What does customer relationship management (CRM) do for your business? It saves you money since finding new customers is expensive. Maintaining and growing the relationship with current customers is paramount. It gives your business information on what customers are looking for. By managing the relationships with your customers, you can better serve their changing wants and needs.
Facebook has tackled CRM and taken it a new level. Facebook has forever changed the way we communicate individually but furthermore, with the addition of business pages, it started a revolution of social media marketing. Most recently, Facebook took a stab at CRM by trying to connect businesses to users’ profiles with specific target marketing and it has been a huge success, both for Facebook and the businesses involved.
Facebook uses a design known as custom audience ads (CAA). Basically, this allows each user to see a different variety of ads based on their “likes” and the way they use the website. This CAA is now connected to a product called Marketing Cloud.
The chief marketing officer for Sales Force, Michael Lazerow announced the details of this new connection at a San Francisco conference in September. He explained that companies that use Sales Force have a database of CRM email addresses that customers have provided through their normal interactions with Sales Force clients. Marketing Cloud will use that database to find users on Facebook using the same email address and show specific ads only to those selected users. It is target marketing at its finest. This type of marketing has coined the name hyper-targeting.
Lazerow was clear that all customer email addresses are encrypted and kept secured during the process and gave a disclaimer that Facebook users have the option to turn hyper-targeting off in their privacy settings. He encourages users not to do so though. This marketing does not hurt anyone involved. Facebook is a publicly traded company now and ads will be shown on users screens, why not make sure they will be useful ads?
This hyper-targeting is an extreme case of CRM being put to use but without any CRM, your business will suffer. Is your CRM failing? Use these ideas and think outside of the box to make sure your relationships are maintained and prioritized.
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She writes business news for the most trusted business directory online. ChamberofCommerce.com can connect to over 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.