CRM Shoptalk: strategy, implementation & the dangers of customisation
Hearing from an expert
👋🏾 Hi, this is Lloyd with a new issue of The CRM Chronicles. In every issue, I cover CRM developments, strategies and technology through the lens of sales and marketing managers, product owners and the C-Suite. Subscribe to get issues like this in your inbox every week.
Today’s issue features an interview with Lukas Lunow, one of the best CRM practitioners I know. We discuss Salesforce, AI, implementations, and a career in CRM. There’s a lot to learn here. Be sure to save this one.
Enjoy!
Lukas leads a global team of talented engineers and architects in a $40bn logistics company. He provides technology leadership and is a trusted advisor to business stakeholders. He ensures full monetisation of the technology investment in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other systems within Maersk’s Martech (marketing technology) ecosystem.
Previously, he spent more than six years in various architect positions at Salesforce, and before that, he was a web and marketing project manager for media companies and ad agencies.
Hi Lukas, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me about CRM.
Background
LM: Can you tell us about your background, how you started in CRM, your Salesforce journey and what you’re doing now?
Lukas: I have always had a passion for technology but realised early at university that deep technology focus wasn’t the right match for me. I combined my degree in computer science with a degree in economics, resulting in a profile fluent in business and technology. However, CRM was not a given. As in many other life choices, it came more as a coincidence with me being tasked with managing projects that increasingly focused on customer data and CRM. At some point, I decided to transition away from being a project manager and dived head-first into my new life as a CRM subject matter expert.
Another coincidence: the company I worked for ten years ago decided to implement a CRM system, at the time called ExactTarget (later acquired by Salesforce and renamed Marketing Cloud). Long story short, a few years later, I found myself employed by Salesforce as the first Marketing Cloud architect in Scandinavia.
“Before you start looking at implementing your new ambitious digital marketing strategy, utilising state-of-the-art, million-dollar software, make sure to prepare yourself. Identify all the obstacles, both technical, legal, organisational, etc., before you initiate your project. This will save you valuable time during the actual implementation and also validate your ambitions in the context of customer journeys.”
LM: You’ve seen multiple sides of the industry, from a tech provider to an end user. What do you think tech companies get wrong about their customers and vice versa?
Lukas: Let’s start with the customers. I have seen far too many cases where customers believe that money will simply start rolling in just by purchasing a state-of-the-art CRM platform or a digital marketing hub. They are caught off guard once they realise that the solid foundation for a successful implementation is a significant amount of homework on their part. They sign the contract with, e.g. Salesforce, start paying licence fees, but spend far too long deciding on how they actually want the software implemented. And while all this confusion is stealing valuable time, they are paying for the licences without monetising their investment.
From the tech companies, I often see a misalignment between selling and buying. The sales executive will push for products that do not match the customer’s maturity or features that are not sufficiently complete within the product - meaning the product might look good in a PowerPoint deck, but when it comes to everyday use, the features promised are not fully developed, or in other ways not meeting the expectations set out by the vendor. This leads to frustration on the part of the customer and the implementation partners, who find themselves in a situation where the adoption of the solution is heavily lacking.
In a few projects I have been involved in, I have seen a sales executive show integrity and understanding of what the customer is interested in (and capable of) buying. Such behaviour ensures a clear focus on the implementation project, with a limited roadmap and narrow scope. Marketers should build a foundation that can later expand to support adopting additional features, such as a CDP or personalisation platform.
CRM Programs & Strategy
LM: I learned from you when we worked together how important it was to have an underlying program and strategy for marketing and retention. Without a driving strategy, technology can’t help you solve business problems, and everyone gets frustrated.
Talk about how you approach customer acquisition and retention and how that informs the technology feature decisions you make or recommend.
Lukas: One needs to have a complete understanding of the customer lifecycle. What drives their buying behaviour? Is the product being offered something relevant to promote on an ongoing basis? How do you identify customers who are about to churn? Firstly, from an engagement perspective, and secondly, from a loyalty perspective.
Technology is just a tool for achieving goals, and you will not succeed with whatever technology you implement through clever engineering alone.
Let me share some examples. Imagine you are a fictitious automotive brand called “Awesome”. Your marketing is obviously focused on driving sales of your cars. You are sending weekly or biweekly newsletters that speak highly of the irresistible features of your brand-new Awesome Whatever EV and other cars you are offering. Imagine a customer decides to buy an Awesome Whatever EV. They visit a dealer, sign a contract and wait for the car to be delivered - a process that might easily take 3-6 months.
