Let’s say you have a customer database. You have products to sell. You’re all set to rock ‘n’ roll with your marketing campaigns.
There’ll be many other marketers out there in a similar position who intend to talk to your customers too.
With your combined marketing efforts, you and your competitors will create a lot of noise, much of which your desired audience won’t take in. They’re busy. They may have already received 10 irrelevant marketing offers that day. And – just as an example – they really may not want to buy a blue duffle-bag embellished with a happy hippo. Even if it does match the pink suitcase with cute kittens on it that they bought for their six-year-old niece. After all, it’s not always about selling more of the same.
The majority of your customers may not think that your particular offer is the best thing since Star Wars. They may also have grown oblivious to being bombarded with irrelevant marketing messages or, worse still, grown resentful of it. And if that’s the case, they may well hit the unsubscribe button and you won’t be selling anything to Mr. Disgruntled of Dodgeville any time soon.
So how do you get the best value from your database? It’s about knowing how and when to play your CRM cards.
CRM CARD 1 – SPEAK TO EVERYONE
Imagine Christmas is coming. For many, it’s a time of celebration when customers are actively seeking gift solutions, food, drinks, items for the home and dressy clothes. A general, Christmas-themed “gifts for everyone”, “celebrate in style” or “it’s time to party” message may well appeal to as much as 60-70% of your audience. It’s worth doing but it will tend to be an annual one-off. Similarly you may speak to your entire database about standout occasions like Mother’s Day, Halloween and Black Friday. They may be a dead cert but they’re finite. And there are 365 days in the years, so how do you keep customers interested the rest of the time?
CRM CARD 2 – USE CONTEXTUAL MARKETING TRICKS BUT REMEMBER THEY HAVE THEIR LIMITATIONS
It can’t be Christmas or Halloween all-year-round. At a more routine time of year, such a blanket-style approach to your database is less likely to have as much success. Triggers, recommendations based on browsing history, retargeting and chasing abandoned carts may help you make a small number of sales if you’ve talked to customers recently or if they’ve visited your website. These contextual marketing tricks work nicely but only address a very small portion of your database. These tactics can also wear thin with your audience. When you’ve tried all these you may feel you’ve reached an unrewarding end to the sales conversion funnel.
But there’s hope yet. And here it is:
CRM CARD 3 – FIND AND MINE THE TINIEST CLUES AND MEET YOUR BUSINESS PRIORITIES WITH AN OFFER-BASED STRATEGY
With Tinyclues plug-and-play SaaS platform, marketers can actually identify the most relevant target for any marketing message. Unlike before, you can now adopt an offer-based strategy that meets your business priorities by promoting all the diversity of your catalogue to the audiences that are most likely to respond. And you can run different campaigns simultaneously to different targets in your database.
This means that your audience will view your campaigns in a positive light as they’ll only ever receive the ones they’re interested in. Hey presto, you’ll differentiate yourself in a busy marketplace without having to compete on discount and your customers will be engaged again and respond positively to your marketing campaigns. Your offer-based strategy will help you achieve greater ROI and incremental revenue and your brand will benefit too. After all, relevant, well-targeted campaigns with fresh propositions say your business is thoughtful, sharp, and that you know and care about your customers. In fact, you’re good to have around, so they’ll read your emails and other communications. A perfect circle of love.
USE ALL THREE CRM CARDS WISELY AND OUTSMART YOUR COMPETITION
By playing your CRM cards right you can build a virtuous circle of satisfied, loyal and repeat customers. You do this by talking to everyone (top of the funnel) on generally celebrated occasions such as Christmas and Mother’s Day. At the bottom of the funnel, you can pick up those “low hanging” sales by converting traffic using contextual tactics.
But don’t neglect your mid-tunnel which can be the most complicated stage because of the broad diversity of your base. By playing your third CRM card, you can make the most of offer-based new occasions to communicate to multiple parts of your audience. You’ll send your campaigns to the optimal target audience who’ll be interested in your offers. You’ll be able to cut through the noise because you can be more creative and most importantly, highly relevant with an audience you know more about. By finding the customers who are most likely to buy what you want to sell today, you can generate more revenue without creating customer fatigue.
It’s almost as easy as one, two, three.
