Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Reviews
The commercial airline business — ever sensitive to booms ands busts — is struggling to maintain traffic in the short run while also trying to build a customer base for the future. Rather than compete on price and schedule alone, airlines are moving away from a mass marketing and commodity approach to sales promotion. Instead, a greater focus on customer relations is emerging.
The commercial airline business — ever sensitive to booms ands busts — is struggling to maintain traffic in the short run while also trying to build a customer base for the future. Rather than compete on price and schedule alone, airlines are moving away from a mass marketing and commodity approach to sales promotion. Instead, a greater focus on customer relations is emerging.
Major hotel chains have been wooing travelers for years with CRM tools focused mainly on “loyalty” or rewards programs. The CRM programs help hotels and resorts determine which customers patronize the same hospitality brand on a regular basis. However, there is a growing awareness that such programs may not be as valuable to either to the hotel, or to the customer, as once thought.
Pick a room — any room. There are lots of choices of places to stay for travelers in the U.S. In fact, there are 4.4 million guestrooms across the country, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. And that’s a problem. Competitors in the hospitality sector need some kind of an edge to gain new customers and, even more importantly, to keep their current customers coming back.
Retailers in the U.S. are convinced that CRM is one of the most important aspects of their business. However, the sector in general has failed to utilize the full potential of these programs, and the industry will be striving to elevate its CRM game in the future. That’s good news not only for customers, but also for the providers of CRM technologies and services.
Cyber Monday may be the most visible symbol of the increasing use of e-commerce technology in the retail sector. On just one day, Nov. 30, consumers operating from home or office computers in the U.S. spent $887 million on Internet purchases. The spending level amounted to a gain of 5 percent versus Cyber Monday of 2008, and it matched the heaviest online spending day on record.
Retail pharmacies in the U.S. filled 3.65 billion prescriptions in 2008, and another 238 million prescriptions were filled by direct mail. Each Rx was issued by a physician — which explains why the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S. spends heavily on marketing efforts aimed at doctors, including customer relationship management programs.
Retail pharmacies in the U.S. filled 3.65 billion prescriptions in 2008, and another 238 million prescriptions were filled by direct mail. Each Rx was issued by a physician — which explains why the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S. spends heavily on marketing efforts aimed at doctors, including customer relationship management programs.
What U.S. business wouldn’t want a customer base of 37.5 million prospects? In 2008, hospitals in the U.S. registered that many admissions — a number that equals 12 percent of the U.S. population. Yet the hospitals in the U.S. have largely underutilized the customer relationship management tools that could exploit the data in that customer base.
CRM has lagged in the health insurance industry, but a major transformation is imminent. “There’s been a reluctance to make comprehensive investments in technology compared with other sectors,” said Gartner analyst Joanne Galimi. “Generally, the firms in the sector have been very tactical, only investing in specific areas — basically reacting to pain points.”
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