“Customer is King”. Fashion and Lifestyle brands depend strategically on a well-managed customer database. Today we share some advice to maintain and grow your client relationship strategy.

Understanding your client base behavior puts your brand in an advantageous position to create practical solutions. All types of businesses manage clients’ data; it is relevant to trace a strategy for communicating with them in better terms, offering information, recommendations, and tangible benefits.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the concept of the development and management of customer relationships in a brand. This type of business philosophy enables any company to identify and anticipate customers’ needs and desires.

The CRM concept is linked to a solid marketing strategy, integrating processes, functions, and external networks to create value for customers. The goal of integrating this type of strategy in our brand is to retain the existing customer base, foster loyalty, and be aware constantly of their habits.

If you have a brand that wants to create a CRM strategy, you have to define your objectives. Any CRM strategy is rooted in:

1) Finding, attracting and winning new clients.
2) Retaining existing clients by loyalty programs and marketing actions.
3) Winning back clients that, for whatever reason, are not engaging with the brand anymore.

Defining clear objectives, tracing a step-by-step strategy, and controlling the outcome, will help us to increase our sales and reduce (as much as possible) our marketing cost.

Find below advice and points to consider when creating a CRM strategy for your brand, either in the digital or in-store environment.

Build Your Database and Find Meaning to It

Let us assume that you have a lot of information regarding your client base;valuable information such as shopping records and frequency, personal data, amount per ticket, or any other relevant information attached to the purchase process that will help you categorize.

This information at hand does not mean anything unless you organize it, process it, and give it a meaningful structure to read the data behind the data.

There are plenty of SaaS that can help you with that task; take HubSpot, Salesforce for example, or if you have a tight budget, you can always rely on Excel. Codifying the right information on your database will allow you to have an accurate description of your customer’s behavior.

The first step is structuring your data, then selecting a tool for communicating with your audience such as MailChimp; then choosing software like Oracle, Split to manage campaigns, retargeting users, and processing the personal data for tracking the customer journey.

Define Your Variables and Classify Your Customers

Consumers are not segmented by definition. Your task is to define a proper classification according to the brand’s core business, purpose, and products. Marketers say quantitative segmentation is needed even if it seems old-fashioned: age, gender, city location, and income are necessary. Values & Lifestyle (VALS) segmentation is useful when creating a Buyer Persona for your brand. This information is perfect for you to understand the target, however, if you want to segment your marketing actions you will need to get further.

CRM marketing actions can be divided by different variables, such as geographic, demographic, product usage, customer life-cycle inside the brand, the VIP customer base purchase behavior, buying preference by gender, and brand line, among others. You must understand the variables and analyze them to find information that helps create a CRM campaign.

Personalize Your CRM Actions

Nobody wants to be just a client code number, we recommend personalizing your CRM campaigns as much as you can. Address your client by its name in an email marketing communication; offer personalized discounts based on their purchase history or special dates such as birthdays, as an example. If you personalize your marketing communications, your customer will feel connected to the brand and appreciated.

Reward Your Customer Base

It is valid to create a CRM campaign to find and attract new possible clients. You can suggest user registration and give a welcome discount. You can use CTA displays on your website (banners or pop-up windows) that explain the membership advantages, benefits, or loyalty programs.

Maintaining the customer happy has to be your goal. You can create campaigns on customer care and web assistance, giveaways rewarding the loyalty of your customers, throw special sales and personalized discounts.

Decide the campaign benefit according to your customer information, such as the most recent purchase, their frequency of purchase, or how much the customer spends on the brand overall.

Creating a CRM strategy is a dynamic, evolving task inside any brand. Analyze your data and always create customer-centric campaigns. In the end, what is a brand without customers?