Download marketing communication and crm

WHITEPAPER
MARKETING COMMUNICATION
AND CRM
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WHITEPAPER
MARKETING COMMUNICATION AND CRM
2
ABOUT
Nowadays, it is essential for a company to have a defined and efficient
marketing strategy. Implementing such a strategy requires following
some rules and adopting solid processes. When planning and executing
a marketing strategy, the so called 4P’s are core elements. The 4P’s
stand for Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Promotion is where the
communication is taking place. There are a few important questions a
company needs to consider before planning its promotion:
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How to communicate?
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Which channels to use to communicate?
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What type of communication to use?
To answer these questions, companies conduct research to define the right
mix for their business. At the end of the process, they have decided on a
mix between advertising, sales promotions, public relations, sponsorships,
internet promotions, direct marketing and personal selling.
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WHITEPAPER
MARKETING COMMUNICATION AND CRM
CRM: THE FOUNDATION
FOR HIGH QUALITY
MARKETING
COMMUNICATION
Over the past years, building a relationship between the
individual customer and the company has become more and
more important. Depending on the saturation of the different
markets, the costs for winning a new name customer have
increased and, because of that, keeping existing customers
has become more important. In order to enable the company
to build a strong relationship with customers, the right
communication via the right channel is the key for success.
Personal selling is the type of communication that first comes to
mind when thinking about CRM. Sales executives are working
with a CRM solution and they are talking with their customer on
a regular basis. But are they always talking to the customer at
the right point of time and about the right topic?
Direct marketing is the second type of communication most
people think of. This is because of the need for addresses and
lists. Most recently, based on the development of Web 2.x,
internet promotions are on the radar, too. When thinking about
marketing types like advertising, sales promotions, public
relations and sponsorships which are focusing more on brand
awareness, CRM-Software is not top of the list of enabling tools.
Most of the things mentioned above used to work more or less
successfully without a CRM solution, even before ERP or any
other system and strategy. But times have changed, companies
have started using ERP and then started their journey into CRM.
In the beginning, ERP systems with information stored about
the customer have been used as a tool to enable the CRM
strategy. Soon they realised that not all information needed was
available in the ERP system and that it also wasn’t the right place
to store it in the future. This is and was the starting point of CRM
system implementation.
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3
Personal Selling
Sales as communication channel is still a major part of the
communication mix. The personal contact enables them
to bring the most targeted messages across. Through visit
preparation, marketing is able to give information to the
sales teams about relevant topics to mention. In addition to
that, sales executives now have a second task. While talking
to the customer, sales executives are able to gather a lot of
information. Today they are not the only ones interacting with
the customers. Other departments like Services and Products
are part of this personal selling.
How Pivotal CRM can help you
Pivotal CRM provides a single platform for Marketing and Sales
to share information and it is flexible enough to be extended to
capture the required information and link those together.
Direct Marketing
Phone marketing, direct mail marketing, catalogue marketing,
direct response advertising and online marketing are the major
forms of direct marketing. Finding the right target audience
for a specific marketing type requires relevant data. This again,
like personal sales, is not a one way communication. There is
information such as clickthroughs, responses, opt-outs and
others that are coming back and enrich the information. The
knowledge enables marketing to execute more targeted and
overall more effective communications.
How Pivotal CRM can help you
Pivotal CRM is offering you sophisticated functionalities for
direct marketing. Letters, e-Marketing and call centres offer the
possibility to execute direct mail, e-mail or telephone marketing
campaigns and capture the feedback. To find the right target
audience, all data stored in the system can be used to select and
filter specific fields.
WHITEPAPER
MARKETING COMMUNICATION AND CRM
4
Internet Promotions
How Pivotal CRM can help you
Internet promotions cover a wide range of marketing
Pivotal CRM offers a platform that is flexible enough to store
communication activities. This all started with the development
information in a way that it is relevant to your specific business
of the internet. Companies put their own websites out to
processes. It enables companies to discover the structures,
broadcast their messages to a wide audience. With the
segments etc. within the customer base.
technology evolving, the websites got more and more
interactive. Customers left their footprint on the sites by
clicking through the topics and showing interest. Web 2.0
caused a major change by enabling new channels for direct
communications, not only from company to customers, but also
between customers. Word of mouth entered a new dimension.
This area is still going through a lot of changes. How this vast
amount of information might be used, how the communication
channel is going to be used, how to engage etc. is still under
construction.
How Pivotal CRM can help you
Pivotal CRM offers different functionalities like social
media research, social media marketing and social media
collaboration, etc. All these can help companies trying out
different things as this area currently is a tremendously fast
moving target. The base requirement currently is to enable
marketing by having a central communication platform to push
consistent messages into the different social media channels
and to capture feedback. In addition, sales get a direct way to
see what contacts to talk to before entering a meeting.
Brand Awareness
The relationship between brand awareness marketing
communication elements and CRM is less visible, but is
still there. The data gathered about the needs and wants,
the structure of the customer base (age, position, affinities,
etc.) help to design the right advertisements, choose the
right locations for sales promotions, choose the right media
for public relationship purposes and find the right areas for
sponsorship.
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Customers and prospects are not only touched through one
channel, they are affected by all channels. The key is that the
communication has to be consistent. Step by step, companies
are moving towards a multichannel integration and are in
need of a flexible platform to support this. CRM is the platform
offering a good point to start from and to continue the journey
towards Multi-Channel Customer Management combining
the integration between the growing number of distribution
channels and communication channels.
WHITEPAPER
MARKETING COMMUNICATION AND CRM
5
CONCLUSION
Using APTEAN’s Pivotal CRM platform combined with the
relevant modules offers you the right tool to improve your
Pivotal CRM highlights
•
Microsoft-style interface
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Personalisable dashboard
•
Role-and-task based navigation
•
SharePoint integration
helps to directly enrich the information.
•
Outlook integration
Pivotal CRM: CRM That’s Built for You
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Office suite integration
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Microsoft .NET Framework
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Powerful querying capabilities
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Custom workflows and sales milestones
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Mobile CRM
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Low cost of ownership
•
Highly flexible and usable application
marketing communication.
Marketing is able to build relationships with customers and
prospects by choosing the right marketing communication mix
based on a high quality set of data which is easy to analyse.
Using the built in tools for sales, direct, phone and social media
marketing information gives direct access to relevant data and
Pivotal CRM is the solution of choice for companies seeking
customer relationship management software that can fully
and cost-effectively satisfy their users’ expectations. Built with
the user experience in mind, Pivotal CRM offers unparalleled
flexibility and customisability, enabling companies to tailor the
system precisely to their sales users’ needs.
development platform.
More than 5,000 customers around the world rely on Aptean to give them a competitive
edge. By providing innovative, industry-driven enterprise application software, Aptean helps
businesses to satisfy their customers, operate more efficiently, and stay at the forefront of their
industry.
For more information, visit: www.aptean.com
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