Acronymtastic – SCRM, ECRM, CRM and the death of DM
Pic: Ian Bottle
I work for an agency that’s made some sort of name for itself in eCRM. That’s Electronic Customer Relationship Marketing. It’s not CRM, which is Customer Relationship Management if you’re into sales management software, or …marketing if you’re a DM agency. If you’re a DM agency, that’s direct marketing, thanks for all the principles, but your industry’s buggered.
Why? Because the principles of segmentation, so beautifully applied to awesome effect in eCRM, which now generates millions through digital channels, are starting to reach social. And social media is about engagement in real time. Which is what the digital agency world has been practising for its entire history – I started an interactive agency in 1994, which makes me positively historical. Without digital provenance, when social channels (gaggle shopping, live feedback and peer advice) and meet eCRM and forms SCRM (yes, I know), the DM world that gave us so much in discipline finds itself detached from usefulness.
Which is a shame. there are some amazing people and minds working in the industry. And while brands continue to send out three million mailing packs, it will survive. But slowly, those mailing packs that cost £1 each are being replaced by digital nudges, creating continuous contact even with the thinnest segments in the long tail. One day the post will be used tactically for that special something. And SCRM and eCRM will have truly blossomed.
All Comments
Errr isn’t social media just another consumer channel or interaction point to be included in CRM (as in Customer Relationship Marketing). Most Direct agencies have been embracing email and social media for sometime. I think you would struggle to find a Direct agency that wasn’t already outputting the majority of its activity via digital channels.
Interesting point, Felix.
Surely eCRM is now just social media marketing, often something of a oxymoron for some brands as they take over the social space!
I think DM has been dying for a long time, Felix. Mostly because it’s based on ‘segmentation’, something which in itself is increasingly innacurate, even obsolete in these times of mass customisation and co-creation. Segmentation of consumers is no longer a valid heuristic for their lifestyle, interests or what they value.
In addition, Direct Marketing generates huge waste, with a return of just a couple of percent considered successfull.
Consider the cost to society of 98% waste; money, human time, materials…
That level of waste for marketing activity — already arguably a societally corrosive acitivty — is no longer acceptable considering more efficient eCRM alternatives you mention.
DM is probably leaving the building.
Martin
There are still millions of consumers who don’t see digital approaches as a legitimate way of marketing, and won’t respond to emails and such like.
DM will only be dead when they are.
In the mean time, why aren’t more brands giving consumers the choice whether they’d like to receive the information via email etc or on paper?
Is it because the answer would probably be a much feared “neither way, please” ?
Gavin:
Plenty of DM agencies becoming wannabe digital agencies – but that’s all they’ll ever be until they’re being run by digital natives.
Martin:
I disagree that eCRM = SM… SM is in-community, intra-consumer; eCRM is driven by observation by the brand, and is designed to provoke both intra-consumer engagement and direct engagement.
Sarah:
eCRM is predicated on the response to the question “Which channel?” – it doesn’t exist sans opt in, and doesn’t work without careful observation of preferred frequency. It’s how brands like McCain Foods can increase brand engagement from 14% to 63% in ten months, and average transaction frequency by 3% in six months. Cold email has no place in eCRM when it comes to retention phases, because we’re already talking to – conversing with – the engaged!