You must centralize the management of your company's marketing efforts in order to create great customer satisfaction
As your business grows to multiple business units, the same customer can interact with the different business units from your company. It is critical that you integrate the information from these business units to create a single customer view
When I was working witn E.sun Financial holdings on a marketing management project. The issue that the financial holding was facing at that time was their customers are interacting with the company at different business units, and the information are not being shared between the business units. As result, creating a poor customer experience.
Hows that? Let me walk you through an example. The Financial holding owns different financial services. For instance, the credit card service, mortgage loan service, wealth management service...etc. Let's say the customer owns a credit from the company, has made a mortgage loan and at the same time a customer of the wealth management service. This customer would be interacting with 3 different business units from the same company. Okay, now when it comes to pushing out marketing campaigns, it would be in the best interest of each business units to reach out to this same customer as much as possible. Since the marketing campaign information is not being shared by the 3 different business units. The customer could receive a credit card promotion campaign on Monday, a mortgage loan offer on Tuesday and a product recommendation from the wealth management unit on Wednesday. You get the idea! This will create what we call "over reaching the customer". As result, creating poor customer experience.
From the financial holding's point of view, they are looking at 3 different customers. However, the customer does not perceive it as this way. The customer see him as interacting with Esun Financial holding, interacting with one brand one company. Therefore, the customer expects his information to be spread throughout the company, even though the interaction is with each individual business unit.
Another importance for creating a single customer view is to develop a more accurate analysis of the customers needs and preference. To create a higher marketing campaign success rate. For example a credit card department may capture the spending behavior of the customers. If the customer spending begins to rise, and continue to spend at a higher level over a period of time. This may mean that the customer now has more cash to spend. If this information is passed onto the wealth department, the wealth department could reach out to this customer with higher success rate. The credit card transactional information could be passed onto the mortgage loan department. When the purchase of baby products are observed, this may mean that the customer is expecting a new family member and might have the need to move to a bigger house. This in turn becomes an opportunity for the mortgage loan department. Spotting these kinds of potential opportunities are only possible when information are shared among the different business units.
At E.sun bank 3 steps are taken to implement this marketing management strategy. First, is to integrate the data from the different business units. I helped created the ETL process to form the Master marketing database. Second, to implement a marketing software that utilize the data from the master marketing database for customer analysis, for the lead selection of each campaign, and to setup the campaign rules at the financial holding level. Lastly, to setup a marketing management team to oversees and control the marketing efforts of each business unit. Allocating the resources to the business unit that is most likely to success at that moment of time.
Competition is fierce, know your customers, don't let them repeat what they have said, predict their preference, and to reach them at the right place at the right time with the right product. All these are only possible when information are shared among different business units. It is time for you to create a single customer view across your company if you haven't done so.