success of your CRM program, we will focus this one on the 3 attributes that spell the success or failure of your analytics platform.

 

Insight Generation

 

It all starts here. Once you have successfully captured the data from all possible channels, the next step is to read them and find out trends that help predict your business direction. Unfortunately, even today, many brands depend on manual scouring of data to identify these trends. If you are still doing this, then you are going to be left behind, way behind!

 

With the power of AI comes the power of precise prediction. Analytics tools that are based on machine learning tell you in advance what is going to happen to your business and what you should be doing next. You want to be here!

 

Insight Democratization

 

If the right people are not seeing the right insights at the right time, then your analytics effort – AI or otherwise – is of no use.

 

All the stakeholders should have access to the data they should be seeing – not more, and certainly not less – at any time of the day. Depending on platforms that require the person to be on premise to analyze and gather insights is like having a mobile phone that can only be used at home – pointless and a complete waste of investment.

 

Ramp up your platforms, make it cloud based. And don’t worry about security. Many leading analytics platform providers have international security audits and standards that they maintain. So you can be sure that your data is safe, while you make it easily accessible.

 

Insight Based Action

 

Coming back to the topic of silos – separating your insights from your actions (like promos, campaigns etc) will undoubtedly lead to your CRM efforts failing and not bringing any returns.

 

Your insights generation and campaign planning need to go hand in hand to ensure you are dynamically responding to the customers based on their changing preferences, tastes and behaviors. Separating these two, or even a delay in using the latest insights to tweak your campaigns may mean you’re deliberately losing out on delighting your customers, garnering loyalty, and, ultimately, money.

 

Break the walls between the different sub functions of CRM and let the platforms communicate with each other. Use the power of technology to automate the customer communication so that your CRM is dynamic, relevant and ringing your cash registers like never before.

 

So there you are – three attributes to judge how strong your analytics platform really is. Find out how you fare in this and the four other dimensions of CRM. We will be happy to assist you through this and help understand how you can make things better.

 

Also, check out the part 4 of our Think Again Series – “Have an A-level Engagement Model? Think Again.

Have an A-level Engagement Model? Think Again.

In the previous post of our Think Again Series we covered the importance of data and analytics maturity. Here we’ll be talking about how well your consumer engagement strategy should be designed.

 

As I mentioned in one of our previous blogs, engaging with your customers at real time is more than just sending them a thank you message after shopping. Today with the proliferation of channels, and maturity in technology, brands like yours need to go a notch higher with their engagement plans.

 

This means, redefining the word “personalization” to be more than just using first names. It means re-looking at your channel mix to use multiple channels together, instead of just one that you believe your customers prefer. And most importantly, it means re-examining your communication strategy to ensure it gives maximum returns from each message you send out.

 

And here’s how you can do that. In the spirit of us explaining what standards you should be aiming for when it comes to different aspects of your CRM program, here are 3 areas to check for when it comes it achieving nirvana in real-time customer engagement.

 

Channels of Engagement

 

No it isn’t enough that you can successfully send out SMSs and email to customers depending on their affinity to the channel. Studies show that more than 70% customers use 3 or more channels before they make a purchase. That means interacting with them simultaneously in at least 3 channels that you know they use, with the same message.

 

In order to have a successful CRM program in place, your brand should be where the customer is. Having a centralized campaign manager tool that allows to plan, design, execute, and track communication across all channels is the perfect solution for today’s digital age.

 

If you haven’t gotten one yet, invest in one – PRONTO!

 

Offer Effectiveness

 

If you are still stuck with the age old practice of sending offers and promos to all females for all female products, and all males for all male products, then you need to come out of Stone Age and embrace the 21st century – big time!

 

Offers need to targeted and personalized at various levels. Demographics is just one of them. Looking at the customer’s past purchase behavior tells you a lot about the kind of products they prefer. And many a times the user is not the buyer. Hence your generic offer to all males, may just be a big waste of campaign spend.

 

With competition graver than ever before, you need to get creative with your offers. Time them in such a way that you can reward the customers for every positive action they take, like purchase a slow moving product, referring customers, buying above your normal basket value, and so on. Get platforms in place that gives you the flexibility to reward your customers the way you want, and when you want. Anything below that, will lead your CRM strategy to reek of stale offers.

