Whether you’re launching a new product, scaling a startup, building your dream house, or planning your yearly budget, almost every worthwhile endeavor in life requires some strategy.

The same applies to your business and its approach to customer relationship management (CRM). Developing a functional and comprehensive CRM strategy should be one of the priorities for your business this year. 

A CRM strategy determines the why, where, what, who, and how your business interacts with clients. It also outlines how a business acquires, markets to, engages with, and retains its clients. Ultimately, the CRM strategy summarizes how your business grows and increases its bottom line. 

Strategy And Software In CRM

In the complex world of CRM, it’s quite easy to confuse the strategy and the software. So let’s look at what these two mean to you. Really, CRM can be a type of software and a strategy at the same time. However, though the CRM strategy will govern the approach you take to customer relationships, your CRM software or system facilitates this strategy’s implementation. 

In other words, the strategy includes the policies, tactics, and measures used to handle customer relationships while you use the software to execute your strategy to reach its full potential. You can further understand how these two relate and deliver maximum value to your business if you hire Salesforce consultant with experience in solving complex business challenges using innovative solutions like software. 

Seeing it’s so crucial, it should come as no surprise that it’s challenging to put together a fully-formed CRM strategy, so if you’re looking for a way to get your CRM strategy off the grounds, browse the following ideas of CRM strategies for 2021. 

1) Customer Interaction and Behavior Tracking

The principal precept of a good CRM strategy is to help you know your customers. Your strategy should leverage CRM software to eliminate any guesswork by helping you understand how clients find your business online and how the two interact. CRM software can do this by tracking valuable metrics and storing different data types about prospective and current clients.  

You can learn the specific ad a client clicked, if they engaged with an email, or even opened it. No longer do you have to wonder which social platform your target audience can use to find you. A CRM strategy designed around customer interaction and behavior tracking will teach all there is to learn about your customers. Hence, you can build a comprehensive, ethical customer database and learn critical behavior patterns that drive purchasing preferences. 

2) Rewards And Loyalty Programs

Talking of CRM strategies involving rewards and loyalty programs, some of the popular names that spring to mind include The IKEA Family, The Tesco Clubcard, and Starbucks Rewards. Everybody loves receiving rewards, especially from companies we like and interact with. Hence, your business can use this vital marketing tool to develop a solid CRM strategy in 2021. 

You can reach out with special packages, offers, and discounts designed to foster customer loyalty. This approach to customer relationships personalizes interactions and allows clients to accumulate digital currency every time they purchase. In short, it’s the perfect motivation for returning customers who will spend more and help spread the word. It’s a win-win approach that lets your business give back to the customer for patronizing your products or services. 

3) Targeted And Tailored Marketing

So you now have a fully-functional behavior tracking and customer interaction system that also features a customer loyalty strategy. Then you’ll need to create a proactive marketing campaign using all the data gathered. This type of marketing campaign is designed to speak directly to your audience. 

Below, you’ll find four tips for designing a CRM strategy based on effective marketing: 

Personalized Emails – According to research, emails having personalized subject lines are more likely to get opened by 26%. 

Customer Segmentation – You should segment your audience and email list if you want your marketing efforts to resonate. Ideally, you can create different customer personas for each segment. 

Be Specific – Let all your packages be specific and to the point. Your readers shouldn’t have to strain their minds to figure out what you’re offering.

4) Customer Relationship Identification

If you intend to nurture good customer relationships, merely managing won’t suffice. You also need to identify. This means that your understanding of relationships shouldn’t end with what transpires between your business and customers. You also need to understand the personal and professional relationships that exist between your customers and how these relationships affect your business’ relationship with them. 

The right CRM strategy provides a holistic outlook of your customer database. Hence, you’ll be in the position to identify any profitable connections existing between your customers. Apart from this, you also gain valuable insight into personal connections. For instance, Learning about the number of siblings or children a client has may be vital for marketing purposes. Furthermore, it can help you save resources and marketing budget.

5) Customer Service Team Integration

Having the right CRM strategy and software can do wonders for the sales and marketing team. But you still need to bring your customer service staff under the same ‘umbrella’ if you want to achieve peak performance. Despite the tremendous benefits, this could provide your business, it’s challenging to integrate the marketing, sales, and customer services departments. 

Your CRM strategy should feature a robust CRM system that supplies your customer service team information about any given client’s marketing and sales process. This enables the customer service personnel to find what’s gone wrong and knows how to address it. After all, nobody enjoys bouncing from one customer service staff to another as they try to find a solution to the problem. And you can avoid this with a CRM strategy that integrates all three departments.

Conclusion

In summary, 2021 is expected to bring with it more automation and increased usability, two essential features that should facilitate considerable growth across CRM platforms. The CRM analytics segment should also record the highest CAGR in the years to come due to the proliferation of artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

Another contributing factor is the rising integration of analytics and business intelligence in CRM software. Companies that can quickly take advantage of these emerging trends in CRM will increase their revenue and register significant growth in their customer database owing to the adoption and use of good CRM strategies.