Customer Relationship Management Systems and Social Media Marketing

A wave of new technologies exists today to aid marketers in reaching and researching existing and prospective customers. Even tools thought of as "new" a decade ago, such as internet advertising, e-mails, and text messaging, are now seen as the norm or even antiquated. Newer technologies, including GPS, DVR's, social media and smart phone applications, are becoming increasingly important. Two major tools being used today are customer relationship management systems (CRMs) and social media marketing.
CRM
Customer relationship management systems use technology to organize, synchronize, and automate business practices. CRM systems for marketing help the enterprise identify and target potential clients and generate leads for the sales team. A key marketing capability is the ability to track and measure multichannel campaigns, including email, search, social media, telephone, and direct mail. Metrics monitored include clicks, responses, leads, deals, and revenue. In a web-focused marketing CRM solution, organizations create and track specific web activities that help develop the client relationship. These activities may include such activities as free downloads, online video content, and online web presentations.
A certain amount of marketing information is being gathered all the time by companies as they engage in their daily operations. When a sale is made and recorded, this is marketing information that’s being gathered. When a sales representative records the shipping preferences of a customer in a firm’s CRM system, this is also marketing information that’s being collected. When a firm gets a customer complaint and records it, this too is information that should be put to use. All this data can be used to generate consumer insight. However, truly understanding customers involves not just collecting quantitative data (numbers) related to them but qualitative data, such as comments about what they think.