I just returned from New Orleans, where I attended the EyeforTravel CRM conference. I had the opportunity to participate in the opening session and share SAS’ vision for a new CRM lifecycle system and a systematic approach to CRM. New Orleans was the perfect location for this year’s conference.
There’s nothing like seeing the rebirth of this city’s hospitality industry first-hand, especially during the famous frenzy leading up to Mardi Gras. Not that I was here for the parades and beads and revelry, but New Orleans is a perfect example of how CRM can help sustain this industry in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
So what is SAS’ vision for how it can help tourism in New Orleans and around the globe? A new CRM lifecycle system that would help you identify customers who share common propensities in purchase frequency, amounts and products and continually analyze their buying patterns. This system would not merely be an ad hoc tool. Instead, it would continually performs its functions and prompt users with strategic alerts when customer behavior changes.
These alerts could signal a need for a new or different marketing effort, an improved reward mechanism for the customer or even show you times when incentives aren’t necessary to keep a loyal customer. In addition to savings in marketing and loyalty programs, the CRM Lifecycle System will also interface with revenue management to determine when a customer might be ready to purchase again or identify customers who would be willing to buy certain products your company is trying to cell. Also, this allows marketing to stop or avoid efforts that are driving demand in areas where additional demand generation is not needed. This is just one of the ways SAS is working to make CRM more powerful – and easier to use.
So whether you’re trying to get customers to come to the Big Easy, Big Ben, the Big Apple or the Big Island (or anywhere else in the world), you can save money, market smartly and attract your best customers to keep them coming back to visit year after year.
