Posts filed under ‘CRM’
Is CRM Really a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
No I don’t necessarily think so, but to keep mixin’ up the metaphors it is not unlike Field of Dreams with the oft-used mantra “build it and they will come“. Just because you build or buy a CRM at great expense and turn it on does not mean that “… they will come”, let alone continue to come again, more often, with increasing loyalty across the various constituent lifecycles.
As many other suggest CRM is but infomation enabled Relationship Marketing that requires equal investments in strategy, people AND technology.
The reason for my initial question is a recent blog post from Lisa Baxter of The Experience Business Customer Relationship Management: Pulling the wool over our own eyes.
Lisa, I suspect you and I are singing from the same hymnsheet (oops analogy three and counting), but I worry about your vilification of CRM at the start or am I getting the wrong end of the stick (oh oh four).
I think an essential element of a CRM in assisting Audience Development is initiating and then building an ongoing relationship, but an important part of that is trust. Trust is based on mutual respect and organisational actions and tactics must align with that as part of a sustainable long term strategy. The tactics that you mentions may be useful components, but as you suggest, on their own with out the coordinated organisational committment that builds trust each and every contact, they are just cheap tricks (and are perceived as such).
CRM like marketing is about managing an exchange of value and that means providing value for both sides, the customer and the vendor. Lisa, the examples you give do seem to be framed to sound “predatory”, but the language does not include the value that such actions may have for the customer (whether prospective, first time, recent or frequent, lapsed or refused and so-on)
Maybe our perspectives are very similar, I agree with you that maybe it is the people and strategy components at fault. A selling orientation is increasingly out of place in this day and age and push marketing is limited by its short term perspective.
I don’t disagree with your ‘platitudes’ that Relationship Marketing may deliver via a CRM: gratitude, helpfulness & empathy, inform, delight, connect and value. In fact, they sound like worthwhile values to aspire to in any initiative.
Yes, retention is the way forward. Retention in all its guises from return attendance to frequency recency and monetary value to upselling, cross-selling and value adds and so-on. But it is a two-way exchange of value that ensures longer term success.
2 May, 2012 at 4:46 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 2 comments
Does Social Media have a role in CRM?
I don’t know, what do you think?
I was asked by a client the other day whether Social Media should have been documented more in a CRM specification. I said that I had presumed so, but when I tried to define tasks or information requirements that overlapped CRM to Social Media a short paragraph seemed to do the job.
I am not diminishing the value of Social Media. But Social Media is about a conversation and the extension of Customer Relationship Management is not Customer Conversation Management.
Listening is more important than talking, preaching or promoting. The latter does not encourage or enhance engagement, listening does.
So back to CRM. I guess you could record a customer’s FB page, twitter account, Linked in page and so-on. But that is just like recording phone numbers, it does not mean you are or will listen to them or learn from them what interests them, excites them, annoys them, even what they think about you and what you do.
I think the missing link is legwork. Sorry for the mixed analogies, but the legwork of listening is essential, whether automated or manual. Listening to Social Media channels may result in learning and provide the trigger for activity. That trigger may be a complaint, compliment, indication of a prospect or a warning of a defector (maybe lapsing subscriber is less inflamatory). Various Social media channels need to be monitored for triggers and when a trigger is identified, a CRM may then assist in managing the customer incident, communication, activity, induction, loyalty, upgrade, re-attraction and other stages of an ongoing, developing and evolving relationship.
Therein lies the challenge, identifying triggers by the action of listening to the multitude of conversations. A CRM can record Social Media identifiers, integration will eventually enable the monitoring of the social media channels for individuals. However, intelligence will be required to be added to that listening to accurately identify triggers for the proactive (even just reactive) management of the relationship.
Then we get to the issue of privacy … oh boy – let’s leave that for another day.
3 April, 2012 at 1:12 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 3 comments
Are Ticketing system providers ever going to facilitate integration with a stand-alone CRM?
Roger spotted this research conducted by Turnkey Intelligence.
For the second time, Turnkey has surveyed 141 sports teams in the: US MLB, MLS, the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL. The findings are summarised in the report The State of Data Systems in Sports & Entertainment.
The study focused on four areas:
- CRM/database management
- Ticketing
- Sponsorship
- Market research
A major issue here and a common refrain in marketing, is the lack of integration between ticketing and CRM, let alone real-time integration.
