Right at their fingertips, marketers have access to a valuable asset that can positively impact customer experience and ad targeting: CRM – or customer relationship management – data. CRM software is a vault of valuable data that tracks interactions companies have with their customers, spanning from contact information to in-store experiences and customer attributes.
This translates to valuable first-party data brands can leverage in their marketing efforts. By onboarding their offline CRM data, marketers can take a people-based marketing approach online in order to:
Most importantly, CRM data provides marketers the tremendous opportunity to shift to one-to-one marketing at massive scale. Here’s how.
CRM software tracks the interactions companies have with their customers, which translates to valuable first-party data brands can leverage in their marketing efforts, such as:
But it hasn’t always been so easy! How did we arrive at our current data-rich state of affairs?
The way marketers track and ultimately use this information has gone through many phases before CRM became what it is today.
Paper and Pen: Marketers began by recording their sales and customer relationships manually.
The Rolodex: By the 1950s, companies could more reality spin through their paper customer records.
Database Marketing: In the early 1908s, companies began analyzing their customer information for customization purposes.
Contact Management Software: The rise of the PC in the late 1980s meant companies could digitize the information on their Rolodexes.
Sales Force Automation: By the early 1990s, software was developed that enabled sales teams to make their processes more efficient using their customer data.
CRM! The acronym “CRM” was coined in 1995.
Mobile & SaaS: As the century came to a close and eCommerce became more prevalent, the first mobile and SaaS CRM products were introduced.
The CRM Boom: CRM is growing in importance. But why? The answer is data.
Today, the role of the CRM is far greater than simply tracking customer information or executing email campaigns. CRM software fosters better marketing campaigns across a variety of digital channels by enabling:
To paint a full picture of their customers and optimize their digital campaigns using CRM, marketers can upload their offline customer data and connect it to digital environments. This process is called data onboarding.
Activating CRM data across marketing channels is not without its challenges. Marketers still struggle with:
But despite these challenges, above all, CRM data paves a path for advertisers to shift to one-to-one, personalized marketing at massive scale. People-based marketing has doubled or tripled conversion rates for advertisers compared to traditional cookie-based methods.
Marketers today need to deliver relevance and maximize their ad budgets in an increasingly digital world. By using the CRM data they already own, marketers can reduce ad waste, delight customers and earn long-term brand loyalty through personalized, seamless and relevant experiences.