The Edge Marketing

It is only natural that the CRM-strategy is reflected in the company's vision and overall business strategy and hence affects every part of the company. A CRM-strategy should at least include:

· Customer strategy
· Relationship strategy
· Customer-minded strategies

Customer Strategy

A customer strategy aims at finding out which customers the company would like to have and how to get them. It defines what the company knows about its customers and what it would like to know. An important aspect here is, as mentioned, the loyalty and profitability of the customers, which leads to an estimate of the customer lifetime value. The customer lifetime value gives the company a new and improved aspect from which it can segment its customers and hence which to pay most attention to - in accordance with whom they profit the most from. The CRM category at www.frejaweb.net will provide you with links to customer lifetime value calculators.

The customer strategy should also find ways to discover, which elements create loyalty for the individual customer. More concrete, the customer strategy should clarify exactly how less profitable a customer should be before he becomes uninteresting for the company and when a customer is loyal to the company.

Customers can either be seen as a terrorist, risky, moveable or as an ambassador. The terrorist will at any time spread a bad reputation of the company, the risk customer is about to change to a competitor, the moveable customer will switch supplier if he receives a better offer and the ambassadors will recommend you to others. New customers will typically enter the loyalty ladder at the risk stage. Naturally, it is preferable to have as many ambassadors as possible and surveys also show that a very satisfied customer also is the most profitable. This means, the customer strategy should provide management with a tool to segment the customers based on their lifetime value. In this way they can pay the most attention to the most profitable customers.

Relationship strategy

Based on the customer strategy, a relationship strategy concerning how to develop the relationship with existing customers and finding new loyal and profitable ones should be made. It determines how, where and when the individual customer is contacted. The relationship strategy also aims at defining how the relationship with the customers creates value for the customers, which elements does the customers appreciate the most and how are these different from the competitors. These questions lead to a strategy for how to approach the different customers.

Customer-minded strategy

Companies implementing a CRM strategy should develop strategies for how the company becomes customer minded. These strategies ensure that the entire company work towards the common goal of becoming customer minded, i.e. the processes, employees, management and IT are focused on providing added value to the customers. It is e.g. necessary that information about customers is not only available but also used. This involves making the information easy to use and assessable as well as to understand how this creates value for the customer. This will be further discussed later in the project.

However, the first objective is to decide which information about the customer is needed, and examine what is already known. This reflects back onto the purpose of the CRM-strategy, to develop strategies for which customers to approach and how to do it, and then use the existing relationships to create a cross- and up sale.

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