Why should the customer keep receiving generic newsletters during that period, telling them they could also buy Awesome Family for little more than they had just spent? Could they start doubting their decision? Most probably!
Instead, be more customer-centric. Pause the regular newsletters for new buyers and instead engage them with an onboarding flow: “You will soon be driving the Awesome Whatever EV - you have made the right choice”. You can build anticipation and offer added services, e.g. “Have you considered our service plans?”
Brands that spend millions on technology often use the most advanced digital marketing hubs as “expensive Mailchimps.” Not only are they spending more than needed on software and missing out on the revenue it might generate, but they also risk impacting customer relationships by ignoring the insights they might derive from their data and letting it drive the conversations.
Awesome cars might be suffering from data silos, which is more than common for any established brand who are not Cloud and API native. There is also the entire aspect of regulation, consents specific to legal entities, and other factors which might not be known to the end customer. Let’s continue our customer journey as a potential owner of a new Awesome Whatever EV.
I have signed up to the newsletter by providing my consent to Awesome Denmark. They know all about my preferences and browsing history; the latter might even include an “abandoned” vehicle configuration from their website. When I visit my local dealership, operating under the Awesome brand, my expectation (at least as a seasoned digital marketer) would be for them to know me, and continue nurturing me as a lead from the context of the aggregated data. Unfortunately, being an independent retailer operating as a franchisee, they are an entirely separate legal entity not being covered by the data processing and marketing consent which I provided to Awesome.
After I buy my car, I need to have it serviced. Awesome does not have any insights into my service history, as all my service appointments are managed by the same independent retailer, who also runs a service centre. They are not able to share this information with Awesome Denmark, who are the ones managing all the digital communication with me. And even if they had consent, which covered the exchange of data between their service centre and the Awesome importer in Denmark, to whom I provided my consent, their application for managing the service appointments was built in 2007, long before cloud computing, SaaS and REST APIs were an omnipresent commodity. Integrating this with a CRM solution or a digital marketing hub would be a nightmare.
But what about my connected car? It must surely be able to share some information with Awesome, right? It is able to do so, indeed. It even updates them several times every day. But as the actual connected car data is sent to Awesome headquarters on the outskirts of San Francisco (yes, you have already guessed it—we are now introducing a third legal entity), this information never gets to my local importer in Denmark. Hence, also in this case, they can’t benefit from this.
So, to emphasise this once again - before you start looking at implementing your new ambitious digital marketing strategy, utilising state-of-the-art, million-dollar software, make sure to prepare yourself. Identify all the obstacles, both technical, legal, organisational etc. before you initiate your project. This will save you valuable time during the actual implementation and validate your ambitions in the context of customer journeys.
Having a career in CRM
LM: How have you seen CRM change in the last five years, especially regarding required skillsets and team setups.
Lukas: The fundamental requirements have not changed much. I still see the perfect skillset as combining technical and business acumen. You can’t have it all, but a “perfect” candidate will bring a combination of the following skills:
Marketing Automation Strategy: Understanding marketing automation principles and creating strategic plans for automating customer journeys.
Segmentation and Targeting: Mastering audience segmentation to deliver personalised and relevant content to specific groups.
Data Integration: Integrating Salesforce Marketing Cloud with other systems to ensure seamless data flow and accessibility.
Data Cleansing and Maintenance: Maintaining a clean and accurate database to enhance targeting and personalisation.
Email Design Best Practices: Staying updated on email design trends and best practices for creating visually appealing and responsive email campaigns.
Content Personalisation: Using dynamic content and personalisation to tailor messages to individual preferences.
Data Analysis Skills: Analysing campaign performance data to derive insights and make data-driven decisions.
A/B Testing: Implementing A/B testing to optimise campaigns and improve key performance indicators (KPIs).
Understanding Regulations: Staying informed about data protection regulations and ensuring compliance with laws such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM.
Permission Marketing: Implementing permission-based marketing practices to build and maintain a positive sender reputation.
Cross-functional collaboration: Working closely with other teams (e.g., sales, customer service) to align marketing efforts with overall business goals.
Effective Communication: Communicating campaign objectives, strategies, and results to stakeholders.
As you can see on my list, I do not mention any particular technology. The introduction of generative AI, increased attention on Customer Data Platforms, and other developments do not distract from the above list.
