It’s been quite some time since we last covered the topic of customer relationship management, more commonly referred to by its acronym, CRM. CRM is one of the most effective tools to track and market to customers and prospects. Our POV – point of view- is that customer relationship management is a tried and true digital approach to increase efficiency, productivity, and the bottom line.
In this installment of MarCom POV, the following article excerpts may very well be the catalyst that maximizes your marketing momentum.
With the advent of the digital era, businesses are now equipped with a strong digital infrastructure and insights that is now transforming business processes. CRM or Customer Relationship Management, initially considered as a customer service process, has been gaining popularity as a versatile business development tool, assisting in creation of intelligent marketing strategies that drive sales, business growth and customer loyalty.
Laced with features like smart data, predictive analysis and real time response, the CRM has, over the past few years, transformed into one of the single most reliable and accurate system to drive growth. This has given rise to the term ‘Relationship Marketing’ – a concept that seeks to increase sales by building trust and engaging customers. Relationship marketing focuses on driving consistent business through repeat customers by building a long-term relationship through consistently excellent customer service, understanding the consumer profile and preferences, anticipating their future needs, and offering discounts and special perks through loyalty programs.
CRM offers the perfect tools for accurately collecting, managing and analysing this consumer behaviour data so as to help in creating impactful marketing strategies, Public Relations and Advertising campaigns for engagement not only with existing customers, but also to reach to potential customers, possibly belonging to similar demographic/ geography or similar economic class.
Click here to view original web page at www.entrepreneur.com
Need a bit more convincing on the benefits of CRM? Check out these stats and the top five CRM systems for small businesses, courtesy of financesonline.com
To give you an idea of how CRM has become an indispensable tool in today’s business, here are some 2017 CRM statistics culled from various sources:
- ROI on CRM is approximately $5 to every $1 invested (Baseline)
- 79% of leads fail to convert without CRM (Pardot)
- 30% of all leads fail as a result of bad data sources (Cyber Sphere)
- 26% is the recorded adoption rate for CRM (Salesforce)
- 65% boost in sales quotas is realized by businesses with CRM (Innopple Technologies)
- 41% revenue increase is attained with CRM (Trackvia)
- 60% of the time, CRM is used for email marketing by small businesses (MarketingCharts.com)
- 47% of the time, leads nurtured in a CRM system are converted (Annuitas Group)
- 300% improvement in conversion rates with CRM in place (Cloudswave)
- 40% improvement in average purchase value with CRM (Cloudswave)
- 23% reduction in lead cost with CRM (Cloudswave)
- 47% improvement in customer service with CRM (Capterra)
- 26% improvement in retention via Social CRM (Nucleus Research)
- 74% of businesses using CRM report better customer relationships (Software Advice)
The top 5 CRM software for small business in 2018:
What is your POV on CRM? Feel free to share your experience or thoughts in the comments section of this post.
GB O’Brien
LGK Principal
For daily marketing communications news, subscribe to LGK’s free, online, MarCom Digest.