“The ability to integrate CRM with other systems (ticketing, etc.) is a critical driver of CRM manager satisfaction (or, in many cases, dissatisfaction).“
“Users of both systems identified “uptime”, customization capabilities, and access to an open API as the platform features most important to them/their organizations …Ticketmaster users expressed dissatisfaction with their system’s lack of integration and customization capabilities“
So am I correct that there are no published API’s for Ticketmaster to facilitate integration?
“a consistent theme among respondents was the importance of system integration. Today’s users expect all systems – CRM, ticketing, lead-scoring, merchandise databases, web forms, etc. – to integrate with each other easily and seamlessly, and to enable the clean, simple exportation of data.“
The use of the term ‘exportation’ worries me. Surely these days we are after real two way integration and beyond the ferrying of batches of data between stand-alone systems?
It was interesting to see how well Microsoft CRM rated:
“Microsoft scored relatively well on CRM users’ biggest satisfaction drivers (ease of use, reporting capabilities, and integration with other systems), whereas Archtics performed markedly worse, especially with regard to integration potential.“
Over 70% of respondents use Ticketmaster and Archtics is a Ticketmaster product that they say is an “integrated solution” , yet it appears that users have another opinion. OW!
The article concludes reinforcing the importance of integration:
“Overall system integration, seen as having a direct relationship with increased efficiency and better business, is becoming more important every day. The systems that can continue to adapt to this reality quickly and cost-effectively will gain market share, while more rigid, stand-alone platforms will suffer.“
15 February, 2012 at 4:54 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Super Subscribers: Saving the Day, Seeding a Loyalty Initiative
An instructive case study of soliciting donors from subscribers at 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle from TRG Arts.
Facing a funding shortfall in 2009/10, 2010/11 subscriber were approached to become “Super Subscribers” and make a donation to “enhance their theatre-going experience“.
This is explained as follows: “Instead of requesting help for the organization, the letter invited patrons to enhance their theater experience with a tax-deductible gift that included experiential benefits: a backstage tour, a one-time guest pass to the major donor lounge, and a show poster of the subscriber’s choice from the upcoming season. Their gift would also support scholarships for the 5th‘s upcoming summer camps, but the primary focus of the ask was on the subscriber’s experience.“
40% of donations came in response to just the direct mail campaign without the need for any follow up calls.
The campaign brought in 453 gifts and a total of $51,189 at a 10% cost-of-sale and analysis by TRG was very interesting:
- “Most Super Subscribers were relatively new to subscribing. 65% included first timers, subscribers of five or fewer years, or patrons returning after letting their subscription lapse.
- Super Subscribers were primarily new donors. 70% had no previous giving history; 30% were lapsed donors.
- Super Subscribers were twice as generous. The campaign’s average gift size was $113, more than double 5th Avenue prior new gift average of $53.73.”
24 January, 2012 at 7:50 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Audience Development may yet, not be, a “non-job”?
A colleague, Jerry Yoshitomi of MeaningMatters, put me on to this article. I find this quite exciting for the future of Audience Development and the development of meaningful consumer models – Voter data crucial to Romney’s victory
No, I am not going to bore you with a regurgitation of the seemingly endless US election process 
I am, however going to wax lyrical about the use of data to segment prospects and inform relationship marketing.
“A central factor in Mitt Romney’s impressive win in New Hampshire was a sophisticated and relentless voter contact program that locked in supporters early and turned them out to the polls.“
Romney’s team “mined reams of consumer information — from the number of purchases voters made at Williams-Sonoma to their range of financial investments — to build a model that would allow them to find and identify potential supporters.“
They used data to prioritise prospects and then implemented an ongoing structured program of communication developed a loyal core.
“Romney operatives expanded a list of 5,000 solid supporters in New Hampshire from his 2008 campaign to more than 25,000 whom they believed they could rely … while also turning out with friends, relatives and colleagues.“
Just imagine if we had audiences on which we could rely and they turned out with friends, relatives and colleagues. Although I am not sure that we would aspire to this approach in the arts?
“In the end, the Romney team credited its successes to persistence — finding those undecided voters leaning their way and just inundating them,” said Romney’s New Hampshire director, Jason McBride.
Let’s hope that the arts can learn from this constituent development and use similar data mining tools for substantive audience development. Maybe we can then put to bed the accusations of nay-sayers like the recalcitrant Eric Pickles who variously called audience development an “non-job” or a “pointless post”.
13 January, 2012 at 10:54 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
What do you reckon about the likely impact of these Marketing Trends on CRM in 2012?
