A holistic approach to CRM

How do you personalize and humanize at scale?

We have developed a holistic approach to CRM based on two decades of experience working with multinational and multibrand companies. It is a simple yet powerful approach, which we have found to be incredibly valuable to better understand why so many brands fail to get personalization right – and where the route to success lies.

Our holistic approach is based on aligning the four forces of CRM: Data and intelligence, Content and creative, Technology and platforms, Activation and orchestration.

However, aligning the four forces is dependent on a well-defined vision and strategy: The vision is the first step, describing how the experience for the customer is going to change in the future when engaging with the brand. This sets the overall direction for our efforts, and without knowing where we are going, we are not going to get where we want to go. The next step is defining the strategy and understanding how far away we are from our vision. That is where the strategy is born; it's where we survey the terrain, marshal resources and kickstart the transformation.

Data & Intelligence

Creating, maintaining and humanizing a relationship requires a real-time understanding of each consumer’s interests: what to talk about, when to talk about it and when to be quiet.

And not least, ensuring that data privacy is respected and complies with regulatory systems across markets.

Content & Creative

Understanding that each consumer can have thousands of different reasons to fall in love with a brand, brands’ content must be engaging, diverse and speak to what moves them.

This means moving to Personal Value Propositions and away from a single Unique Selling Point born out of a mass communication paradigm.

Technology and Platforms

Scaling CRM to reach millions of the right customers with the right content at the right time, we need the right technology and platforms. However, this transformation is far too complex for the solution to always be “acquire new technology”.

The key question is: How do we get the technology to work for us and not against us?

Activation and Orchestration

Finally, we need to activate and orchestrate all these variables in an efficient and scalable operating model, tied together by streamlined processes, clear roles and responsibilities, automation and continuous optimization.

It is crucial to create a clear separation of meta workstreams like transformation, capability development and activation.

With this approach, no area of expertise is more important than the other. They all contribute to moving us forward and need to be perfectly aligned and balanced. The trick is to get them to evolve at the same speed, in the same direction, at the same time...

Chandra Mostov

Global COO, VML MAP

You can have the most powerful creative assets in the world, but if you don't know how to connect them to the data and scale them with the technology – using an efficient operating model – you’re going to fail. We often see businesses build fantastic data models that can predict intent and behaviors, but creative specialists cannot understand it and therefore, cannot leverage it to build user engagement. Or if the technology stacks are ill-equipped, we can crash the platform with a single creative execution.

With a holistic approach to CRM and the framework of four forces powering your journey, you can better organize your business and accelerate your efforts to humanize the experience and hyper-personalize omnichannel marketing.

How do you personalize and humanize at scale?

Chandra Mostov

Global COO, VML MAP

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