Success with customer relationship management requires segmenting customers so that you can communicate relevant offers to them.

You can segment customers by:

Their buying behavior,

Their frequency of purchases, and

Their demographics.

This is the first of three posts on how to improve your success with customer relationship management by segmenting your customers. You can access the next in this series by clicking on the link below:

Success With Customer Relationship Management: Segmenting By Frequency Of Purchases

Success With Customer Relationship Management By Buying Behavior

This post covers segmenting your customers by buying behavior. It includes terms from an article by Ken Burke in the August 2008 issue of Target Marketing These terms are:

Lapsed buyers

Traditional loyalists, and

Brand advocates

Success With Customer Relationship Management For Lapsed Buyers

Lapsed buyers are customers who haven’t bought from you for a specific period of time. That time is a period that you set because it makes sense for your business.

Lapsed customers have purchased one of your products or your service already. And although they haven’t purchased for a while, they know your brand. Unless they have had a negative experience with your brand, it will be easier to get them to buy again than it will be to get a new customer.

If you’ve kept records on what and when they bought and what they paid for it, you can determine whether they paid full price or bought because you were offering a discount.

Those who paid full price are more likely to buy another product at full price. For those who bought at a discount, you’ll need to offer a similar discount to get them to buy again.

Success With Customer Relationship Management For Traditional Loyalists

Traditional loyalists are customers who have bought often from you and usually paid full price for their purchases. They like your brand and have already demonstrated loyalty to it with repeat purchases.

These are your best customers. They have the highest lifetime value so you need to really treat them special. Make them a part of a select community reserved just for them. Help them to feel like they belong in the community and are an important part of your business.

Inviting them to sales is not as important as involving them in special events like a time when your store is opened only to them. You can also make them feel special by assigning a representative that they can ask for by name who provides additional services that other customers may not get.

Success With Customer Relationship Management For Brand Advocates

Brand advocates are customers who have learned about your brand through interaction with other customers or your business representatives.

Maybe a friend recommended your business, or they met you on an Internet social networking site, or they know you personally from face-to-face social networking.

Because of their affiliation with your business, they like you and your brand so they chose to do business with you.

Although these customers may have purchased only once from you, they have the potential to be traditional loyalists so they should be segmented separately and pursued with promotions that further enhance their perception of your brand.

Success With Customer Relationship Management By Buying Behavior - Conclusion

It’s simple to segment these types of customers from your customer data. Yet these three segments enable you to connect to your customers in a way that relates to their buying behavior and their relationship to your business.

By treating each differently and providing each what they want, you will have more success with customer relationship management.

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Posted 8-13-08:Success With Customer Relationship Management:
Segmenting By Buying Behavior

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 6:33 am and is filed under Customer Market Segments, Market Segments, Uncategorized.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.