In a world of what Marketspace’s Jeffrey Rayport calls Meet Customers 3.0, where customers are specifying the kind of relationships they have with brands, we have moved from CRM to CMR – Customer Relationship Management to Customer Managed Relationship.
Jeffrey Rayport
During his keynote at today’s Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference, Rayport discussed the implications that the Customers 3.0/CMR will have on retailers. His presentation used many real-world examples of how successful companies had mobilized their customers, often leading to increased sales, a better brand presence, and a competitive edge. Here’s what he discussed.
1. Target the Core: Overwhelm the Microcosm
When Toyota launched the Scion, they knew who their target audience was. Better yet, they knew WHERE their target audience was and WHAT they liked to do. Toyota knew that the GenY males they were targeting, or more specifically a demographic called “The Tuners”, went to clubs, played online games, and were unlikely to react to push promotions. Armed with that knowledge, they spent 70% of their marketing budget on events and focused on encouraging continual interactions. The result? Toyota managed to connect with its target market, propelling Scion sales past the comparable Honda Element. And, as an added benefit, the average Scion owner feels so connected to his or her vehicle that he spends as much money in the first three years of ownership customizing the vehicle with tools, apps, and services as he spent buying it in the first place.
2. Activate the Community: Ensure Membership Has Its Rewards
Nespresso, the fastest-growing brand in Nestle Group, has sustained a compound annual growth rate for the last eight years of over 30%. By activating their community and turning it into a multi-channel experience with stores, bars, social interaction, and online engagement (to name – literally – just a few), they have acquired 217,000+ fans on Facebook. Even more demonstrable of the activeness of their community, consider that when they asked their Facebook fans: “Indriya, Rosabay or Dulsao, which coffee pure origin suites you the best?” over 3,700 people checked that they like the posted question and almost 1,500 commented with a response.
3. Work the Web: Let the Outside In…And Let the Inside Out
Threadless embraces this concept by not only encouraging the outside community to submit designs, but also asking the community to score designs and help the company decide which one to print. Their crowd sourcing initiatives have helped them garner 1.2 million members, 100,000 Facebook fans, 1.5 million Twitter followers, and helped them grow sales from $6.2 million in 2005 to over $30 million in 2009.
4. Design for Occasion: Tailor Each Interaction to Its Form Factor
Through emails and an iPhone app, Gilt provides its members with access each day to private sales. The result of giving their members immediate online and mobile access is that 48% of sales are made between noon and one pm, when the new sales typically start. And though the company was only established less than two and a half years ago, their revenues for 2010 are projected to be up to $500 million.
5. Integrate the Experience: Mandate a Unified Field Theory
Looking at Netflix revenues since 2004, you wouldn’t think the economy had suffered in the slightest in the last few years. Netflix has continued to grow by continuing to innovate how and where they serve their customers. Aside from receiving DVDs in the mail, Netflix’s 12 million subscribers can access movies and television shows through their own computers (48% of customers streamed at least 15 minutes of video from Instant Watch) or through devices like Xbox 360 and Tivo.
Rayport wrapped up his session by telling retailers to give consumers the retail experiences they want and demand by putting the tools to create that experience back in the hands of those very same consumers. With compelling examples that spanned the entire scope of the retail industry, I have no doubt that attendees left with plenty of food for thought.
2 Comments
“has continued to grow by continuing to innovate how and where they serve their customers”
I think that this quote is key to the entire article. Static content that fails to engage is dead, hyperlinks are pull users away are bad and the distributed nature of the Internet is making things worse. Innovative hybrid marketing platforms that combine external and internal marketing materials, continually deliver fresh content to all distribution points, organize data for instant recognition and exponentially expand marketing real estate is one solution. It uses permission marketing, allowing the customer to pick what information they want, where they want it and when they want it. Custom analytics track all uses providing the metrics for marketing campaign (geoIP, time and market based) changes in real time.
As you mentioned with the launch of the Toyota Scion, we have found online games as one of the interesting mediums for promotions for companies.
We develop online games platforms as our main business and we have found that online games are definitely one of the very successful ways of creating stickiness for a site or portal.
It is definitely not something that is applicable to every business, every site and every advertising campaign.
Demographic dependant, it makes sense in certain instances and proves exceptionally effective. It creates an interesting way of gathering information and interacting with clients and potential clients.
Just one of the interesting cogs in the system that really helps to engage customers.
As a sidenote… this is definitely not the one, only and best way to engage customers, but a useful one nonetheless. In my opinion the best possible approach to engaging customers is to definitely not only have one approach. Work through various mediums at various intensities and the results come….
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[...] social media mantras from Diane von Furstenberg, rules for customer engagement from Moosejaw and Marketspace’s Jeff Rayport, and a very popular Sephora session on identifying key participants in your community: “Who’s [...]
[...] social media mantras from Diane von Furstenberg, rules for customer engagement from Moosejaw and Marketspace’s Jeff Rayport, and a very popular Sephora session on identifying key participants in your community: “Who’s [...]