Creativity in marketing is usually reserved for customer acquisition campaigns, points out Ian Bates. But companies may be missing a trick by not using more creativity in their management of existing customers. Its time to ditch boring CRM campaigns and make every time you contact customer count.
As a creative in the marketing industry theres an almost unrelenting crusade for the Holy Grail that is “The Big Idea” - a creative concept that breaks through the humdrum of everyday life, gets the brand noticed and hopefully picks up a few industry awards on the way!
For many brands today, the most creative ideas (and therefore most of the time and effort) are saved for customer acquisition campaigns, leaving retention and CRM campaigns somewhat in the shadows, dare I say it even…an afterthought. But why isnt the same time and effort afforded to finding that Big Idea (or a series of great Little Ideas) when it comes to customer retention? Are brands, and indeed agencies, not wasting a fantastic opportunity to engage their customers and build long lasting relationships by paying only lip-service to executing creatively innovative ideas in their CRM campaigns?
The underlying problem starts with how brands define a relationship. Unfortunately too often, when you hear people say “Were building relationships” in reality all theyre really doing is repeatedly sending their customers unwanted and irrelevant messages and dressing it up as CRM. They may well have put a lot of time and effort into building the brand and recruiting the customer, however when it comes to CRM it almost becomes a simple process of joining the dots.
Its as if some brands think: we know who we want to target, we know what we want to offer, now all we need to do is dress it up and were good to go! The major problem with this approach is that theres no actual creativity inherent in the inception of the relationship programme. Theres no magic. Really, how many surprises do you get in the average CRM programme? When do you get that one thing that really lights up your day? Possibly never.
Yet every communication a brand has with a customer represents the value they place on them. The quality of that interface is vital to long-term success. So timing, relevance and answering a real customer need is really important, as is the quality of that engagement.
Banks, retailers, travel brands can all be culpable. Theyve all got loads of reasons to talk to their customers, but more often than not they tend to only think about product push. Theres no sense of the individuals needs, their requirements, their touchpoints or their lifestage. Take their logos off and most CRM campaigns would be near identical.
I passionately believe theres no reason why any brand should have exactly the same CRM programme. Each brand should look at itself and ask what is it about us that makes us different? What made our customers choose us over our competitors in the first place? What is it about our values that resonate with each of our customers?
CRM should be about staying relevant and useful to your customers. After all, for a customer to be on your database in the first place you must have been useful at some stage in their lives. The challenge therefore is how do you continue to be relevant? In CRM theres always the danger of stripping out the humanity. Youre entered into a programme and you become just a bit of data that gets mailed or emailed, as opposed to being treated like a human being.
As creatives, we need to keep the humanity in marketing. But we cant do it alone. It comes back to very simple things – what problem is your brand solving, how useful are you to your customer right now, how can you make their lives better? It could result in random acts of kindness, the unexpected things that light up your day that makes you feel a little more human. The person that smiles at you on the tube or the person that picks up something youve dropped on the street.
This is what CRM is all about, not the product push or relentless mailings, but being there for your customers when they need you, creating those moments of joy. This is why creativity at the heart of the process is so important.
When it comes to the creative execution, there are subtle differences between creating acquisition and retention campaigns. The latter still has to be attention grabbing, however because youre looking to strengthen an existing relationship, its much more about bringing the brand values to life over an extended period of time.
Having creatively-minded people as part of the strategic team means that youve got people that approach challenges from alternative perspectives. And that should be a valuable asset in any CRM team.
Marketers who understand how their brand can be brought to life through thought provoking, engaging and compelling creative will be far better placed to create long term value for their customers, ensuring that they are still with you, not just next week, but in many years to come.
Ian Bates is creative director at Indicia
|