Watch: What do you hear when people say "Relationship Marketing"? What do people actually mean by that? And what, exactly, it entails, how it differs from other aspects of marketing, and just how impactful to your business it can be? (well, a lot)
The term “Relationship Marketing” is broad, but it’s easy to differentiate it from other aspects of marketing. And, even more important – it’s the most basic step you need to take in order to start doing CRM Marketing the right way.
What is the right way? Well, that’s a long story. But we’ll just say that when done right – Relationship Marketing can increase your Customer Lifetime Value by 33%, and contribute even more than that to your brand’s bottom line revenue.
The video below will make sense of it all, in 3-something short minutes.
Welcome to another installment in Optimove’s PostFunnel Insider Learning Center series (SmartCRMBasics) – and this time, we go to the very basics, and answer a fundamental question here – what is “Relationship Marketing”?
So, if we go with the Wikipedia definition – it’ll be “Relationship marketing is a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns that emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction rather than sales transactions.”
If we go with the one that is actually on Optimove’s Learning Center, it’s “the interacting with each customer uniquely, based on that customer’s specific wants, needs and preferences.”
But, both these definitions seem to be assuming a bit of existing knowledge, and I want to go even more basic.
See, marketing is often confused with sales and advertising. And, while in some more traditional businesses, they can overlap quite significantly, the differences are much clearer in digital.
And in digital, marketing is mostly associated with acquiring new customers.
If I just start throwing some acquisition-related terms, you’ll see that you know most – if not all – of them. From acquisition to growth, to growth hacking, from acquisition channels to PPC, to CAC to SEO to targeting and retargeting, from cookies to conversion, lead, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, to opportunity to… yes, finally – the customer.
And that’s where the world of Relationship Marketing takes the baton and leads the way.
See, in the most simple terms – Relationship Marketing is – marketing to your existing customers. That’s it.
But, what it entails? And how it differs from other aspects of marketing?
Well, we gotta keep it short on these segments, so let’s do it quickly, and if you want to learn more just visit Optimove’s learning center, or, better yet, talk to us.
Okay, ready? Here we go.
Relationship Marketing is about reducing churn, eliminating one-timers, and increasing retention – getting the same customer to buy with you again.
Relationship Marketing is about Loyalty – nurturing a sense of connection between the customer and your brand in a way to could also turn them into advocates, word-of-mouth spreaders.
And, one other thing that really separates Relationship Marketing from all other aspects of Marketing – is the data.
While in digital customer acquisition, data is non-direct and heavily dependent on what Google and Facebook, and regulators allow you to do – in Relationship Marketing, for the most part – you really know who you are talking to. Personally. Because they told you who they are – and gave you their phone number and email, and you can find them on social – and! The vast majority of them gave you direct permission to reach out to them on all these channels.
All these combine to a reality where getting an existing customer to buy with again you is 10 times easier and 5 times cheaper than getting a new person to become a customer.
Yes, customers are the secret sauce of business growth, and – when applying the right approach, the right tech, and realtime segmentation, smart analysis, and other sophisticated best practices to it – your CRM marketing can increase customer lifetime value by 33% percent, and even contribute more than that to your brand’s bottom line revenue.
That’s what relationship is all about. That’s what it can be for you and your brand, as well.
