Last week, we held an insightful webinar with a panel of industry experts. The ‘Sales and Marketing Tools for Merchants’ webinar featured Forrester’s VP and Principal Analyst, Kate Leggett; President and Founder of dotmailer, Tink Taylor; and CEO and co-founder of Oro, Yoav Kutner. This star studded panel focused on how online vendors can streamline business processes to retain clientele and maximize profitability.
If you missed this live session and want to catch up on the highlights of the webinar, we offer a brief summary below.
Kate Leggett speaks on major trends in CRM and how CRM can impact the customer experience.
Kate considers the shift towards digital and self-service commerce channels as one of the biggest trends in the market. The internet has given B2B customers instant access to a wealth of information which has led buyers to demand self-service purchasing options. Another trend Kate sees in terms of commerce and customer experience is the 360-degree view of the customer. This means companies need to understand their customer’s purchase history, buying behaviors, and preferences all in a holistic perspective. A multi-channel CRM is a perfect tool to meet this objective as it helps businesses create that unified view of all customer data.
To be able to keep up with these expectations and drive a profitable customer experience, businesses should look to implement a natural blend of CRM and commerce, says Kate. In fact, she argues that commerce is a logical extension of CRM. The bundle of both technologies enables businesses to effectively support clients throughout the entire customer journey.
Another issue Kate highlighted is that companies currently struggle with the deluge of customer data being collected. Big data isn’t a new concept but businesses are still having a hard time identifying valuable insights from their customer data. Kate also shared Forrester’s findings from a survey referencing that 47% of businesses cited difficulties in creating a single view of the customer, 41% mentioned problems with getting customer insights to drive decision making, and 35% faced troubles with managing data quality.
With Kate’s final words, she recommended that modern digital merchants should break down data and processing silos, craft ecosystems of technologies, and consider adopting innovative business tools to support their customers’ journey.
Yoav Kutner discusses tools multi-channel businesses can use
After introducing Oro’s background, Yoav spoke about Oro’s suite of business applications and the momentum behind its products. He revealed how Oro’s founders have come up with the idea of creating CRM and eCommerce solutions for B2B and discussed the product’s flexibility to solve unique business needs in various industries and verticals.
Yoav then discussed OroCRM’s product strategy and explained how the application is addressing the need for a single view of the customer across all channels and touchpoints. OroCRM allows businesses to capture multi-channel customer data because all interactions are brought into a single source and made visible for marketing, sales, and support units. Omnichannel businesses can easily track all channels, including B2B and B2C websites, social media, POS systems, etc., and instantly obtain a high-level understanding of their client. This valuable data can then be leveraged to better understand the customer journey and bring together a cohesive customer experience.
Yoav closed with sharing a case study of how UK’s largest wood company optimized their customer data management. In just three months, Certainly Wood had gone on to increase the ROI of their direct mail promotions by more than 1,000%, their segmented promotions by more than 3,000%, and their automated promotions by more than 5,000%.
Tink Taylor reflects on the benefits of integrating email marketing with a CRM
Tink discussed how email continues to deliver the greatest return on investment for any digital channel. For every $1 spent, email marketing reapes an average ROI of $50 but this can only be achieved with a robust email marketing engine. Tink spoke about how email marketing and marketing automation empower marketers to maximize performance. Batch-and-blast emailing (e.g. a newsletter send-out to every customer irrespective of their buying patterns and profiles) is known as a poor marketing tactic. Tink also discussed the importance of performing targeted emails based on behavioral and/or demographic segments.
Tink also spoke about knowing your customers’ buying habits and analyzing your customer touchpoints. That’s where a CRM with a 360-degree view of the customer adds value. The sheer amount of customer data in a CRM can then be used to segment and target specific audiences for more successful email campaigns. Integrating a CRM with a marketing automation software will help businesses to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time yielding in better conversions and higher close rates.
We hope you found the ‘Sales and Marketing Tools for Merchants’ webinar recap useful. Stay tuned for other Oro’s webinars we’re announcing here.
