Pepsi Trades Super Bowl for Social CRM Campaign

Depending on who you root for, the Super Bowl might be more interesting for the commercials than for the game. But there will be one major advertiser missing from the starting lineup this year: Pepsi. The soft drink giant publicly announced in December that it would be redirecting its normal big game budget to an in-house initiative involving CRM software and social media.

As Martin Schneider pointed out on the CRM Outsiders blog, this revelation is important because it puts CRM applications on the same playing field (literally) as old media. Pepsi is not falling back on CRM software to save money in a down economy. Instead, it is redistributing its whole Super Bowl budget to the interactive initiative. Instead of relying on rates and raw market research to determine the impact of advertising, Pepsi intends to use direct feedback and relationship tracking to build stronger connections to customers.

Pepsi's move has been seen by some observers as a reaction to the backlash it suffered when overhauling its Tropicana orange juice branding in 2009. Brand managers hired a creative agency to reinvent Tropicana's logo and packaging in conjunction with a mainstream media relaunch. Consumers found the new packaging confusing, noting that Tropicana products became less distinct on store shelves. Customer relations managers at Pepsi fielded calls, e-mail, and social media messages demanding the return of the old packaging.

Pepsi recovered from the criticism by acknowledging the campaign's failure to achieve its goals and by switching most of the Tropicana products back to versions of their old packaging. With its new social CRM applications, Pepsi officials hope to use the same kind of direct customer communication to innovate new products with input from consumers. That initiative can benefit the organization all year long, not just at Super Bowl time.

Gartner: Adopt CRM Systems Now, Or Lose a 1-Year Head Start

Companies that use the economic downturn as an opportunity to invest in CRM systems and other business intelligence tools will enjoy the same long term benefits as getting a one year head start. That's according to a recent Gartner report on CRM applications, focused on the impact of reducing costs and preparing for the end of a financial slump.

The Gartner report highlights the impact of launching new CRM systems during periodic business declines. Learning how to use CRM systems effectively during slow times is a great way to prevent service bottlenecks when call centers get busy. Training on CRM applications during downtime can help team members feel productive, efficient, and ready to take on bigger challenges once customers start buying again.

Tightening up business processes always feels necessary during a recession, since boom times can often mask the effects of inefficient tools and systems. It's easy to write off a problematic software tool when the opportunity cost to fix or replace it is such a low percentage of a company's gross revenues. As revenues shrink, problems like outdated CRM software become more apparent.

However, the Gartner report reminds business owners not to expect sales to snap back to their former levels right away. In some companies, sales may never reach their previous volume for a number of reasons:

• Customers have changed buying habits.
• "Temporary" discounts or price cuts have become permanent, reducing revenues.
• Competitors have leveraged their own strategies to steal market share.

Therefore, investing in CRM systems is just one of the important tactics that companies can use to ride out the recession. Strengthening training, development, and marketing programs are still necessary steps to make sure that customers return once the economy improves.

Was Your CRM Software Killed, or Did He Jump?

David Sims has written a funny and fanciful murder mystery about a hapless CRM application that winds up dead one morning. Sims' own team of CSI-style investigators ponder the evidence and grill the suspects. I won't give away the solution to the mystery, but it's a crime that gets repeated again and again when businesses don't fully understand how to leverage the power of CRM applications.

Sims does an effective job of illustrating some of the most common challenges to implementing CRM applications. By following a few steps to ensure the success of a CRM software launch, you can make sure your most valuable tool doesn't meet a similar fate:

First, understand the potential resistance points in your organization. Are you replacing a comfortable tool or process with one that seems more rigid and less user friendly? Can you reframe the implementation to focus on the overall benefits?

Second, explore how employees perceive the difference between hosted CRM tools and desktop-based CRM applications. Helping your team understand your decisions may not get them on board immediately, but it gives you the chance to hear about their needs and preferences.

Finally, make sure that you're using CRM software to enhance your business processes. By putting customers ahead of policies or processes, you can develop a CRM system that employees won't be as willing to fight.

Mobile POS Brings Advanced CRM Applications to Restaurants and Retail

The last time you ate at an upscale chain restaurant, did the waiter or waitress bring a small computing device to your table instead of just the check?

