Trends in Canadian CRM Usage

2021 vs 2022 – the stampede to CRM Marketing has begun!

If 2021 was the year of Canadian companies cautiously dipping their toes into the CRM space, 2022 has been the stampede to launch CRM Marketing right away! Speaking to contacts across the Canadian marketing and technology sector, I am repeatedly hearing of how companies have finally woken up to the potential and untapped opportunities of their customer data like never before.

The 2020 pandemic was no doubt a seismic event for the world and marketing in general, and we’re still feeling the aftershocks. While before 2020, a CRM database software installed on a specific computer in the office would suffice, the reality of remote work has made CRMs that are accessible anytime from anywhere the standard. As you read this, from small to large companies across Canada, excel files are slowly being deduplicated, cleaned, standardized, harmonized, and imported into CRMs with the intent to better market and sell to these contacts. [For those looking for a crash course on CRMs and how they are used for marketing, refer to the article on CRM Marketing 101].

One CRM to market to them all!

With technology now at the fingertips of anyone across the entire organization, we’re slowly seeing the converging and merging of parallel databases that might have existed previously between the Sales team and the Marketing team. Partly a cost-savings question, partly the need to centralize all customer information in one location, the move towards having one CRM is driven by the need to have one 360-degree view of the customer for maximum customer ROI.

Personalization is still in the launch stage

The right message at the right time to the right person, still hasn’t been solved in 2022… but we’re getting there. As customer data is united across departments into a single CRM, this permits a true single view of the customer. While previously purchase data was stored separately from customer preference data, the move towards a single CRM is enabling marketing staff to personalize marketing taking into account all the levers and information on the client.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are the hot marketing buzzwords… but not for all organizations

The utilization of Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning, which use computers to uncover the best clients and identify client behaviour patterns, is increasingly becoming the most wanted tool for marketers. With a recession around the corner and staff layoffs, the leveraging of these digital tools lets companies do more with less. However, there seems to be a perception that these tools are for big companies, and not for the Small-and-Medium Size Businesses (SMBs). This might be as SMBs face a steep learning curve as they take the first step in moving to a CRM. With time, out-of-the-box availability of such tools or scaled-down versions of them will become the norm and be used by all.

CRMs as financial management tools to measure ROI

By tracking the campaigns, channels, and sources of customers, in addition to subsequent purchase and transaction information, CRMs are quickly becoming the tool for companies to measure and attribute ROI across marketing and sales. In other words, by connecting the costs to acquire a customer and the revenue generated from a customer, executives can determine the campaigns and sources that generate the highest-quality customers. This is a natural consequence of having a unified single view of the customer, and lets companies gain insights into their best clients, to optimize profit and customer lifetime value.

First-Party Data is still a struggle to understand and action

With the on-again-off-again “cookie-apocalypse” impacting the targeting and re-targeting of customers online, many companies have started to collect data on their clients (first-party data). This lets companies not have to depend on third-party cookies for their digital marketing. This shift away from cookies to first-party data is still being worked out, and the combination of data privacy and uncertainty on how to use (and not just collect) first-party data is further complicating the topic. 2023 might be the year of first-party data taking a leading role in marketing conversations across Canada.

Legacy systems are alive and kicking

Legacy systems are old, often fragile custom-built databases or software, that are kept alive because of the risks involved in migrating to a new system. At the same time, remaining on a legacy system often impairs marketing efforts as these older systems were designed and built in an age before email. Depending on how entrenched a legacy system is to a company, these legacy systems won’t disappear overnight. Simple CRMs that connect easily with legacy systems will be favoured, especially those that better integrate into existing ways of working.

Article written by Khalil Guliwala. Khalil Guliwala is a Marketing and CRM Professional who specializes in using data and digital marketing to inspire customer loyalty. Get more from Khalil by following him on LinkedIn.