By Bart S. Foreman, president and co-managing partner, Group 3 Marketing

Remember when Captain Picard told 'Number One' to take the Enterprise into a nebula to hide from the Romulans? Best Practices is a concept that seems easy to define, yet so hard to execute. Best Practices begin with a simple premise. In the words of Bob Thompson of CRMGuru.com, "Put the customer at the heart of your business." Discovering CRM Best Practices should begin with a segmentation analysis of what marketers are doing in executing CRM. This can apply to B-to-C marketing and B-to-B applications as well.

CRM segmentation recognizes that there are several elements that comprise the process. There is no one Best Practice. Each element has to be considered separately and Best Practices standards applied to each element. Best Practice responsibilities should include these basic elements:

THE DATA
This is your company's treasury of client information. Our first Best Practice responsibility is to protect all data elements from disclosure. Yet, some companies are willing to sell or rent client demographics without the expressed authorization of their clients. Gathering client data should be done in an ethical and open manner. Much is said about data integrity. Data honesty is a critical Best Practice responsibility. Clients demand it and government is taking a more active role in policing how data is gathered and used. Third party service providers have a Best Practice responsibility to act as guardians of the client's data. We recently received an e-mail from a third party who claimed to be working with one of our clients and wanted access to some proprietary data, saying because the client was on vacation, he was contacting us directly. We contacted our client and had another senior manager working on the project send us written authorization to work with this other party.

OUTSIDE RESOURCES THAT IMPACT THE DATA
Marketers must understand that NOTHING IS STATIC - especially customer data. Customers are always in a state of transition, especially at the micro level of analysis needed for CRM communications. The Best Practice responsibility when using outside data is for marketers to gather as much demographic data as their clients are willing to share and overlay it with their existing data to best understand customers. This should be done on a regular basis and marketers should continually identify pattern shifts in the information and react accordingly to such shifts. In other words, keep the data current and avoid overlaying external information that may not be specific to the customer.

COMMUNICATIONS
Staying connected with clients is at the heart of every CRM initiative. Customers want information that is timely and relevant to them and that sums up the communications Best Practice responsibility. If you are selling music, don't offer a customer who collects classical and jazz titles a great deal on country music. Unless that customer has a friend or relative who is into country music, which probably is not in the database of information, the offer is not relevant. The Communications Best Practice responsibility is to develop a contact strategy that employs all the available data to cluster customers with similar purchase patterns and demographics and offer them relevant information and special incentives that are meaningful enough to elicit a response. This Best Practice only works if the recipient wants the communications. Every communication, whether it is electronic or postal, should always provide for a clear mechanism to be 'removed' from future communications.

MEASUREMENT
Metrics is what truly separates CRM from other marketing disciplines and is often lost with regard to Best Practices. It is common practice to measure the response to each campaign and initiative. Best Practices encourage test and control whenever practical. Further, a Best Practice is to always ask 'WHY?' In the words of Tom Peters, 'Screw around vigorously.' Try to understand what caused the results of each initiative. Employ more than one set of criteria in each analysis to gain a deeper insight into possible pattern shifts in customer buying and spending habits. In 1967, PaperMate launched the Flair brand, the first porous pen. Demand was furious. Flair sales were only constrained by the inability to produce more. One sales analyst took time to study the companyÕs ballpoint pen business and reported a significant sales downturn because management was focused on Flair. The core business was eroding because management took their eye off the most profitable part of the business just as BIC was entering the market. Today's CRM practices didnÕt exist in 1967, but if they had, management would have been analyzing both the trade and consumers to measure the demand levels for all its brands because a new star may burn out more quickly than a solid performer.

EXECUTION
CRM is all about execution and our Best Practice responsibility is to be all encompassing by considering how all the various elements of each initiative interact with the others. Once a CRM strategy is proposed, create a checklist of what data and communications elements are involved and then do whatever research is needed to best understand what data segments are needed and what communications elements and channels will best achieve the desired results. A large salon and day spa wanted to send clients daily e-mails informing them of open booking times. It sounded good on the surface until we asked if daily emails were what the clients wanted. We were concerned that they were intrusive and static. Our proposal was to create a special Web page that the salon would be able to input daily open bookings and then as they were filled, the open booking would be removed. We surveyed all the salonÕs clients who had e-mail with an online survey. Over half did not want daily e-mails, but 80% said they wanted a weekly reminder e-mail. Further, the respondents were enthusiastic about having the information on the Web and that once an open booking was filled, it would be removed. This is a simple yet powerful CRM Best Practice.

IN CLOSING
CRM Council members are invited to submit short articles relating to Best Practices. We're not looking for infomercials but encourage examples as part of the article. ¥

Bart can be reached at 952-475-3269
or
bforeman@group3marketing.comv>

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