Having an automated meaningful dialogue with customers
Marketers can now centrally orchestrate the management of customer communications across every channel and touch point throughout the entire customer lifecycle, thanks to the new 'Relationship Marketing' application from Blue Martini.
The application lets marketers engage in multi-step, cross-channel dialogues (personalised, event-driven campaigns) that are designed to attract new customers, increase the profitability of existing customers, and provide better service over the lifetime of the customer relationship.
Whether using the company's existing analytic software, or third-party applications, marketers need only to identify individual customer segments before creating and executing the appropriate dialogue for each. One of the key breakthroughs is the ability to trigger dialogues by defining audiences and scheduling campaigns, as well as by monitoring customer behaviour across channels - and triggering dialogues based on specific events. Such events might include:
- Customer triggered events - such as buying a specific brand of merchandise, complaining to a call centre, returning a product or searching for a product on a web site;
- Customer lifecycle triggered events - such as birthdays and anniversaries;
- Recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) triggered events that monitor the value of a shopper over a period of time.
How dialogues work Dialogues can include relevant offers, communications and follow-up to specific purchases, and build loyalty and manage communications through the sales and service process. For example, if a retailer has excess inventory of a certain item, the inventory system triggers an event in the software which initiates a dialogue to target people who might be interested in that item. The system sends out an e-mail campaign to customers with e-mail, a direct mail campaign to customers without e-mail, and also triggers cross-selling on the website, the point of sale and at the call centre (via scripts). The result is that the retailer sells the excess inventory without having to reduce the price of the item.
"Effective marketing campaigns require more than mass email, direct mail or telesales - they require dialogues that are ongoing over time and delivered across every channel of interaction," said Monte Zweben, CEO of Blue Martini Software. "We uniquely address these requirements by managing customer relationships with coordinated interactions that resonate with each individual customer. Our new application enables marketers to elevate the customer's experience by gaining insights and information about customers and turning those insights into profitable interactions."
Full integration The application is a stand-alone product designed to work independently with any e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system using industry standard protocols. Blue Martini says that the system can easily be live within a matter of weeks.
Marketers can also use the software to send leads and offers to other front-office applications, such as call centres, sales force automation and third-party websites. It can also receive dialogue triggers (like inventory backlog or order placement) from back-end applications such as ERP or supply chain management (SCM) applications. It also integrates with many merchandising, inventory management, fulfilment, SCM and store systems.
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