cCRM :: Financial Management

The third functional component of cCRM involves the broad measurement framework that will allow the organization to understand the relevant key performance indicators across the spectrum of customers, campaigns, media, channels, etc. Financial management must encompass a strong customer value currency and is conducted through measurement at the most granular level possible. Technology has allowed us to build superb measurement skill sets, which enable the study of customer event streams in order to attribute a specific behavior to a specific action or series of actions. These measurements inform budgeting and resource allocations – defining marketing mix analysis, forecasting and planning to optimize results within each target segment.

Effective financial management provides a “true view” of campaign, program, and individual/segment performance as the foundation for decision making. The allocation of resources against well-defined CRM priorities will improve campaign and program results to increase the yield from media spend, maximize ROI and boost shareholder value. It is a difficult task, but these agile shifts in budget apportionment can really move the needle on business performance.

Financial Management at Work

Session summary from the 2013 CRM Executive Summit

Presented by: Bryan Schroeder, Product and Marketing Director, Data and Targeting, Facebook & Megan Pagliuca, VP & GM, Digital Media, Merkle®

Within the Facebook platform, lies a tremendous amount of marketing opportunity for those brands that are able to understand its true value. Mastering the value of the Facebook platform will help marketers better understand the value of the interactions that their customers have with their brand on the social media platform and allocate their marketing budget more appropriately.

After better understanding the value of their interactions with their customers on Facebook, a number of Merkle’s clients have experienced very positive ROI on the dollars that they allocated toward marketing on social media platform.

• In one example, an insurance marketer incorporated the newsfeed advertising inventory on Facebook and was able to increase the click-through-rate of its ads by 34x.
• In another instance, a car insurance provider successfully utilized the Facebook Advertising Exchange (FBX) tool in its real-time bidding (RTB) digital media strategy and saw its effective CPM (cost per thousand views) become 800% more efficient than other RTB inventories. They were also able to reach an incremental audience and noted that the overall cost per quote on FBX was just 27% of other media in the plan.  
• Another Merkle client integrated the Facebook Custom Audiences tool, which allows marketers to find their offline customers online through Facebook, using email address, phone numbers and user IDs to make the match. By incorporating this tool, Facebook has seen match rates above 85%, and has noted the overall cost per sale as much as 500% more efficient versus “native” Facebook interest-based targeting. 

Through the use of Merkle and Facebook’s data-targeting methodology and strategy, brands that use Facebook as a tool to help drive engagement are seeing a dramatic decrease in their cost per acquisition and cost per sale. This remarkable new direct-targeting technique has allowed those brands to utilize Facebook to actually help drive sales, and not just social engagement.