Here are some more predictions of marketing trends that will impact CRM in 2012 according to Judith Aquino of CRM.COM in 5 Hot Marketing Trends (not surprisingly, mobile is at the top):
- Mobile Marketing
- QR Codes
- Voice Of Customer (VOC) Monitoring
- Social Media Marketing
- Video
Finally, she suggests an additional trend with the ‘news’ that Groupon and Daily Deals sites have fallen to earth and are no longer seen as the ‘answer’. Surely, you would have to suggest that they were only ever good for pissing of existing and loyal customers with unfocussed discounts in the guise of prospecting for new customers – BUT without gaining any personal details with which to build an ongoing relationship with those new prospects?
2 January, 2012 at 5:47 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Will This Be The Start of CMR as Opposed to CRM?
It seems we may be seeing the start of a legislative push added to the slow industry evolution from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) toward Customer Managed Relationships (CMR).
In April this year, the UK Government launched a new consumer empowerment strategy “designed to encourage businesses to release their customer data back to them so that consumers can use this data for their own purposes.”
The Government has boasted that the ‘midata’ project will “turn the existing approach towards consumers on its head (with) a shift away from a world in which certain businesses tightly control the information they hold about consumers, towards one in which individuals along or in groups, can use their data or feedback for their own or mutual benefit“.
Information sharing as opposed to data access or the archaic concept of customer data ownership is put in context by Alan Mitchell, strategy director of market analyst Ctrl-Shift and a member of the Midata Project Board:
“firstly it is mindset – there is another way of thinking about the whole area of customer data – and also process.“
“The trust element is really important and that works across terms and conditions, privacy policies, actual data policies, data management policies, customer training, staff training, staff incentives, and so on. So it is actually quite a good programme of change across a number of areas – the trust, the mechanisms, and the value. And that is why we are saying it really is an evolution, but it is happening already.”
The Ctrl-Shift publication The new personal data landscape, “demonstrates that the trend towards individuals managing their own data is mostly happening beyond the radar of organisations’ existing concerns but is nevertheless changing the environment in which they operate, including customer behaviours and expectations.”
From hoarding to sharing: CRM and the democratisation of data management
16 December, 2011 at 8:40 am Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
OK, do we finally have a RoI for CRM?
No, I am not having an annoying acronym attack, maybe a bit of alliteration though
This is the headline that got my attention: CRM Returns $5.60 for Every Dollar Invested.
With “an average benefit of $5.60 returned for every dollar spent” investing in CRM as they say is a “no-brainer”.
They also suggest that if other capabilities like social, analytics and mobile access are added there is a further multiplier and sustainability.
The full RESEARCH NOTE is available online CRM PAYS BACK $5.60 FOR EVERY DOLLAR SPENT
29 November, 2011 at 6:00 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Who are the Big 3 in the War in the cloud?
A quick primer to the main providers of CRM in the cloud and currently battling it out:
1. Microsoft Dynamics CRM
“If you are an Outlook shop, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a no brainer. The application’s core offering is your standard fare CRM feature set, but it is adding social media functionality as fast as it can.“
2. Oracle Public Cloud
“brings its formidable database and business application bona fides — of which CRM is just one part — to the cloud.“
3. Salesforce.com
Just need someone to solve that issue of integrating external ticketing software/service transactions for those stuck in venues with exclsuive ticketing contracts …
17 November, 2011 at 12:04 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia Leave a comment
Do you know of any other successful integrations of CRM with ticketing solutions?
I was contacted by Lauren Carlson a CRM Analyst with Software Advice.
Lauren introduced me to a review she wrote on five CRM alternatives to consider other than Salesforce, namely:
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM
- NetSuite OneWorld CRM
- Oracle CRM On Demand
- Sage SalesLogix
- SugarCRM
The review is Salesforce Alternatives | 5 Cloud CRM Systems to Consider
I recommend having a browse, not because I have a problem with Salesforce. However, I do think that comparison is always useful, as is competition. I would also suggest that the needs of entertainment wrt CRM are specific and the major requirement that is not addressed by any of these is integration with transaction capability, such as ticketing, memberships or donations.
There is are only two such integrations I know of currently:
- Patron Manager is built on a Salesforce platform and incorporates a variety of transaction types (including: Ticketing, Subscriptions and Donations) within the web-based service developed by Patron technology in New York.
- Event2CRM is an integration of Microsoft Dynamics and Eventbrite online ticketing developed by CRM Innovation in Kansas.
Do you know of any other integrations of CRM with ticketing solutions? Let us know by all means by adding a comment to this blog.
There is a short common sense summary available from Software Advice: Ten Steps to Selecting the Right CRM Software that you can download after registering.
14 November, 2011 at 5:38 pm Tim Roberts ARTS Australia 6 comments
