Lack of trackable 3rd-party data from customers and rising pay-per-click and acquisition costs are some of the current struggles in the marketing space. Read on to learn how predictive marketing and value-based customer retention can help brands optimize their marketing strategy in the most uncertain times.

 

It is no secret that digital marketing is going through difficult times and is facing many challenges. From third-party cookie deprecation to the all-time high cost-per-click prices on Meta and Instagram, online marketing is going through many changes, and it is up to brands to keep up with the marketing game. To do so, companies must invest in making the most out of their existing customers rather than blowing up their budgets by trying to acquire new ones – and the best way for brands to succeed is with predictive CRM.

 

 

The Current Landscape in Digital Marketing

The struggles in digital marketing didn’t start with the economic downturn in 2022. As our CMO, Dr. Markus Wuebben, predicted during his talk The New Era of CRM at The Heroes of CRM Conference, marketing struggles date back to 2020. They started with Google Chrome’s third-party cookie deprecation, followed by the skyrocketing prices of Meta and Instagram ads.

In 2021, iOS 14.5 released the app tracking transparency framework (ATT), an Apple widget asking customers if they wanted to be tracked. Later that year, iOS 15 released the mail protection feature, where users could choose whether to hide their email address, location, IP, and other useful customer data. If the suppression of third-party cookies wasn’t making marketers’ jobs hard enough, these new Apple features were the tip of the iceberg, as they left marketers with zero data to work with and tripled the cost per action.

All these trends happening in such a short time left marketing teams with empty hands, which is why value-based customer retention is more important than ever before. With a lack of trackable 3rd-party data from customers, pay-per-click and acquisition costs being higher than ever, and side effects from an economic recession, first-party data is the new asset all companies should invest in. Using value-based CRM, brands can therefore do intelligent audience management to maximize CLV – and this is the way for companies to stay afloat.

 

Why Is Customer Retention More Important Than Ever?

We predict that user acquisition costs will remain high for a while in the current landscape, and gathering first-party data will be increasingly challenging. Therefore, creating more value through customer retention management is the best solution for companies if they want to stay profitable – and, as Dr. Markus Wuebben, our CMO, says in a recent interview – it can only be done by implementing an effective customer strategy based on first-party data.

Value-based customer retention allows brands to take good care of their customer base by maintaining and strengthening sustainable relationships that benefit the brand even during the most uncertain times. With modern CDPs, companies can better understand their customers and therefore implement marketing efforts accordingly.

Customer retention tools also help brands to keep an optimized marketing strategy, as many activities can be automated to shorten sales cycles, target marketing activities, and provide better customer service overall. In addition, customer retention best practices can help marketing teams

  • Build multi-channel customer relationships that will allow brands to establish strong bonds between the brand and the customer base.
  • Create engaging customer journeys that will lead to higher customer loyalty; therefore, customers will be more likely to share their data.
  • Allocate each customer group within the customer journey and adapt communication and marketing strategies accordingly.
  • Manage customer relationships with predictive Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to help determine which customer groups are worth focusing on.
  • Offer customers what they want, as CDPs help brands acknowledge and adapt to their customer’s needs.

Modern customer data platforms can also upgrade the CRM game by allowing brands to create predictive model builders. These tools enable marketers to have an accurate representation of their audience and get a good understanding of how they can target each customer group in the best way possible.

 

The Boom of Predictive Marketing: Value-Based Customer Retention with Modern CDPs

Retaining customers is one of the most challenging tasks for any business. Considering the disadvantages mentioned before, digital companies must think one step ahead to keep up with the latest challenges. To do so, brands need to focus on predictive marketing and figure out how to tailor their customers’ needs with CRM practices – and modern CDPs are the tool all digital businesses need to succeed.

As a customer-centric technique, customer retention can actively help brands understand their customers’ needs and market expectations. By doing so, brands can provide better customer service, leading to higher customer loyalty and strong relationships between the customer base and the brand. With value-based customer retention, companies can gather insightful customer information to use this data in favor of the brand for future marketing.

With modern CDPs like CrossEngage, companies can implement high-quality marketing strategies through value-based customer retention and gather and keep all their data in the same place. In addition, these AI-powered tools allow brands to incorporate their marketing efforts and anticipate market changes, test performance, and adapt their strategies based on customer segmentation.

Dr. Markus Wübben, CrossEngage

“The new era of CRM has begun and is evolving at breakneck speed.”

– Dr. Markus Wuebben, Co-Founder & CMO, CrossEngage.

Predictive marketing is the only solution to succeed in the digital space with the current circumstances. Modern CDPs can assist by

  • Gathering data and helping brands use it for their marketing strategies,
  • Recognizing customer data patterns, and deriving future decisions.
  • Automating marketing decisions to save money and marketing resources.

On top of that, CDPs can help companies start their journey towards automated customer relationship management with our no-code predictive model builder. This top feature allows marketing teams to build and execute predictive models without needing coding skills or data science. AI-powered predictive models enable brands to determine customers’ future values, preferences, and behaviors and make predictions based on that. For brands to evaluate their predictions, CrossEngage allows you to test your prediction campaigns and understand the validity and impact of your predictions.

Do you want to learn more about our solution and how CrossEngage can help you optimize your customer retention game? Check out our solutions page or request a demo with us.

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