Innovative mobile point of sale devices help build customer loyalty for restaurants in three ways. First, when customers see waitstaff capturing information in a handheld device, they perceive that orders will be handled faster and with higher accuracy.

Second, servers with access to CRM applications can gather information about patrons, such as dining preferences, favorite drinks, and even birthdays. When combined with trackable online reservations or frequent diner cards, servers can unobtrusively offer the recommendations most likely to build loyalty and profit.

Finally, mobile point of sale terminals with on-board credit card swipers emphasize a restaurant's data privacy and security position. Servers at take-out windows of one pizza chain in suburban Philadelphia were recently arrested for copying customers' credit card data while processing orders. Completing payment at tableside -- so a credit card never leaves a customer's hand -- makes customers more likely to make repeat reservations.

Mobile point of sale devices are unlocking the power of CRM applications in retail stores, as well. When TigerDirect, a direct marketer of electronics, purchased failing bricks-and-mortar retailer CompUSA, critics wondered what they might be able to do to rescusitate the chain's remaining locations. Shoppers at the stores can now access additional information about products or receive alternate product recommendations based on their purchase histories with both the online store and the physical storefront.

Mobile devices with built-in wireless networking and touch screen technology are becoming less expensive every year. Even using off-the-shelf CRM applications or hosted CRM tools, most retailers can find ways to enhance the customer experience.

CRM Applications Vital to Non-Profit Fundraising

Sophisticated charity organizations have used CRM applications for years. Public radio and television stations were among the first non-profits to spearhead technological innovations for donor relationship management. By tightly coordinating follow-up fundraising campaigns using donor databases, development directors converted one-time pledges into long term memberships.

Remember when pledge drives used to look like this?



Pledge drives were inherently inefficient, usually relying on station staff or community members to beg for funds. Today's pledge drives look very different:



Borrowing a strategy from professional marketers, public media programmers launched stunt programming with merchandise tie-ins that attracted first-time donors to their stations. Though tight on margins, pledge premiums like CDs, books, and DVDs helped development teams grow their databases. However, the practice has resulted in what some critics call "pledge drive fatigue." Many of the fundraising specials created for PBS have little or no connection to stations' regular programming. Analysts wonder if, during a recession, the same impulse shoppers that purchase self-help CD packs will still help public media make their annual budgets.

Therefore, CRM applications have become even more crucial to organizations that must rely on existing donors. By using donor management tools to track a member's history and response rate, smart development officers can craft exactly the right message in the right medium to maintain or grow giving levels. This practice prevents donors from hearing the same message too many times, which can cause burnout.

Some organizations have integrated CRM systems into their online services, allowing members to enjoy deeper access to special programming or to order tickets to member-only events. Integration with the CRM systems of corporate underwriters also allows donors to receive targeted, third-party marketing messages on an opt-in basis. All of these strategies help increase the amount of funds that actually go toward supporting a station's mission.

Tomorrow, I'll show you how non-profits from other sectors are using similar strategies, along with some of the ways that clever not-for-profit organizations get their CRM applications for free or for cheap.

Can CRM Applications Revive the Old Fashioned Letter?

As marketing directors across the country look for line items to slash from their budgets, is anyone seriously considering spending money on postage stamps in 2009?

Actually, yes.

Thanks to CRM applications, sales and marketing professionals can target prospects by mail more effectively, while enjoying the benefits of both short-term and long-term tracking for mail pieces.

For companies that have loaded their existing CRM systems with deep customer information, snail mail campaigns offer an opportunity to connect physically with customers who have tuned out e-mail newsletters or mass media advertising.

Traditional mail marketers often get excited when response rates top half a percent. Some of the most successful mail campaigns of all time enjoyed response rates of over three percent. However, to justify the cost of printing and postage, marketers often push themselves to achieve even higher percentage goals.

Jay Rollins explains some of the technical requirements for successful mail marketing campaigns in his column for TechRepublic. Specifically:

• use CRM applications to generate unique offer codes for each customer and each offer.
• run any new captured data through a de-dupe filter -- existing customers may have moved, or may be trying to game the system.
• utilize CRM systems to measure differences in response rates, tracked along with a "control group" responding to a previously-successful offer

Every successful campaign should generate enough information about your customers to help you refine a future campaign. With incremental improvements each time, your marketing outreach efforts should continue to become more effective.