 

Personalized Communication

 

Yes, it all boils down to this. If you are able to send each customer a personalized offer, on the channels he/she actively uses with a message that is relevant to previous interactions the customer has made with your brand, then bravo – you have arrived at CRM paradise. Take a drink and chill!

 

If not, then you need to step on the gear and get some processes in place. With the advent of AI, you can now easily set up platforms that can predict the customers’ preferences in advance and tell you who should be targeted in what way (what messages, offers, channels etc). Up until now, this was usually done on a group level. But with AI, you can dive deeper and personalize your engagement in the true sense – at an individual level.

 

With these three checks in your engagement strategy, you can be sure that you are on the track to provide the best experience to your customers, thus garnering more loyalty.

 

While you’re at it, do read the last part of the Think Again Series, “CRM Success is not Linked to Technology Adoption? Think Again!” and let us know how you have been doing things differently to Ace your CRM Strategy.

CRM Success is not Linked to Technology Adoption? Think Again!

In the previous post of our Think Again Series we covered the importance of having a well thought out customer engagement strategy. In our final installment of the series, we’ll be covering what technological factors can determine CRM program success.

 

Having a huge team doesn’t always mean you’re going to get the best results. More so with your CRM. With your customers demanding a more personalized interaction than ever before, it is impossible to deliver seamless, consistent experience with siloed teams and platforms.

 

And that is why the last part of our Think Again Series talks about, what areas of CRM determines its success, deals with technological integration in your organization.

 

To skip the fancy introductions and get on with it, here are three attributes that give you a clear picture on how integrated your platforms are and if they are giving you the expected results.

 

Data Capture

It’ll be too silly of me to think you still capture your data manually across all channels (please don’t tell me otherwise!). So skipping this, let’s talk about the different systems you have created to capture the data form your all your stores – online and offline. Do these systems talk to each other at some point? Does your team work on connecting data and customers across channels after the initial data capture?

 

If your answer is yes to any of these, then your CRM technology maturity is nowhere close to where it should be.

 

In today’s omnichannel world, your data capture and storage should also be omnicahnnel. This means having completely integrated systems across channels that recognizes a single customer across these channels, and stores data in a single repository. The more nodes you create for capture and storage of data, the worse your customer experience is going to be. So revisit your data capture systems and processes, and become omnichannel in the true sense.

 

Campaign Execution

 

Gone are the days when your campaign execution required additional steps of downloading the data and then uploading them into the campaign software.

 

In today’s realtime world, you cannot depend on separate platforms if you want to recognize trends and act on it immediately. Campaign platforms should sit on a single data warehouse where your data capture systems are constantly feeding it data and your campaign tool is interacting with the customers on the basis of new data points, dynamically.

 

Omnichannel CRM

 

It all boils down to this – if you need to deliver an omnichannel CRM externally, then all your platforms, and processes should also be omnichannel internally.

 

Standalone, non-connected systems and technological platform will leave gaps in your entire CRM strategy that will prove to be too expensive in more than one ways for your CRM journey. Concentrate on pulling all your systems together and tightening the loop holes. If this needs additional investments, I would say it’ll be worth every penny you spend! Remember, a completely integrated CRM suite reduces duplication across platforms and increases efficiency.

 

With that we conclude our Think Again Series on how to get your CRM program to deliver results you never thought possible. Do share your thoughts on what criteria you think decides the success or failure of a CRM program. We are all ears!!

 

How to Create an Effective Loyalty Program

What is a loyalty program?

 

Recently, I was at a shopping mall at Winston Salem, North Carolina and to my delight, I found that with every purchase of a Bath and Body Works product, I was able to get another product absolutely free!  I came away feeling delighted that I had got a good bargain and the broad smile that I gave to the saleswoman was matched with one of her own, having made a good sale.  This was a clever way of getting me, a new customer, back to the store, retaining old ones and an extremely attractive form of a robust loyalty program.  Customers are always pleased with toys in Happy Meals, buy- one-get-one-free offers and coupons with a purchase or credit card points.

