In the press - Opinions and press coverage
Everything comes together to make eCRM the way forward
14th December, 2007
We're on a cusp of a huge change in marketing. Until now, we've relied on people electing to come and see us so we could provide them with the materials they need to make a choice. They had to be given a CD-ROM or click on the red button or use a search engine to locate the website.
Email marketing gave us a broadcast channel. The Data Protection Act gave us a legitimacy based on the requirement for opt-in lists. And opt-in requirements gave us a channel for asking for customers' likes and dislikes.
Incrementally we've been able to build up a picture of an individual starting with these preferences, added to data based on their behaviour, responses and purchase patterns built up over years of observing customers from the inside of the sales process.
Suddenly we have a critical mass of information and the requisite channels through which to gather data. This gives us the ability to deliver to the customer the kind of interactivity and elective participation previously only possible through marrying broadcast (ads, emails, online PR) and personalised websites.
At the same time, the population has become familiar with the self-service paradigm. Not only are people using Ajax to personalise interfaces, they're also used to the personalisation of content. People want control. We must provide almost sycophantic attention to an individual's needs or they don't feel as though we care.
So the timing of eCRM is perfect. We have an opportunity to deliver tailored, relevant, wish-based, behaviour-based communications to an individual timed to perfection. We can send an email that's truly unique, based on a series of rules set up in a complex database, in turn based on segmentation models created by people with a background in data or direct marketing. And the companies that deliver emails can track the response and provide the tools to allow us to re-segment at an ever-increasing level of accuracy.
Just as eCRM reaches this point of potential, we have a fairly robust understanding of how it works and what does and doesn't work. We have clients that have proven the case commercially - one gets a return of 26:1 - and those that have found it produces only incremental growth in sales. Either way, more is being invested in eCRM.
At a time when there's the prospect of recession, when huge clients are halving marketing budgets, when the world's safest financial institutions are dumping risky investments, this shift away from big-ticket acquisition gambles towards utterly personal communications that can be adapted for greater relevance at the whim of the recipient is a no-brainer.
ECRM's nascency today foretells a time when non-personal communications will be a thing of the past. Although we're a way away from the totally personalised electric newspaper read on a gossamer screen, marketing is about to move on. This unstoppable change is propelled by consumer expectation of relevance, response to preference and applied observation of behaviour catered to with intelligence. It's enabled by the confluence of data channels, sources and regulations. And it will be driven by the financial necessity of getting a proven return on investment with as low an entry level as possible.
Felix Velarde, New Media Age, 13.12.07