Do marketing, not CRM

If you were a senior marketing executive at a sports organization, and you were to buy some software that promises to make your customer relationships more intimate and then you were to hire a technical guru, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were on track to “doing CRM”…

In our experience the CFO of the average sports organization is never happy with the return this approach brings. The CMO is often left with obsolete sales capabilities and the CIO, well… let’s not go there.

Although customer relationship management as a philosophy is a good one, it’s been muddied by the systems-led approach to ‘CRM’ and whilst the lessons from this approach have passed, it’s not all bad. The original motivations for implementing technology were good ones. How do I drive better retention? How do I speak to my audiences at exactly the right time? Who are my most loyal fans? How do I build stronger relationships with my customers?

So what should the 21st century rights-holder be doing?

First, let’s take it back to the 20th century, 1995 in particular. The year that saw a symbolic post-apartheid victory by the home nation in the Rugby World Cup, the year that saw the launch of now multi-billion dollar tech giants eBay and Amazon and the year that saw ‘CRM’ fend off many other three-letter acronyms to become the term now associated with being the thorn in the side of so many an organization. We wish it had never been coined as a thing… and we’re sure eBay & Amazon would agree!

CRM didn’t need a productized acronym last century and it doesn’t this century either!

For Two Circles, when sports organizations say they want to do CRM, we interpret that as the sports organization wanting to get better at giving customers what they want when they want it. But that’s marketing right?

Fast-forward 20 years and marketing has never been easier or more complicated. Marketing in the 21st century equals more media, more channels and more attention from more customers. New over promised technology and new fantastic technology… but also more acronyms. Most importantly more data from which to provide a greater understanding of customers. All of which makes the simple concept of marketing even more complicated to execute than ever before.

What’s more the advent of real time data makes a marketer useful in every moment of the campaign from programmatic advertising to lifecycle marketing. Targeted and personalized marketing is complicated, expectations are high and marketing is permanently on (even when your organization is not).

Personalization has become a bigger thing in the last decade, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Personalization was the cornerstone of 20th century counter service before the one-to-many mass market movement. The turnstile manager noticed when you’d missed a couple of matches and (unfortunately) the bank manager knew everything there was to know about you before you walked through the branch’s revolving doors.

The delivery of global and expansive personalization this century has changed, but the essence of personal service hasn’t. It’s less so the man and more so the machine attempting to give the customers what they want, where and when they want it.

CRM isn’t a thing. We don’t believe it ever was.

Marketing is a thing and in this day and age it requires a data driven approach at its heart. Marketing is about giving customers what they want and whether to deliver personalization or inform a marketing plan, data provides the best clue you are going to get!

If you get the philosophy right then it’s easy to hire the right technical expertise – who are probably marketing executives rather than “tech gurus”. You might also need some software, but get the philosophy right first before investing in another three-letter acronym.

This is marketing and it’s data driven.