Online Marketing & CRM

Internet and CRM

Trying to acquire new customers is more costly than keeping the ones already have. Relationship marketing is geared towards customers that are the most valuable for business. These customers expect great customer service and want to feel like they have some kind of relationship with the company in hopes that the company will make them feel like a valued customer. In turn, these customers are usually the most loyal and will spread the word about the business.

The way to execute a customer relationship program has changed in the last few years. Most businesses like to hand out discounts or special customer appreciation promotions as well as personalized customer service. Today, social media is helping corporations get closer to their customers in a way that is less expensive and more effective.

Change in technology and evolution of social relation online resulted in new way of marketing. Social Media has changed the way people connect, discover and share information. Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. Increased communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns Social media marketing is the way to use that technology to build relationships, drive repeat business and attract new customers through friends sharing with friends. This technique of marketing is better than traditional way of marketing especially for new emerging companies these companies get quick result and exposure through social media marketing. Millions of people daily visit social media sites and blogs which help companies in getting long tail traffic for a long period of time.

The luxury of staying at home, browsing the net and at the click of a mouse having your favourite book titles delivered at your doorstep is a tough model to beat. Which is why the trend of buying online is increasingly preferred by book lovers and retail stores are feeling the pinch.

Some of the leading book stores in the city have seen a decline in the number of walk-in customers to their shops.

The lifestyle of customers is changing and people find it convenient to browse at home and get the books delivered. The free shipping and huge discount margin offered is also another significant reason for their choice.

Chennai is the No. 1 destination for indiaplaza.com, in terms of book sales [1].

As buyers become more comfortable with the clickbuy-pay process, they have inched up the purchase ladder, from booking railway tickets or recharging prepaid mobile phones, to picking up more expensive items such as jewellery. While various branded jewellers have been selling their wares online for some years, a new segment is now emerging-online jewellers, who only sell via the Internet and have no retail stores. This means that they can cut down on high rental costs and operational expenses to offer hefty discounts to buyers . In fact, some of these online sellers claim to give discounts of up to 30% compared with the prices being offered in physical stores.

Most of these sites, such as Johareez (johareez.com) and JewelsNext (jewelsnext.com), sell across various categories, from silver anklets to diamond solitaires.

One reason for the growing popularity of online jewellers is that they can offer significant discounts. The e-commerce companies' savings come from the expenses they shave off on costs that go into renting and managing a swanky retail store. These discounts are in addition to the regular ones offered during festive and wedding seasons.  Another advantage of shopping online is that these sellers have more variety compared with that in physical stores. Online jewellers also offer customisation options. For instance, CaratLane allows you to choose the type of diamond you want to buy depending on its cut, carat, colour and clarity, even your budget. Once you have picked the stone of your choice, you can choose the setting as well as the size.
Buying from these sites is as easy as that from any other online shop.

Nokia India and Indiatimes Shopping have launched Nokia’s online store, NokiaShop, to deliver mobile devices directly from manufacturer to the users. The online shopping portal will offer Nokia devices and accessories. A recent report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) reveals that India’s e-commerce market is growing at an average rate of 70 percent annually and has grown over 500 percent in the past three years alone. Given the potential of e-commerce industry, Indiatimes and Nokia are confident of high growth in the mobile phone category within the next two quarters.

Nokia devices connect more than 1.3 billion people every day. Times Internet Limited (TIL) is the Internet and mobile venture of the media house Times Group. Indiatimes.com is TIL’s flagship brand and receives more than 1 billion page views per month. In the mobile space, Indiatimes is accessed by over 50 million consumers across all telecom operators in India [3].

After bringing about a lifestyle revolution in the West, online shopping websites are catching up in India too. With the rise of sites like HomeShop 18, eBay.in, Naaptol and Indiaplaza, people have stopped going out to shop for everything they need. These shopping websites are offering an interesting range of things at very tempting prices, and online innovations have done away with the fear of one losing their money in transaction. No doubt, these websites are mushrooming by the day and customers are spoilt for choice.
A recent survey by a website listed the following online shopping websites as amongst the top five in the same order: Flipkart, Fashion and You, eBay, BabyOye and Yebhi. Metrolife speaks to a few online shopping enthusiasts and finds out about their virtual shopping experience [4].

