I know that everyone has their favorite CRM joke to tell at parties already at this point. But to be fair, CRM did give the IT department an agenda and lots of work building all those databases. Wait a minute I thought CRM was supposed to deliver a single customer database? Ok, so it turns out CRM ended up being an IT project that really didn’t change the day to day job of the marketer much. But it had good intentions. The idea of “Customer Relationship Management” sounded natural. Or at least the words seemed groovy to us marketers. Especially direct marketers, as I believe CRM was really invented by direct marketers and their relentless pursuit to better understand their markets and customers.

But CRM hasn’t quite empowered us marketers like we had hoped. It probably isn’t anyone’s fault either. If you go back to when CRM took off the IT department was the only department in the enterprise that was allowed to buy software. CRM had to be IT led, it was software and IT controlled all software decisions. Marketing was in charge of coloring and campaigns, not making technology decisions.

So we marketers are taking another crack it. Why? Because we still have that relentless pursuit to better understand our markets and customers. But this time we are going to call it “Customer Experience Management”. That ought to do it, no way can IT screw it up, we came up with the buzz word!

The punch line? Well, marketing better take control of marketing technology decisions or we won’t be laughing. We can do it. We have become technology and business savvy. We outsource coloring now. The CMO is becoming empowered. Raise your hand and take ownership of creating a marketing technology roadmap and own the budget. You better change your operating models so you can be competitive in the new online ecosystem. Oh by the way, your customer has already changed how they operate.

Company: Alterian