Successful brands today build advocacy amongst their audience by delivering timely, relevant communications which recognise the needs of each individual customer and how they wish to be communicated with.
Or, to put it more simply, your customers have the power – and if you want to delight and excite your existing and potential customers, their unique needs should be front and centre of everything you do so that you can communicate with them in the right way, at the right time.
And that’s why you need a CRM strategy.
What is a CRM strategy?
A CRM strategy is an essential part of every business today. It basically enables you to manage and nurture customer relationships so you can deliver an excellent customer experience, boost customer loyalty, and ultimately, drive new business.
Here at Edit, we live and breathe CRM strategy, and over the years we’ve risen to every new challenge as CRM services have continued to evolve, all the while staying true to the original promise of CRM: to keep the customer smack bang in the centre of it all.
So, if you want to learn how to improve your CRM strategy, there’s no one better placed to help you than our expert team. With that in mind, let’s hear it from the Editors and discover what you can do to get the most out of your CRM strategy…
5 ways to improve your CRM strategy and get the most out of your software
1. Flexibility is key
When it comes to an effective CRM strategy, it’s important to be flexible. Your strategy is a work in progress, it’s not a simple item that you can tick off a list and move on from. That’s why you should let your data to make your decisions and inform what you should do next.
Strategic Lead Holly Payet who heads up our Strategy team and supports clients with putting their customers at the heart of what they do explains:
“Your CRM strategy should be constantly evolving as your business and customers continue to grow and change. That’s why here at Edit, our strategy teams work alongside data scientists to find valuable, actionable insights – so we can help you to keep honing your strategy as you go.”
2. Use data science to solve your challenges
This leads us nicely onto our next point: if you’re going to get the most out of your CRM strategy, data is your best friend – something which Director of Data Science Marc Dallimore agrees with:
“Your CRM strategy is only as good as your data – which is why you need to use your data to solve your marketing challenges. From data analysis to review past campaign performance to data science to plan the future and search for ways to improve results, here at Edit we combine the maths and magic of data science and creative to make highly personalised customer relationship strategies.”
3. Put data privacy at the forefront of your decisions
With the shift from third party to first party data, changes to cookies, and the number of types of data accessible for marketing purposes, it’s no wonder that companies are concerned about the impact on customer experience.
However, data privacy should always be at the forefront of all decisions regarding customer data – and if you’re going to build trust with your customers and use your CRM to deliver great customer experiences, you need to have clean data.
Senior Data Scientist Andy Aldersey explains: “It is very much possible to personalise customer journeys without compromising on privacy. By generating insights from first-party data, you can optimise brand communications, create personalised content, and benefit from better retention and increased ROI”.
4. Predict your customer behaviour
No customer journey is the same, and all your customers want to feel special. So, if you’re going to get the most out of your CRM strategy, you need to use it to understand your customers and how their journey works.
By using customer data to predict customer behaviour, you can connect your organisation to your customers in a more holistic way. Senior Insights Analyst Sean Longthorope agrees:
“It’s all about creating improved customer experiences – which is why you need to use your data to predict behaviour. By closely analysing customer behaviours, previous campaigns, and the market, we help our clients to plan for the future and uncover rounded, actionable insights.”
5. Create consumer trust with compelling customer experiences
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: your customer should be at the centre of everything you do, which is why you need to recognise the needs of each individual customer in order to deliver relevant communications.
Strategic Consulting Direrctor Josh Hull breaks it down: “The secret to creating compelling customer experiences is focussed targeting, segmentation, and ultimately, personalised content. Customer segmentation allows you to create campaigns that engage with and inspire your customers, so you can put customer experience above everything else.
How Edit can help with your CRM strategy
If you need help and advice with your CRM Strategy or Campaign Management, you’ve come to the right place. Here at Edit, we strip everything back to your core objectives and use real data and smart analytics to provide an audience-first approach.
This way, we can ensure that we always reach your customers in the right way, at the right time, and deliver what you need: better sales, award-winning campaigns, and unbeatable customer experiences.
Sound good? Contact us today to find out more about Transformational CRM and how we can improve your CRM strategy by helping you to create powerful, bespoke CRM strategies that actually work.
