OgilvyOne on Social CRM (sCRM)

Social CRM (sCRM) has been gaining traction recently, combining social media tools with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs as a solution to better drive customer and business value. And now “one-to-one” marketing agency, OgilvyOne has joined the sCRM vanguard.

In this presentation, Brian Jensen, Head of Experience Planning at OgilvyOne in London, argues that by adding social media tools to CRM programs businesses and brand can turn a CRM program – essentially a post-purchase customer retention tool (stimulating loyalty and advocacy) into a effective customer acquisition tool as well (for boosting Awareness Consideration Preference Purchase). Brian cites OgilvyOne case histories from British Airways, IBM, Motorola and Mini as sCRM credentials.

View more documents from giles rhys jones.

With average social media marketing budgets less than £5K/annum, it could be a smart and lucrative move by Brian and his team to position themselves in the multi-billion dollar CRM market (growth 12.5% last year).But the CRM market remains a scary place for a marketing agency – technology-led and solution driven, as opposed to the traditional digital marketer’s fare of interactive online advertising campaigns. And there are a number of pretenders to the sCRM throne (Lithium, Oracle, Jive to name but three), so OgilvyOne will have their work cut out. Of course, sCRM could be a more of a marketing device for OgilvyOne, a bit of CRM sizzle to sell the social steak and to differentiate the agency from the myriad of other digital marketing agencies selling social media marketing campaigns.

As it happens, Brian ends his presentation by selling OgilvyOne’s social media marketing strategy rather than an sCRM solution (integrate with overall communications mix, do social media monitoring, set up guidelines, educate your team, find a value proposition (planning), and then choose a “community platform?” (still selling communities???))

CRM sizzle to sell the social steak or social sizzle to sell the CRM steak?

For a primer on sCRM, take a look a Lithium’s (an sCRM solutions provider) short video below – and catch up with some recent posts from the thought leaders surfing the sCRM zeitgeist (links below).