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Independent retailers of outdoor power equipment can utilize CRM software to improve their digital marketing strategies. Keeping track of customer engagement in one location saves massive amounts of time, since then to analyze your sales and accounts the manager or analyst doesn’t have to switch back and forth between separate databases. Furthermore, if the platform being utilized has built-in features like AI and data visualization, you can sometimes find more insights about your customers looking at it that way, faster, than if you were to look at it in any another way. For social media marketing, email campaigns, newsletters, and other types of online advertising it helps to know what strategies have ‘paid off’ for your organization in the past. With CRM, you can keep track of marketing ROI on a customer level, which means you can sort through individual customer journeys and from there create detailed customer profiles. Also, having a CRM that you can record customer interactions with lets you build a library of keywords which can be used to strengthen your search engine optimization.

 

 

Traditional incentive programs, for instance mail-in rebates, invariably require administrative work. Product registrations need to be accurately recorded, discounts need to be appropriately applied, etc. These tasks can pile up, but that’s where marketing automation comes into play. Modern CRM platforms can delegate promotional items and discounts to customers, in a way that can be tracked and/or altered in real-time, all on their own. This capability makes implementing loyalty programs a breeze.

 

In the case of OPE dealers, they can benefit from having CRM before they even begin advertising online. By looking at an aggregate view of their past sales, they can assess customer preferences and decide which product(s) they should push the most. Also, they can use CRM to set up A/B tests and monitor their results. Without CRM or other software delineating which sales are attributable to which campaign, it can be very difficult to produce valuable information through marketing research.

 

 

An A/B test test for an OPE dealer’s online advertising campaign could look like this: the dealer places identical ads on two different websites or social media platforms and has them link back to separate landing pages, then they let the ads run for a predetermined period of time. Afterwards, the dealer compares the traffic for the two landing pages and applies what they learned moving forward. Similarly, a dealer can run an in-store A/B test, where they switch back and forth day-to-day between offering two different in-store discounts then see which program boosts business the most. Modern CRM platforms offer both the data storage and the analytical tools necessary for conducting A/B tests.

 

With CRM you can also conduct omnichannel analysis. In other words, if you were selling outdoor power equipment and your selling strategy included a website and online advertising, you could keep track using a CRM where your new customers are mostly coming from. Your sales representatives could simply ask the customer where they heard about your store when they are checking out, or the question could be included in the product registration process. With this information, you can finetune your outreach efforts. Additionally, if you collect your customers’ emails you can automate follow-up messages that can influence customers to make repeat purchases.