 

Keeping the customer happy and making them advocate for your brand involves more than great service.  How will you ensure that this customer keeps coming back to buy your brand in the future?  One great way to ensure returning customers is to have a powerful customer loyalty program.  Customers like them and 76% of those interviewed think that this is a great way to form a relationship with brands.  A customer loyalty program is a marketing technique to retain loyal customers and to attract new ones.  It is a reward program that rewards customers who frequently conduct business with a company.

 

Here are some interesting stats about customer loyalty programs:

 

  • There are over 3.3 billion programs in the US currently
  • The cost of acquiring a new customer is 6 to 7 times more expensive than retaining an existing one
  • 75% of US companies with a loyalty program generate a Return On Investment (ROI)
  • Increased profits show an upward trend of up to 95%
  • 83% of customers agree on the fact that loyalty programs are likely to make them continue to do business with certain brands
  • Existing customers spend 67% more than new ones

Types of customer loyalty programs

 

77% of customer loyalty programs fail in the first two years.  The primary reason is the lack of sync between customer perception and the company objective.  73% of customers feel that the company should be loyal to them and 66% of marketing executives from the company feel that customers should be loyal to them.  Only 25% of loyalty programs reward customers for some form of engagement with them.  85% of companies are always in search of ways to reward customers beyond promotions and discounts.  Take the case of Amazon Prime.  For a yearly subscription, customers can get access to free shipping, exclusive content and more.

 

Let us look at loyalty programs that are successful in bringing back customers time after time.  Looking beyond complex and bland reward systems, it is time to look at ideas that will build a loyalty program which would actually work for you.  Some examples of loyalty programs that have been very successful are :

 

  • Swarm Perks
  • American Express Plenti
  • REI Co-op
  • TOMS One for One
  • Amazon Prime
  • Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and
  • Sephora Beauty Insider and VIB

 

What makes these brand loyalty programs so successful? Let’s dive in and find out!

 

  • Use of a simple points system

 

Though this is a simple and commonly used loyalty program, it seems to be very successful.  There is no rocket science attached to this system.  Customers are rewarded with points for every purchase that they make.  It could be in the form of a discount, a free product or a special customer treatment.  Companies that build on this model make their processes confusing and complex and this is where they falter and fail.  The connection between points and tangible rewards is not easy for the customer to understand.  For example, when a company sets out to say “15 points is equal to 1 Dollar and 30 Dollars offers you a 50% discount on your next purchase”, they are setting themselves up for disaster.  This is not a reward but a headache for customers.

 

Make the loyalty program easy to understand, so that customers can make understand the terms of redemption on their own, without any help from the sales and in-house teams.  There is a note of caution though.  This type of reward does not apply to every form of business.  It works best for a business that encourages frequent and short-term purchases like Sephora.

 

The cosmetics giant is known for a great customer loyalty program.  They have a simple point-based system that rewards their customers for every dollar that they spend.  Customers swipe their Beauty Insider Card at every purchase and the card keeps a track of every purchase made.  Every dollar spent earns customers a point.  Shoppers can then redeem their points for products at the store’s check-out counters.  The company speaks in the language of its customers with points, dollars and cosmetic items.

 

A great incentive to continue shopping at Sephora is the scaling up of the rewards, according to how much the customer spends.  This helps customers to reach a certain threshold on their spending ways.  For example, they offer a free birthday gift through their online shopping or stores and free beauty classes.

 

  • Tier system

 

There is a thin line between attainable and desirable rewards and this is one of the biggest challenges for businesses, while they design their customer reward programs.  Using a tier system that rewards initial loyalty and encourages more purchases is the best way to implement this system.

 

Offering small rewards is a part of a hook to be a part of the program and then scaling up the rewards or by increasing the value of the rewards, in order to become involved in the loyalty ladder is a good way to implement a tiered system.  This helps customers in not forgetting about their points and not redeeming them at all because there is a huge gap between gaining points and finding gratification from them.

 

A big difference between the points system and the tiered system is that the former is a short-term value and the latter offers long-term value.  Tiered programs work well with higher commitment from customers like the airline industry, the hospitality business or insurance companies.

 

The Virgin Atlantic Flying Club not only offers frequent flying points to its customers, but it also inducts them into the Club Red, the Club Silver and the Club Gold, in order to enable them to earn tier points.  Club Red not only helps its members to earn points on miles, but it also offers discounts on airport parking, rental cars, hotels and holiday flights.

