Dr. Florian Heinemann at the Heroes of CRM Conference
This episode of the CrossEngage Podcast was recorded at this year’s Heroes of CRM Conference, which we started to create a platform for modern CRM approaches and to encourage information exchange among experts. It’s a double premiere for us: It’s the first german episode of our podcast and we finally got a guest in front of the microphone, that we have been waiting for: Dr. Florian Heinemann, who is also considered an online marketing guru or even a marketing pope in the trade media. He treated us with a lecture and extensive Q&A round.
For those who don’t know Dr. Florian Heinemann: As an investor and business angel, he is involved in over 100 start-ups. At Rocket Internet, he helped build up successful startups such as Zalando and eDarling as managing director before co-founding the operational VC Project A. He is a member of the board of directors of Rocket Internet. There he is responsible for marketing, CRM, communications and business intelligence.
Repurchase and Customer Retention Become Mandatory
Anyone who knows Dr. Florian Heinemann knows that he advocates the importance of customer relationship management. In a world dominated by first order platforms – such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple – direct customer access and strong customer loyalty are essential factors for sustainable success for many companies. This is the only way they can compete against large platforms that otherwise position themselves as intermediaries between companies and their customers and, as a consequence, monetize customer access. But even business models that can manage without extensive marketing and CRM due to a certain virality – which is often favored by the network effect – can benefit from modern CRM approaches. After all, the bar for success should be potential sales, which in most cases can be better exploited through active customer loyalty.
For companies with long sales cycles, which usually have to be profitable at the initial purchase, the first question is whether additional sources of income such as products and services outside the core business can be meaningfully supplemented and sustainably established through an appropriate CRM system. The latter applies to many traditional small and medium-sized companies, which often struggle with the increasing shift in margins away from hardware to software and have to master the general challenges of digitization.
AI Is Mostly Just Intelligent Automation
In the podcast, Dr. Florian Heinemann also talks about the importance of artificial intelligence in marketing and CRM, which many companies currently use to advertise their software solutions, but which he considers in most cases to be window dressing that should be described in a more down-to-earth way as intelligent automation. In addition, it concerns the role of creative content in external communication as well as team line-up, which becomes particularly important with regard to the technical aspects of modern CRM and marketing approach.
Innovative Customer Relationship Marketing
Dr. Florian Heinemann is also featured with a guest article in our recently published book “Innovatives Customer Relationship Marketing“, which is now also available on Kindle. In this volume, well-known and new concepts as well as current developments and trends in customer relationship management and, to some extent, online marketing are presented and brought into a broader context. We spoke with experts from various industries about topics such as strategy, technology and operational and organizational aspects and experiences.
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