Dear Ms. Lizzy Foster, Marketing Executive at Farmison & Co.
I’m writing to you because on August 25th, 2021, we at PostFunnel – a publication dedicated to everything relationship marketing – analyzed your brand’s site experience according to the “7 commandments for basic CRM”.
These are the basic principles that brands should follow in today’s zeitgeist to improve their chances of building meaningful customer relationships.
You can read more about the method at the bottom of this page.
Since we ran the CRM analysis on your brand a few months back, we wanted to revisit it today to see what has changed. After all, we know these things are dynamic.
You can find the original analysis here.
Back then, you folks did pretty well – with a final score of 54/70, or – 77%, enough for a tie on 20th place out of the 55 brands we analyzed by that time.
We are now 60 brands into our ongoing series, and that score is still worth a place in the top 3rd of the entire list.
We gave you a perfect 10 on “Transparency,” “Incentives and Perks, and ”Relevancy.” Other categories where you scored high were “UX” (with an 8), and “Helpfulness” (a little below-average 7).
Most points were deducted on the “Social Media” category, where we look to see how well the brand is using these platforms to strengthen customer relationships (we gave you a 6) and the all-important “Realtime Personalization,” where our experience merited the low score of 3.
And so, we wanted now – 3 months later – to quickly come back and see if anything has changed.
Realtime Personalization
For the sake of context, this is where we look into two main aspects of the customer experience: 1) on-site the realtime personalization of the browsing and shopping experience, and 2) off-immediate personalized platform retargeting (on social media).
This is what we wrote last time:
“Sadly, realtime personalization isn’t part of Farmison & Co’s customer relationship management strategy at this point in time, and/or at this stage of the customer journey.
It seemed that nothing we did on the site resulted in a better, more personalized experience in realtime. Not even returning to the brand’s HP after adding a chicken supreme to our shopping cart, not to mention other messages around the site.
Apart from showing us other poultry cuts, we might like, no other cross-selling or up-selling techniques were implemented.
Farmison & Co misses opportunities to entice us to make an additional purchase. For instance, Farmison & Co could easily have provided some condiment suggestions during checkout to go with our chicken supreme purchase.
Also, we weren’t retargeted on social media, not even with ads containing the items in our cart. Farmison & Co’s CRM strategy takes a hit for not creating realtime personalized experiences for its customers.”
Three months later, it seems that nothing has changed. At least not for the better.
Even more so, we created an account, added chicken products to our shopping cart, browsed back to the homepage, and then – while still signed in and with the chicken products still in our cart – we visited the “Recipes and Tips” page, and it was as general as possible.
This is a seriously missed chance to present us with recipes and tips directly related to the items which were still waiting in our carts at that same time.
Oh, and the fact the pop-up on the homepage that encouraged us to sign up for the newsletter screamed, “join the flock.” With images of poultry behind it, it felt a bit insensitive.
This time around, and given the passing three months – which, for sure, saw more competitors or other eCommerce businesses moving forward and advancing their realtime personalization capabilities – what was worth 3 points back then should be less this now.
Reducing your score here from 3 to 2 or even to 1 means a total final score of 74-75%, which means a position closer to 30th (out of 60). Middle of the flock. An online-only business can, and perhaps should, do better.
Especially as we know the importance of personalized experience and its role in getting visitors and customers to come back for more, brands that deploy hyper-personalized CRM Marketing strategies can see a 33% increase in their Customer Lifetime Value. Some, even more.
To learn more about how you and THD can take full advantage of all the latest, cutting-edge realtime marketing personalization and customer segmentation practices, feel free to reach out to me at any time. That happens to be our expertise!
Cheers, Amit Bivas, VP Marketing at Optimove
About the 7 Commandments for Basic CRM Tactics in A Post-Coronavirus World:
We have a saying here at PostFunnel: All marketing is relationship marketing. Why? Because every touchpoint with a potential customer impacts the kind of relationship, they will have with a brand, if and when they become customers. Even branding has. It’s like what people hear about their upcoming blind date can determine the actual meeting’s success.
In recent years, it meant that the ways brands support global, social, environmental, and even political causes have become increasingly critical to their relationships with customers.
Then, 2020 happened. With its global pandemic’s tragedy, economic downturn, and historical social and political turmoils – people turned their eyes to brands, almost as much as they have to governments. Expecting and judging brands by how they conduct themselves throughout such events was never more crucial to a company’s CRM success.
One after the other, the internet got flooded with articles advising marketing and CRM leaders on making sure their brand is suited for this new reality. So, we combed dozens of them – and came up with a list of 7 staples that appeared in most of those articles.
The seven most essential commandments a brand must follow these days to make sure they put themselves in the best position possible to develop long, meaningful relationships with their customers.
The 7 Commandments:
1) Transparency. Show the human side of your brand
2) Give incentives and perks (that make sense)
3) Be relevant (with your language, offering)
4) Be helpful (improve your communities’ lives)
5) Personalize in realtime (cause, duh)
6) Master UX (slow, clunky websites are no longer an option)
7) Leverage social media (don’t just treat it as a sales channel)
Yup, that’s all. Your CRM efforts will struggle to achieve their full potential without being at least decent at all of these.
And, let’s be honest, it’s not too much to ask of a brand, right?
Yet, you’d be surprised how many well-known brands fall short too often when analyzed through these lenses.
Still, it makes some sense – these changes are happening fast, and not all brands can react and adapt quickly enough and on all fronts.
And we’re here to follow these reactions and adjustments as they happen.