When was the last time you bought something because you clicked on a display ad? If you can remember, have you stayed loyal to the brand since then? Or was it just a one time deal? It’s becoming common sense that classical ads will continue to lose relevance in favor of meaningful content. The increase in digital touch points in today’s customer journey makes it possible to gain more insights about customers and personalize approaches. A lot of these touch points are moments of interaction initiated by customers. So brands need to be ready to identify customer intentions and serve their needs at any of these moments. A good example for trends in CRM and marketing is the advent of messengers: WhatsApp, a channel everyone is familiar with in a private context, has just started to become a high-potential CRM channel since it enables a remarkably personal and bi-directional interaction with customers in various formats.
In his talk at this year’s DMEXCO, Dr. Markus Wuebben sheds light on these and other current trends in CRM and marketing while providing insights regarding the three core pillars of building long-term customer relationships: strategy, organization, and technology. CRM and marketing tools by themselves won’t get brands in a good position. While strategy lays the groundwork for everything else, organizational aspects are equally important and should mirror the technological trend of breaking channel and data silos.
Too long; didn’t watch
Here are the key learnings from Markus’ talk:
Strategy
- Customer retention and acquisition will merge.
- Classical ads will continue to lose relevance in favor of meaningful content.
- Customer-initiated moments will become more relevant.
Companies will enrich their cross- and up-selling strategy with more meaningful moments that help customers get more out of the product and ensure that customers keep the brand in the consideration set for next purchase decision.
Organization
- Companies will eliminate the organizational silos.
- There will be an audience gatekeeper superordinate to channel teams.
Audience Managers will be established as new roles in 2019 focusing on cross-channel campaign management.
Technology
- A predictive 360-degree customer view will become standard.
- More single-channel vendors will merge into multi-channel vendors.
- Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) will gain further relevance.
- WhatsApp marketing will become a relevant channel for customer-initiated moments.
A company’s technology stack needs to enable the consolidation of data into comprehensive customer profiles to be applied for a consistent communication across channels demanded by customers. Especially regarding customer-initiated moments, the ability to react swiftly is a critical factor. CDPs continue to gain relevance due their extraordinary performance in handling vast amounts of complex data in real time and their flexibility in channel integration.