 

Club Silver members earn 50% more points on flights and also enjoy the benefits of expedited check-ins and stand-by seating on priority.  Club Gold members get double mile points, access to areas where they can grab a drink or get a free massage before their flight and priority boarding.  As the journey of a customer moves from Red to Silver to Gold, they are helped in this process by a benefits table, so that they can understand this journey easily.  In the early stages of a customer engagement program, they are offered benefits that are very cool and help them to keep coming back over and over again.  They are also made to realize that a gold status is not unattainable and there are some awesome benefits that can be taken advantage of.

 

  • Charging a fee for VIP benefits from the start

 

Charging customers a one-time fee or an annual fee could work out very beneficial for both the business and its customers.  Customers can bypass common purchase barriers and a loyalty program can address specific obstacles.

 

This kind of a loyalty program is applicable to businesses that are frequent and involve repeat purchases.  It was found that a huge number of customers abandon their cart purchases after they find out the cost of their purchases, after taxes and shipping costs have been applied.  Amazon found a way to tackle this issue by charging an upfront fee that would be applicable to all future purchases.  Prime customers get a two-day free shipping on millions of products, without a minimum purchase, along with other benefits.  The company also offered a 2-hour free delivery of grocery to its members in certain areas, along with other discounts.

 

  • Creating a value program around beliefs

 

Customers are loyal to beliefs and values, rather than to a company.  A connection with customers can be created around non-monetary or discounted rewards, much more than dollars and cents.  Any business can offer promotional coupons and codes.  But the value that they can offer to their customers, other than these can increase loyalty to their brands.

 

Toms Shoes is dedicated to improving the lives of their customers by promising that for every purchase made; they would help a person in need.  This initiative has grown huge and is now helping with clean water access, improving maternal health care and supporting many other organizations.

 

  • Fruitful partnerships

 

Coalition programs or partnering with other companies for customer loyalty is extremely effective in retaining customers and growing your business.  Understanding customers’ daily needs, lives and their purchase processes would help you to decide which companies to partner with best.  For example, if you are a food company for dogs, it might be a good idea to partner with a veterinary clinic or a pet grooming facility to offer co-branded deals that would be beneficial to your customers and create a win-win situation for all.

 

American Express, in its Plenti program has partnered with companies like Macy’s, AT&T, Rite Aid, Hulu and more and offer their customers points for shopping at any of these stores and linking their existing loyalty card to their Plenti accounts.

 

  • Gamification

 

Everybody loves playing a good game.  Your loyalty program can be converted into a game to help encourage repeat customers and prepare a robust brand image for your business.  It is important to make your customers feel valued and that you are not duping them of their rewards.  Ensure that the purchase requirements to play this game is attainable and that your legal department is on the same page as you regarding these gaming programs, before it is announced and launched.

 

Swarm Perks is an incentive that is offered by Swarm, which is a check-in app.  It encourages its users to check-in from different locations and share what they are up to with their friends.  Discounts are offered at various locations, like a 20% discount at Best Buy.  Dream vacations, spa days and shopping trips are also won through draws.

 

Benefits of a customer loyalty program

  • The perks that are offered to customers could be the best way to acquire new customers
  • It is a great way to initiate a lifelong brand-consumer relationship
  • If customers are given opportunities to maximize their loyalty rewards and receive communication, based on their milestones, needs and preferences, they are likely to support the company not only with their money, but also with referrals, repeat purchases and exposure on the social media, thus bringing in new customers

Latest trends in loyalty programs

 

Some of the biggest and latest trends in customer loyalty programs are :

 

  • Customers look forward to personalized rewards
  • Omnichannel and multichannel programs are replacing traditional ones
  • There is an increase in brand partnerships
  • A sense of social responsibility is expected from brands
  • Premium loyalty programs are an attractive option
  • Customers look forward to a sense of emotional loyalty
  • AI and chatbots are being used for customer engagement

How to start a customer loyalty program?

 

Here are some tips to get started on a loyalty program.

 

  • One of the simplest and easiest ways is to have a loyalty punch card
  • Begin with an opt-in program
  • Put some thought behind a Premium Loyalty Program
  • Give your customers a branded loyalty membership card
  • Use a digital component in your program
  • Invest in incentives that work for you
  • Have a regular communication with your members