Having led the CRM and lifecycle marketing at brands like Uber Eats, Glossier and now FitOn, it’s safe to say Raj Suvarna knows a thing or two about how to get the most out of CRM and the teams that use it.
At Ometria’s Lifecycle event, Raj shared an array of unique insights from his career – and we’ve distilled the five best tips from his session here – and you can check out the full video at the bottom of this post.
You can access videos and slides from all of the amazing talks at Lifecycle20 here.
Raj opened the session by outlining the five key characteristics of a great CRM team.
They are the champions of the customers internally, and promote their interests across the many different functions of a business.
CRM teams act as the hub of functions in marketing and beyond. This can stem from the unique findings in analyzing data and inputs, or from unveiling valuable insights through user-research and consulting stakeholders.
The best CRM teams will share their roadmap and priorities – and then reshare these as they are continually evaluated and updated. This communication is integral in aligning strategies across marketing.
CRM teams supercharge strategy across the business – in addition to building and launching multiple projects which ensure the business is constantly learning and optimizing its offer to best suit customer needs.
Great CRM teams know that when they take chances, there is a strong likelihood some of these efforts will fail. And there is no shame in that. Failures provide genuine learning opportunities for the wider business.
Strong CRM teams are composed of a multitude of different talent requirements and skill sets – and Raj talks us through the most important sub functions within a CRM team.
Not every retailer is big enough to support each of these roles – and Raj explained how he might prioritize hiring using the diagram below:
Raj highlighted that having strong, clearly defined processes is the best way for CRM marketing teams to produce effective campaigns.
Segmentation is the first and most difficult step. The first way to segment your audience is through their core characteristics (things that change infrequently), such as name, gender, age, language and city.
Then there is behavior. How are they browsing? How many emails are they opening? What content is resonating?
From these blocks, you can then segment based on future value indicators. How often are they purchasing? And at what value? How long have they been a customer? Are they influential on social and can they impact sales?
The final segmentation looks at your customers’ needs indicators. What are the customer’s support expectations? What is their defect/return rate? How frequently do they contact support and for what issues? This segment helps you identify the customers whose needs may outweigh their value.
The next step is mapping the journey – from the awareness stage before they place an order, to the early phases after a purchase, to regular interactions – then to those who are ‘at risk’ with large periods of inactivity. You need to define what stable looks like – and what at risk looks like.
Raj stressed that one of the most important qualities in a CRM marketing team is the ability to develop a good hypothesis.
A good hypothesis is one which is clearly articulated and can be proven or disproven. If it can’t be proven or disproven – it is not a good hypothesis. Raj gave an example of what this could look like:
“By including a recommended products module in our first order transactional receipt email, we expect second order conversion to go up by 10%.”
This could be true or false – but with experimentation it will be possible to know which it is with certainty.
You can write strategy all day long – but if you can’t execute it then it’s useless. Raj recommends that CRM teams draw flowcharts and visualise what a campaign will look like – before it goes to deployment.
Execution and measurement are two sides of the same coin. Raj shared his high-level template of how CRM teams should assess whether there is any statistical significance to the results of a campaign.
There is a lot to cover when it comes to building a great CRM marketing team – and Raj tells us exactly how to go about it in the video below.
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