Putting the 'R' Back in CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM), especially the relationship piece, is in a serious state of flux. Marketers can no longer do the same old thing because new technologies are throwing up roadblocks to the relationship. Daily-deal sites like Groupon offer consumers shortcuts and pricing advantages that bypass marketers completely. Consumers make purchases on auction sites based on product reviews, keeping shoppers away from your website and eroding the relationship even further.

Retailers must begin to put the "R" back in CRM. One way to accomplish this is to directly compete with these relationship-busters by improving your customers’ shopping experience. It's one of the best ways to re-establish a relationship and increase customer loyalty.

It starts with tracking your customers’ behaviors and using that information to drive convenience. Let's go back to an early example of tracking customer behavior: supermarket cards. We all wanted one because they promised better prices, access to coupons, specials and so on.

I remember the first time I was offered a special coupon on an item I bought with regularity. At the time the coupon still came in the mail. I clipped it, brought it in to the store and saved a whole bunch of money. And it wasn't just about the money I was saving. The coupons were a helpful reminder to place the item in question on my shopping list, to remember to buy it, etc.

Putting the "R" back in CRM is all about a very focused mission: to bring the kind of convenience described above to the online shopping experience. Having a marketer provide you with suggestions and great promotional offers on products and services you need, or are thinking about buying, is a tremendous time and energy saver. It builds a relationship between the marketer and customer. It fulfills the customer's needs and desires and it enables the marketer to sell his or her product or service.

Over the next five years, the shape of online marketing will, in part, be defined by the development of two kinds of branded applications: content and convenience apps. Content and convenience apps will keep companies closer to their customers, and their customers closer to each other. What's more, these apps will play an important role in determining where companies rank against their competition.

Branded apps will play a paramount role in this competitive marketplace. They'll be built for a variety of platforms with the agility to take advantage of every new channel that comes along. These platforms currently include smartphones, desktops, tablets, e-readers, communities, navigation, television and radio. But if you can be sure of anything, it's that there will be many more branded apps to come. Branded content and convenience apps are hitting the market at a rapid pace and will work together seamlessly in the future to become the next generation of online marketing.

Think of Pandora.com as an example. Pandora monitors your listening habits to suggest other music for you to listen to. It enables you to vote on the songs it recommends in order to continuously tweak the music it suggests for you. As your music tastes change, Pandora seamlessly changes with you. When you hear a great new song, you can immediately buy it and put it on your iPod. This is how an app of content combines with an app of convenience.

Branded apps of convenience simplify the end-user experience across the entire product life cycle, from research to purchase to delivery to service, and will be designed across multiple platforms. Many are already in use today. For example, navigation systems can observe traffic issues ahead and get around those problems before you get stuck in a jam. They can also warn motorists of icy conditions ahead, if a car is sliding out of its lane or any number of potential hazards — again, before problems arise.

Branded apps of convenience can also warn a consumer of a recall of a product before a purchase is completed, make an alternative suggestion on the spot and rewrite the order.

Content and convenience apps are being developed based on listening. Companies identify persistent tasks that are repeated by many consumers, perceiving what consumers really want and need. Apps are then built to meet those consumer needs. Imagine being able to listen to your customers, identify a specific group of tasks that a subset of your buyers all go through prior to making a purchase, then building an app to do it.

The power and future of online marketing lies not in the development of the next great disruptive technology, but rather in optimizing the technologies that exist today — technologies which marketers haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities. The future is happening now. Savvy marketers will take advantage of all the technologies available to continue to put the "R" back in CRM.

Neil Rosen is the founder and CEO of eWayDirect, a provider of strategic e-marketing solutions and services. Neil can be reached at neil@ewaydirect.com.