We regularly wax lyrical about customer experience, content marketing, CRM, and all things real-time, personalized, or cross-channel. Comments welcome.
Felix Velarde is Founder and Managing Director of leading eCRM strategy company, Underwired, and he is also the Course Leader for eCRM at the Institute of Digital and Direct Marketing. We caught up with Felix recently after our January Brand Breakfast, at which he was a speaker. Here are the key points:
On eCRM
Customer engagement is centred on increased understanding of consumers in a way that allows better engagement with them through digital channels.
Such understanding of people goes beyond behaviour and demographics but the needs, attitudes and motivations of customers.
Know their motivations, and you know how to create power to build lasting relationships with them.
Data is one of the most important tools for marketing. Collecting customer data can help a company create targeted campaigns and personalized customer experience which reaches more customers and keeps loyalty high. The recent example of Tesco is instructive, as it involves a customer loyalty turnaround that cost £3.7 billion of the company’s value.
Every brand or company prizes one thing in a customer: trust. With trust comes brand loyalty and consistent word-of-mouth marketing, but how do you build up that trust? Customer service is one way, but that’s only the beginning.
Through content marketing, a brand instantly opens up more channels and new ways of sharing stories with their customers. This more personal and ‘off-the-record’ style of communication allows the customer to see the face beyond the product. Content like this can be distributed on a blog post, an email newsletter, Youtube, or social networks. This quality content isn’t aimed at making the sale, but rather to entertain, inform and assist your customer.
Consumer brands who want to establish themselves as known experts in their turf of the industry need to ensure that they are using content marketing strategies effectively, and keeping their consumers engaged. To become the known expert in any particular industry, consumer brands must focus on presenting a content proposition that fulfills the need of the consumer, be it informational or entertainment – delivering customer utility.
Every brand or company prizes one thing in a customer: trust. With trust comes brand loyalty and consistent word-of-mouth marketing, but how do you build up that trust? Customer service is one way, but that’s only the beginning.
Consumer brands who want to establish themselves as known experts in their turf of the industry need to ensure that they are using content marketing strategies effectively, and keeping their consumers engaged. To become the known expert in any particular industry, consumer brands must focus on presenting a content proposition that fulfills the need of the consumer, be it informational or entertainment – delivering customer utility.