Exploring the Realms of CRM: A Roundup

How is your team structured currently?

We operate with a fully in-house team.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

The top three challenges that we face are:

• Segmentation strategy: WHO will I send a message to. One size fits all vs. "hyper targeting"
• Content strategy: WHAT will I send to customers? Is it relevant?
• Contact strategy: WHEN will I send my customers messages. Triggered vs. Ad-Hoc. Also, which channel is the most relevant for which message

Give one example of how CRM is helping you *integrate* your *email marketing* with other channels.

We have multiple feedback loops. One example is the customer service data (NPS scores) which we can use to exclude customers that had a bad experience or reward when they are labelled "promoters".

Protip:

Make a clear distinction between strategic pillars and tactics.

How is your team structured currently?

We work with a fully in-house team

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

According to me, data integration, personalization, and multichannel marketing are the top three challenges for us.

Give one example of how CRM is helping you *integrate* your *email marketing* with other channels.

We integrate email marketing with other channels by using data exports and journey builder.

Protip:

It is not all about email.

How is your team structured currently?

We have a fully in-house team.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

Getting IT and Sales to a place of understanding. A lot of the time I have to keep things super simple for understanding reasons. However, once we start going into the build we run into IT making changes to other systems that might impact our data/segments we can use for the programs we started planning 6 months ago that are launching soon. Communication with my teams and stakeholders is so important, and making for people to share what was shared and having them rephrase it back is helpful for understanding.

Give one example of how CRM is helping you *integrate* your *email marketing* with other channels.

Getting our Contact Center integrated into the CRM world using Service Cloud has been a game-changer for our email campaigns, from one of the emails, to automation programs. This now allows us to take customers out of an engagement program if we have received a customer relation issue from a past or current order. Which allows our programs to pivot to that customer's current needs. The Contact Center is my key player when it comes to CRM.

Protip:

Planning, planning, and more planning. Hire a full-time project manager. As a CRM Manager, our head is in between IT Requirements, CRM/ESP Tool Requirements, and Functional restrictions, while also trying to juggle Design, Content, Segmentation, Trying to make sure you Email Templates are rendering for Outlook, and trying to get your emails to hit the inbox. It's a lot and Email Production is still 85% of our jobs... and there are not many people who understand it. So by hiring a really amazing project manager they can help with all the details of launching/maintaining CRM programs and processes...

How is your team structured currently?

We have a fully inhouse team.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

These are the top three challenges that we encounter in our business:

• Getting enough analyst power to truly understand impact
• Stakeholder buy-in (and avoiding last minute requests)
• Insufficient CRM tooling

Give one example of how CRM is helping you *integrate* your *email marketing* with other channels.

We are currently working on a multi-channel onboarding campaign to test against a single-channel variant.

Protip:

It's just an email. No one's going to die. (Sometimes it doesn't feel that way.)

How is your team structured currently?

We work with a fully in-house team.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from planning to program analysis?

Behavior-based personalization, integrating social into a contact strategy, and optimizing email content are the top three challenges for us.

Give one example of how CRM is helping you integrate your email marketing with other channels.

CRM helps to integrate email marketing with other channels by compilation of data collected from a single source.

Protip

Marketing automation is the key.

How is your team structured currently?

Our team is placed fully in-house.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

KPIs, Target Audiences and Design. Project management is key.

For KPIs, I ensure all stakeholders involved know their input matters and provide benchmarks/data to back up objectives and why they were chosen.

For design, I connect with the creative team's workflow and process; ensuring they are aligned on my tasks and submitting briefs that make sense.

Protip:

Keep a record of everything. Simple but powerful. I always like to refer to documentation whether I need a quick reminder on something that is coding related or an older report that I need to refer back to.

How is your team structured currently?

We have outsourced Email Development, Campaign Performance Analysis and Reporting, and ESP Migration to our remote team. The rest of the operations are carried out in-house.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

I think the biggest challenges continue to be:

Data - So many organizations struggle with their data, both having clean data coming into their CRM and being able to export and extract meaningful insights. If you have bad data going in, it will be nearly impossible to glean usable insights after the fact.

Process - It seems like the longer we have been sending emails, the longer the process continues to take. There are often many cooks in the kitchen, resulting in various rounds of reviews, changes, "approvals" and final final (no really this is the last one) approvals.

Testing and learning - While testing is a critical component of continuously improving your marketing strategy, it is often the first thing to go when priorities change.

Protip:

If you can't make it personal, make it relevant. Trying to achieve the perfect 1:1 communication strategy can be a losing battle, especially at scale. If that is holding you back, focus on targeting the largest group with the most relevant message and then use those learnings to improve future communications.

How is your team structured currently?

Apart from email development, we have all the teams working in-house.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

Our top three challenges are:
Cadence - how much email is too much?
Content - what content is best to resonate?
Re-Engagement - how do we bring subscribers back into the fold?

Give one example of how CRM is helping you *integrate* your *email marketing* with other channels.

It makes more data available.

Protip:

Just get the basics right, and build from there

How is your team structured currently?

Except Campaign Performance Analysis and Reporting, Email Deployment, Email Development, and IP Management, we have an in-house team for our operations.

What are your top 3 challenges at any stage of CRM and email strategy execution- from *planning* to *program analysis*?

Data quality seems to be the biggest challenge for us.

Give one example of how CRM is helping you *integrate* your *email marketing* with other channels.

CRM has facilitated data driven marketing across channels for us.

Protip:

Data Governance is KING