Will Social CRM Systems Let You Be More Than Facebook Friends With Your Customers?

Executives at Oracle recently made waves by unveiling a roadmap for that company's CRM software which focused heavily on social networking. While some companies are trying to find ways to let their CRM applications connect directly to Facebook and Twitter, others simply want their CRM systems mimic the look and feel of social networks to make work more engaging for customer service representatives.

Customer Experience

Already, banks and merchandisers have discovered the value of being accessible in the places where customers want to be. The same process that companies use to scout new brick-and-mortar locations is playing out again online. This time, companies leverage CRM applications to make presence on social sites like MySpace and Facebook meaningful, instead of leaving behind just another branding campaign.

Brand Control

Brand managers, marketing managers, and customer service managers have found themselves in conflict over companies' social CRM strategies. Brand managers have especially voiced concerns about the demands that social networking websites place on customer service personnel. Instead of having a single, consistent message, companies that adopt social CRM applications create individual experiences that flow from a common vision or credo. That may require taking a different approach to customer service elements like communication templates or e-mail policies.

User Adoption

Social CRM applications offer another major incentive to companies. Employees who use sophisticated websites like Flickr and Facebook often become frustrated when dealing with aging, text-based CRM systems at the office. By integrating some of the best practices of popular online applications, sponsors of CRM systems hope that they can speed up training and increase adoption across the enterprise. Even if CRM applications don't directly connect users to customers on Facebook, a growing hope is that a generation of socially-networked web surfers will be more likely to embrace highly attractive, functional, fun CRM applications.

Best CRM Applications for Non-Profits

A common question: if CRM applications can do so much for sales organizations, what can they do for non-profits?



It's interesting to see this question wrapped up in the distinction between small businesses and not-for-profit. That leads me to think this questioner is really after one thing: CHEAP.

What's great about today's batch of CRM applications? They actually are affordable for most types of organizations, even small businesses and not-for profits that don't have a lot of money. Having worked in the not-for-profit world as both a fundraiser and as a consultant, I have run across two types of folks who would be likely to set up their offices on CRM applications.

The first group believes strongly in Mission Based Marketing, and understands how to leverage their investments to bring in more donations. They're not afraid to spend $25,000 on a high-end CRM application if it means that they'll get a $250,000 return on that outlay. Like major corporations, they rely on solid marketing tactics, especially direct mail and online appeals. However, it's becoming harder to justify large overhead expenses to major donors. Nobody wants to see their big donation cover the cost of a very un-sexy software tool, even if that tool is pulling back nine or ten times its price tag in revenue.

The second group are the bootstrappers. These harried office organizers might not even be getting a paycheck for doing something they love to do. But they want to leverage software to help their causes. "Free" and "cheap" might be appealing to them -- it's easy to suck up a $12/month seat license on one's own dime. But lower cost CRM applications might not always have the right mix of features and support for charities.

Here are some of the low-cost CRM applications that are making great inroads into the non-profit sector:



GivenGain: Via the always-helpful eHub, I just learned about this new entrant in the race for "best CRM application designed for non-profits." This European team offers a donor management solution with two tiers: a fully-featured solution that includes e-mail outreach for $60 per month and a lite version with basic tools for $10 per month. Integrated payment processing is available for 3% plus transaction fees. Those fees are a little higher than PayPal's, but with all of the hassles of getting a non-profit set up with a merchant account, this structure is great for non-profits that are just getting started with online giving.



Zoho CRM: This little upstart has made a name for itself by cloning some of users' favorite elements from Google Docs and Salesforce, and blending them into its own CRM suite. Zoho lets teams of up to three users work the CRM application for free, making it ideal for budget-minded organizations. While Zoho offers web forms and other tools to import donor information, users must bring their own payment processing. This is good for groups with an existing web presence or a donor pool that loves writing checks.



Convio: The suite of tools offered by this specialist CRM software company might not appeal to folks looking for cheap solutions. However, Convio was one of the first programming companies that specifically addresses the needs of non-profits. They specialize in event-based donor management solutions, especially team fundraising activities. Best of all, they're not afraid to look outside themselves for inspiration -- some of their latest tools are actually built on the Salesforce.com application platform, bringing the best of both worlds to non-profits.

