Event summary: CRM in one day

This week, I visited the event "CRM in 1 Day" in the Netherlands. If you want to excel with your online or multichannel shop, a good CRM strategy is a critical factor.
A lot of things were obvious, but I will share some insights and my opinion below.

The presentation of the keynote speaker is available at slideshare.

Social CRM: where's the money? from Clo Willaerts


The keynote speaker referred to a TED talk  from Pattie Maes. It's from a few years ago. When I watched the video, I already noticed that it is only a small step before parts of the examples given become reality.
Offline and online integrate. When buying a book in a bookstore, see the reviews at your phone immediately.
Project and share information everywhere.
Albert-Heijn supermarkets in Holland now started a test, with scanning and paying products with your cellphone. Next step is of course to add marketing, reviews and personal advice. Just like in the TED talk.

It is important to have a good CRM strategy. Don't just start building a CRM and think about a strategy afterwards. CRM is NOT anymore just a tool that you implement to register your orders we are way beyond that time now.

Always start with a vision and mission in a CRM plan

It all starts with a customer vision and mission and a customer strategy.

Often companies still think that acquiring customers is the most important. But don't forget that it is way cheaper to keep customers then to acquire them. CRM, social CRM, customer touchpoints they are all very important to keep customers. The whole day, various examples of customer touchpoints, customer journey's  were discussed. Make a map of all your customer touchpoints, and change them with your new vision. If there are to much, shortlist them and start with the most important ones.

In a research presented during the day, more then 66% of the customers will switch from company when the customer service they experience is not satisfying. Note that this is about your CURRENT customers. Not about acquiring new ones.

E-commerce - email communication after purchases

I have collected a few recent examples from online communication after some online purchases.
Examples are mostly in Dutch. But I will explain the pro's and con's in English.

Still I think (and I wrote about it here as well) that companies can improve their (online) communication so much more. Good communication and service goes beyond a "we recommend you" e-mail.
Think about all customer touchpoints, about your vision and mission and create contact moments that in the end will give you a positive ROI and customer experience that will be shared online massively.

Especially (But not limited to) the travel industry can start much more effective campaigns by better segmentation and not placing every cross and upsell possibility in these one or two confirmation mails.
Be there with the right content at the right time. Not everybody will book a hotel right away if they purchased a flight ticket for 5 months away!
Value for the customer, value from the customer. Make sure you sent relevant and/or entertaining emails and you can earn money with it. If you are an airline, sent a few e-mails about the latest news at the destination (especially in vibrant areas), nice events, tourist info etc. If you sell dog food, you can also sent communication about dog tips, dog courses etc.

Bol.com

If you place an order where you choose to pay after receiving the goods (we still do not have an alipay in Holland where money is being hold in escrow untill the goods arrived in good order), bol.com try's to pursuade you doing a prepayment before the order reaches you. I think in this way they try to convince people who do not use or trust online payment methods to try it anyway. A suggestion would be to give a small discount then as well if the online payment method is used.
The button at the right is the IDEAL online payment method.

Bol.com from post to prepayment

Zalando

I ordered something at Zalando as well. During the registration process (I did not completed the order yet), I read a message of a 5 euro discount when subscribing to the newsletter. So, I subscribed to their newsletter. This pursuaded me to place the order actually.

Pro:

• Pursuasion to place the order by giving a discount at the first order
• This email will have a very high open ratio!

Con:

• E-mail arrived in spam folder in my gmail

Zalando welcome e-mail and registration newsletter confirmation