With CRM technology becoming ever cheaper, the business case (seemingly) less challenging and stellar examples like Netflix and Amazon offering inspiration at every turn, it might seem that creating and sending highly-relevant, engaging content is more straightforward than ever.
But as quickly as CRM technology’s evolving, the goalposts are shifting, too.
For instance, where and how we can reach customers. From its early, largely email days, CRM has had to move into the mobile world and social media, most recently seeing the rise of Snapchat and Instagram Stories. And new, previously unimaginable channels are springing up too, with some companies already seeing potential in the screens of driverless cars.
With so many moving targets, it's hardly surprising that the level of sophistication – both in systems and in brainpower – required for a successful CRM implementation may now be beyond many businesses, despite more affordable and accessible technology.
So maybe it’s time for a fresh approach. One that minimises the executional challenge, reduces the time to market and offers the best ROI. A “no-tech CRM” to help us overcome all this complexity.
That’s where marketing in the moment comes in.
Rather than building a massive dataset across every customer touchpoint, our pared-down approach takes pointers from recent purchases and external signals to spot key events in a consumer’s life, offering a more appropriate way of targeting offers, both in advertising and at point of sale.
Knowing that a client changed electricity supplier when they moved house last month is not a great indicator of them changing again. But just think how powerful this homemover data could be to a furniture retailer or a broadband supplier.
For most CRM teams, the solution is perhaps to find a balance and make the most of both approaches: rise to the challenge of building a complex single customer view, but get an instant boost by picking up on life event signals and marketing in the moment.
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