Facebook CRM Applications Track User Communications, Preferences

I’ve already written about how companies have started to integrate Twitter into the customer service environment. Now, I’ve got a press release on my desk about a company that is launching a Facebook CRM application for contact centers.

It turns out that they’re not the only ones trying to catch the trend of communicating with friends through Facebook instead of via e-mail. Programmers and CRM software developers have been tinkering with the ability to bring customer relationship management tools to the service’s open programming platform for at least a year.

Some of the Facebook CRM applications on the market work like middleware. They actually handle inbound Facebook messages the same way as incoming e-mail. Service agents can import customer requests from Facebook mail, open tickets, and even collect personal data provided by site members.

Newer Facebook CRM applications take advantage of API connections between Facebook and a company’s CRM software. By saving a user’s profile page as a field within a contact, agents can help automate the process of following up on transactions or scanning user status updates for alerts.

Privacy advocates have raised concerns about what happens when companies start logging the personal information shared through social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. CRM software programmers note that Facebook’s API prevents them from violating the site’s privacy policy. Facebook users set their own privacy profiles through their personal preference settings. They also control the amount of information that “friends” can access. Therefore, companies can only review information that site users allow them to see. However, logging a customer’s live feed of data might inadvertently store information that might later be deleted from a site’s servers, creating potential copyright issues.

For companies that want to learn more about customers while responding to questions and concerns in a familiar context, tracking Facebook through CRM software appears to be a promising, new frontier.

Mobile CRM Systems Coming to a Hotel Near You

Product managers at CRM application vendors love to talk about web integration. After all, when customer make their own selections of products and services online, web servers capture the details and nuances of their requests in place of human agents or sales professionals. What might have once landed in the heads of clever field agents now resides in a master database of likes and dislikes.

Some organizations experience resistance over installing CRM applications because staff members fear they’ll eventually be replaced. In fact, companies that use CRM software and web-based tools effectively tend to expand their business far beyond the capacities of their current staff. And the evidence of this trend is popping up in some unexpected places, like your local hotel.

For years, major brand hotel chains have urged guests to shift their appointments from the phone to their company websites. Not only does self-service web booking offer guests a comprehensive view of the prices and options available, it allows key customer data to be fed directly into a chain’s CRM system. Savvy hotel managers can use CRM data to predict the needs of incoming guests, especially repeat visitors. Anticipating these needs can impact everything from hotel decor to the kind of food and beverage on hand.

Now, imagine the power of a CRM application that can track a hotel guest’s wants and needs throughout the duration of their stay. That’s exactly what Runtriz has created with a custom hotel CRM application that runs on an iPhone or an iPod touch mobile device. By putting the entire range of hotel services -- from room service to special requests -- at the fingertips of guests, hotel managers encourage more sales through increased interaction.

Over time, managers use the CRM software not just to streamline special requests, but to build profiles of travelers and the kinds of services they request the most. This kind of CRM application can influence everything from the kind of food offered on the menu to the types of amenities offered throughout a property.

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Sales Advantages of Using CRM Software

CRM software benefits many people in a business. Salespeople enjoy several advantages as a result of the system.

- The sales cycle gets shortened. All steps in the sales process becomes more efficient thus promoting its alacrity.

- Customer needs are better identified. CRM software aids in a business' attempt to personalize a consumer's account. Businesses can cater their services to their customers on a case-by-case basis.

- Customers can be analyzed in depth. Salespeople can see support, sales, and purchase history of each consumer.

- Salespeople can share information with others on their team in order to compare notes, share ideas, and give suggestions.

- CRM software enables salespeople to integrate cohorts from other departments into the sales cycle. This results in better efficiency and great communication throughout varying departments.

CRM Software Helps Create Loyal Customers

Customers are the most important element of your business; without them, you have no business at all. CRM software gives you the insight to create lasting customers. How does CRM software achieve this?

It creates an impact in four major areas of your business:

Customer service - Representatives will know more personal information about individual customers to create a 'personalized' rapport.

Sales - Your sales department will have more information to draw from when speaking with potential and existing customers.

Marketing - The department will understand how to develop current and future campaigns based on data elicited.

Management - Executives will receive a steady stream of information in order to make better decisions and allocate immediate resources.

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