Naaptol Online Shopping Pvt Ltd, a leading player of the home shopping industry,announced plans to strengthen Customer Relationship Management (CRM) team. Naaptol.com currently services 50000 calls a day through trained and customer focused 24x7 call centre.

Currently, the management has 150 executives to support the customers, in eight different languages. The CRM team is dedicated to resolving any issue faced by the customers and take quick action under any condition.

Enhancing CRM team also boasts of company’s association with logistics partners such as Blue Dart, First Flight, Expressit and AFL, to ensure smooth deliveries.

Introducing reverse logistics method where customers can send back the parcel without any extra cost and get replacement or refund as suitable is a added feature [5].

While the second round of e-commerce activity in India started in all seriousness around 2007-08, it was only at the beginning of 2011 that trade pundits started talking with confidence about the return of e-commerce as a viable business activity. Some major e-commerce sites that had showninitial success in drawing consumers expanded operations and, like in the case of flipkart.com that started off as an online bookstore and expanded to consumer electronics, extended their propositions.

Everyone in the know started saying that this time around, consumers would respond positively to the online buying proposition as people beyond the metros and big cities could access products and services they had no access to earlier. This would be very unlike the first dotcom bubble that burst around 2000 because of poor ‘business’ blueprints.

This time around, besides the metros and large cities, small-town India has responded very positively and transaction sizes have been rising dramatically. Consumers across urban India, according to published reports, are not fighting shy of deal sizes that cross Rs 20,000-25,000 today. Earlier, they stayed in the Rs 2,000-5,000 range. According to a Vizisense study in 2011, adoption of e-commerce product sites is higher at 57% in urban India beyond the top eight metros’ 43%. For service sites too, the pattern is similar at 54% versus 46%.

Therefore, e-commerce seems to have become a very good business idea as India’s huge consumer population, aspiring for more and better if it can access them, is opening doors and prospects for online consumer-based businesses. With entry costs comparatively low, at least to start off with, the second half of 2011 and the beginning of the current calendar have seen the launch of a good number of new e-commerce sites spanning across an expanding pool of propositions.

Everyone wants to be a part of this race. Experiments by the dozen are emerging week after week. Consumers are spoilt for choice. There is, in many cases, an explosion of me-too e-commerce ventures, while in other cases, there is a genuine attempt to create differentiation and a long-term vision.

With angel funds and venture capital firms more than willing to look at e-commerce start-ups for funding, the fire is getting further stoked as even more new start-ups are cropping up in what industry pundits are still calling a nascent sector.

Top 5 industry trends in 2012:

Social Media – With social media sites like Twitter and Facebook having gained mass adoption, customers now have a new channel of expression and it will be important for companies to beef up their social media strategy and use these channels to engage customers on a regular basis. In addition, customer support and customer service through these social media channels will become imperative and companies will need to rethink their entire customer support strategy from ground up, keeping social media in perspective.

Mobile – The number of mobile users in India exceed number of internet users in India by a factor of 5. With smartphones becoming cheaper and 4G being launched in India, mobile internet usage will not only become affordable but also enable several users to access the internet for the first time on their mobiles. Mobiles therefore will very soon become a big channel not only for seeking information, but also for transactions.

Payments – The success rate of payment gateways in India is nothing to boast about. In the coming year, several new modes of payment like NFC, Mobile Wallets etc will get introduced which will not only make payments easier, but also enable transactions for a big segment of people who could not transact earlier. Ease of payments will overall be a significant contributor to the growth of e-commerce services in India.

Social CRM – A personalized experience to a customer will soon be a factor that will differentiate the service of one company from another. So far, websites are used to showing up the same offers, same results to each customer, but going forward, they will need to provide a custom experience to each customer based on what they have purchased in the past, the products that they are looking at etc. A social profile for each customer will also help customized and relevant marketing promotions to reach each consumer.

Hyper Local – Location based services are already catching up and the coming year will mark the tipping point for location based services. Companies will need to figure out their offering in the context of a location and ensure that the user is able to quickly find relevant products based on his current location [7].