The past few weeks have been a nasty rollercoaster ride for everyone.
Optimove’s Strategic Services team is spending most of its time these days learning how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted various B2C verticals and brands across the board, mostly from a user behavior perspective. Then, the team is coming up with new best-practices to tackle this reality.
Here are a few of their most recent insights.
To learn more about how you can prepare for after COVID-19 join our webinar on the topic on Thursday, May 7th at either 1:00 PM BST or 1:00 PM EDT
Step 1 – Prioritize Your CRM Efforts
Budgets are smaller, Costs of Acquisition are higher, where do we go from here?
Our team translated Maslow’s chart into different layers of customer levels of engagement or lifecycle stages. We call it the COVID-19 CRM Pyramid of Priorities.
The idea behind it is that every brand needs to understand what their hierarchy is – and make sure it treats the layers appropriately, accordingly, from the bottom up. A company needs to analyze what meets their business KPIs, customer behaviors, and customer segments, and to create this pyramid uniquely. (we can help!)
It’s a great way to map customers and understand prioritizations – which is especially crucial in times of crisis.
Step 2 – Define Each Slice of The CRM Pyramid
Since it’s tough to get new customers these days, you should focus on your existing, loyal ones. Which brings up another challenge: defining who your core customers are. You need to understand what data points to use and how to identify them.
Thing is, many brands don’t have that core understanding of what a VIP customer is. And so, working on defining these thresholds is an essential step in this process.
When going about it, it’s important to remember that defining these segments is not only based on revenue, number of purchases, how customers have engaged with your brand, etc. Though it’s easy to think that only the amount spent with your brand matters – this isn’t the smart way to define each segment/layer.
Your true VIP customers are the most loyal ones, with the highest Lifetime Value, the ones that are likely to stick around with you after these tough times. Not just when business is at its peak. Therefore, you should focus on those loyal customers right now. Then you can expand depending on the resources that you have.
Step 3 – Adjusting to The New Reality
Everyone’s on a race to adapt as quickly as possible to this new situation. From retail store closures to certain products that are suddenly unavailable or gaming operators that no longer offer sports betting events.
Looking back at these past few weeks, since most of the world has been on lockdown, every week seems completely different. If one week a particular strategy seems to be correct, the next week, it may be completely wrong. Brands who are most agile and easily able to adapt to these changes every week are the ones that’ll be the most successful the day after. It requires staying on top of your customers’ behavior trends.
So, to sum this post up – prioritize ruthlessly based on your different customer lifecycles and segments. And be adaptive and agile.
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For more information on how to conquer your CRM strategies during these challenging times (and always), email us at [email protected]
Stay tuned for more analysis, and in the meantime, check out our vast Marketing Amid Corona coverage:
Matan is Optimove's Director of Strategic Services, based in London, and has been with the company since early 2017.
His specialty is working closely with CRM executives on optimizing retention marketing programs, analyzing customer data, and revealing actionable, data-driven marketing insights.
He graduated from Tel Aviv University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering/Industrial Management and has occupied different analyst positions since 2014.