Technology is just a tool for achieving goals, and you will not succeed with whatever technology you implement through clever engineering alone.
You need a competent team around you who can cover all the points above. You must have a clear direction to where your digital marketing operation is evolving. All your activities and initiatives must work toward this goal.
Salesforce
LM: Talk about your experience with Salesforce. Why do you think Salesforce has such a market-leading position in CRM?
Lukas: What lies in the word “superior”? You might think I am biased, but I have yet to work more with other CRM systems to have a proper base for comparison. There are a number of reasons why Salesforce is in a lead position in the CRM field:
It’s an open platform. You can heavily customise it according to your own business processes.
With such extensive market penetration, Salesforce is a natural choice for third parties, such as webinar tools, social networks, etc., to provide native integrations. Thus, integrating data to and from a number of relevant applications is achievable simply by clicking a button.
A global and experienced partner ecosystem and a broad talent pool.
Easy onboarding of new employees. There is even a good chance they’re already familiar with Salesforce!
LM: What are some things Salesforce doesn’t do so well (aside from pricing 🙂)?
Lukas: Customisation can be both a blessing and a curse. Before implementing any customisations, you must have a very good idea of what you want to do with it. You can quickly find yourself having spent large sums on consultants who don’t ask questions and only implement what they are being tasked with. You should preferably team up with experienced solution architects to map out your processes, create design blueprints for platform changes, and, most importantly, be transparent about potential drawbacks these changes will have on the platform.
CRM & AI
LM: Where do you think AI and CRM are going in the next five years?
Lukas: Again, I don’t think people with solid digital marketing skills will get replaced. Some products allow you to generate email copy based on a combination of a clever Gen AI prompt and a large language model containing your entire website. However, a human being must still validate this. So, we will most probably see increased productivity in the digital marketing teams, but I surely don’t expect segmentation, content generation, etc., to be entirely taken over by AI.
To stay current, digital marketers should familiarise themselves with Gen AI’s capabilities. For example, this could be automated versioning of an email to multiple personas/segments where the same product is automatically positioned to recipients with different needs/pain points. So, while today, you might be sending only 1-2 versions due to resource constraints in your copywriting team, Gen AI can assist you in versioning the same copy to 10 or even more versions at the click of a button.
LM: What are some of the big dangers and mistakes you see with companies using AI?
Lukas: I am, unfortunately, seeing an increasing occurrence of clearly AI-generated content with some significant hallucinations. There are multiple causes for this, including insufficient training data, incorrect assumptions made by the model, or biases in the data used to train the model. If not handled properly, you might find yourself sharing content that, at first glance, seems seemingly correct but holds some really obscure “facts.”
There is nothing wrong with using AI. As I mentioned earlier, I see many relevant use cases. But you must ensure the output is carefully validated, preferably including some sort of feedback loop, for ongoing improvement of the model.
LM: And the good: what are some of the successes you know of and possibilities you see for the technology in the future?
Efficiency is the single word that comes to my mind. This can be done by generating multiple versions of the same email tailored to different audiences. A draft response to a customer support request? Or a highly intelligent chatbot, which will reduce the need for human customer service staff. So again, not doing the same with fewer resources but allowing the same resources to become even more efficient.
Advice on implementation
LM: What advice would you give to business leaders, project managers and others who want to implement a CRM system?
Lukas: Plan! Understand why you are considering a CRM system. When deciding what features to adapt, think 12-18 months into the future.
Team up with an experienced Salesforce partner or an independent consultant at a very early stage of these considerations. By doing so, they can avoid (among other things):
Investing in products and features for which they don’t have sufficient maturity
Kicking off the implementation project by spending six months discussing what they actually need
Not aligning internally with their tech stakeholders, who are expected to deliver data and integrations
Engage a trusted architect who has been through several similar implementations and preferably has domain knowledge of your industry. They can ask you the right questions and prepare you for the scope of work ahead. They should also contribute with a wishlist to your tech department.
As a client-buyer, you want to be one step ahead of the sales executive, telling him what you want to buy and not only hearing what he wants to sell. This will save you some cost on the licence from day one. Remember, you can always buy additional features later on and enable them once you are done adopting what you already have in place.
LM: Thanks so much for taking the time, Lukas!
Are you or your company looking to implement a CRM system? Have questions about breaking into the CRM field? Have ideas for future topics? I’d love to hear from you. Just reply directly to this email.