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Understanding Electronic Customer Relationship Marketing
Companies understand that Electronic Customer Relationship Marketing (eCRM) has significant potential, but they face the challenge of building the required technology infrastructure quickly and cost effectively. A knee-jerk reaction is to buy off-the-shelf applications, cobble together a database of web traffic and online purchase information, and launch an eCRM initiative. Unfortunately, many such efforts have met with poor results. Recent research indicates that 39% of online shoppers failed in shopping attempts and a staggering 66% of loaded online shopping carts were abandoned before the checkout process. Less than 5% of unique visitors become customers.
A more sound approach is to install a comprehensive software platform of five engines that together enable the eCRM business process. These five engines are:
1. The Customer-centric Information Store: To consolidate information about millions of customers together with preferences, permissions, and information that may be useful to them.
2. The Analysis and Segmentation Engine: To leverage this customer information to build a business campaign strategy and evaluate its success.
3. The Personalization Engine: To personalize the entire customer experience, configuring unique sets of messages and offers to each customer.
4. The Broadcast Engine: To proactively deliver information and offers to every customer via the media of his or her choice.
5. The Transaction Engine: To facilitate the interactions between customer and the company, either exchanging information or driving transactions.
Properly configured, these five engines collectively form a robust, scalable, and flexible platform for eCRM. Prefabricated and custommade software can be seamlessly integrated into the platform to provide a virtual shopkeeper to millions of customers. Equipped with such infrastructure, companies can continually create significant customer value at Internet speed, automating the who, what, when, where, and how of sales and marketing.
Engine 1: The Customer-centric Information Store
eCRM initiatives depend on a 360-degree customer view. A Customer-centric Information Store integrates data from disparate information sources such as web sites, transactional systems, operational databases, call centers, enterprise resource planning systems, and third party data. This engine enables companies to recognize and respond accurately to customers, whether they purchase products through a physical store; telephone a call center; or browse a web site. Consequences of an incomplete customer view are often harsh. Presenting customers with inappropriate offers...