CRM and Marketing Automation: Changing The Game For the Retail Industry

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words CRM or marketing automation? For us, the term is transformation, and rightly so. CRM and marketing automation together have empowered retailers globally to up their game and reach new heights. Read on as we delve into the powers of CRM and marketing automation for retailers.

Personalized Communication to Maintain Trust

When you connect an intuitive marketing automation tool with a robust CRM, you can achieve seamless and bespoke communication with your customers. The marketing automation tool comes with valuable features such as journeys, workflow, and triggers, allowing marketing, sales, and customer service teams to be more proactive with their engagement. 

For instance, you’ll be aware of customers’ journeys through your website, allowing you to connect with relevant messages that are more likely to pique their interest and make sales. Reaching out to your customers at the right time, with the right messages, and through the right channels, brings transparency and strength to your relationship with them. Furthermore, it significantly improves the customer experience, satisfaction, and loyalty. 

Diverse Portfolio to Fulfill Unique Needs

A seamlessly connected ecosystem allows retailers to offer customers diverse options within their portfolio and order faster. It allows teams to share data that comes with smart routing, paving the way for versatility in operations. Tasks such as utilizing in-store stock, expanding affiliate networking, optimizing last-mile delivery, and many more become more efficient. It will not only streamline different tasks, but the unified workspace will also significantly improve time, efforts, costs, supply chain ties, and customer satisfaction.  

Accuracy and Transparency at its Core

From checking the availability of products to tracking the status of their order, today customers want complete transparency and accuracy from you. A good CRM system is compatible with various third-party systems, allowing retailers to source data from a single point. They will be able to retrieve, manage and share information in real-time across various vertices easily. 

upRetailers will also be able to connect and share relevant data with channel partners, allowing utmost efficiency across the supply chain. This connected system will allow the customers to enjoy a customized and seamless shopping experience where they are up-to-date about products, prices, and orders. 

A Whole New Experience

CRM and marketing automation builds a decentralized digital world where data can be shared in a distributed manner. This offers customers complete ownership and control over their data. What does that mean for retailers?

• A reduced supply chain means retailers can reduce cost and efforts and better connect with customers.
• Strong privacy and control policies allow retailers to build trust with their customers and also gain valuable insights into their behavior.
• Retailers can leverage the new technologies to build a transparent and traceable supply chain, thereby boosting the confidence of customers in their purchases. 

CRM and Marketing Automation Uses Cases

Clubcard: Customer Retention the Tesco Way 

Tesco uses Clubcard CRM to engage and retain its loyal customers. Every time you purchase at Tesco, you will earn a point. Collect all these points and later you exchange them for vouchers. Lucky for you, many hotels, restaurants, and gas stations are companies’ partners, so the spending opportunities are great. 

Furthermore, these programs are available for all family members as:

• Tesco Kids Club
• Tesco Healthy Living Club 
• World of Wine Club 
• Tesco Baby and Toddler Club 

The company uses Clubcard for personalized marketing actions and there are more than four million variations of mailing to make sure each customer gets something valuable. 

Marketo:  Optimizing the Marketing Potentials for Panasonic 

Panasonic’s Europe branch uses Marketo which was implemented with their existing Salesforce CRM solution. The company’s goals were to achieve higher ROI and expansion. The marketing automation tools assisted the company to import over 55, 000 contacts and train more than 50 employees. Subsequently, the sales went from 10% to an impressive 26%. Moreover, the marketing campaign volume grew to 100+ campaigns monthly. 

The growth of CRM and marketing automation in the retail sector has been revolutionary. These technologies are rapidly growing to be a billion-dollar market as more and more companies have begun to invest in them. It’ll be exciting to witness what transformations CRM and automation tools have in store for us.