Q&A with Aitor Soto Abonjo, Global Mobile CRM Manager at HelloFresh
#Topic: Setting Up A Scalable Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Aligned With Your Growth Plans
HelloFresh is the leading global provider of fresh food at home. HelloFresh aims to provide each and every household in its markets with the opportunity to enjoy wholesome home-cooked meals with no planning, no shopping and no hassle required. A huge data driven technology platform puts HelloFresh at the forefront of disrupting the conventional food supply chain and for fundamentally changing the way people shop for food.
CRM Aligned With Your Growth Plans
A big problem for every start-up CRM faces is non synchronized channels of communication towards the customers.
· It confuses the customers and leads to blurry brand perception.
· Untimely promotion of products may deter customers.
· Information from different channels of communication needs to be compiled.
· Keeping all the messages delivered from every channel uniform is challenging.
Choosing your CRM stack according to your real life situation:
1 tool for all
● Information managed by a single tool such as a single email provider.
● Everything is linked and there is only one connection to maintain.
● Risk of changes being made to the tool and how it affects CRM.
● Budget friendly for small companies.
1 tool per task + Control Center
● A control center manages information which is then relayed to the other tools.
● Distribute information across various tool platforms uniformly and selectively.
● Flexible for catering to all potential customers on different platforms.
● Tools can be changed anytime and is easily managed.
HelloFresh’s Multi-Channel CRM via Customer Data Platform
● HelloFresh uses CrossEngage to compile and manage the data from the company, its tools and its customers.
Customer Relationship Management Basics:
Key factors that help with your growth
● Onboarding cycle: Explains the value and details of your service or product has to new customers for educational purposes.
● Engagement cycle: Profile your best customers to know their purchasing behavior and try to use those key behaviors in your marketing strategies.
● Communications center: Always give users the possibility to choose when and what type of messages they receive.
● Reactivation cycle: Win back users after they have purchased a number of times because winning back a customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one.
● Team coordination: The company as a whole needs constant flow of information from all sides especially between the Tech and Marketing department.
Key Question 1:
How do you manage to have the same CRM implemented in all your markets?
We currently have a global CRM team that is based in Dublin that are basically aligned with all the other localized CRM teams. The localized teams are the ones who determine the strategies that brings the best result in their respected country. The global team keeps the localized teams consistent in the information that they deliver.
Key Question 2:
How do you prioritize development or campaigns in detail?
We focus our services on active customers and activation of past customers as it is our main effective source of income. We have cycles for prospect communications but we prioritize our marketing strategies more on active customers. Every quarter we discuss the road map with our VP of engineering and arrange our priorities together.
Key Question 3:
Do you own the CRM platform, CrossEngage, that you are using?
No, It is not owned by us. But we are working together with them and we are also a part of their road map discussion. If their plans do not fall in line with us or if we need a new feature in the platform, we will bring it up for discussion. CrossEngage is crucial for our business because every stage of management uses this platform.
Key Question 4:
Is there any analogy on the frequency in which we should contact our customers?
It varies on your business and the medium of communication used. For example, e-mails are best delivered on Tuesday,Wednesday and Thursday. You should contact your customers depending on their behavioral statistics in targeting the highest amount of reach as possible with your medium of communication.
Key Question 5:
Can you tell me about the other tools that are integrated into CrossEngage that HelloFresh is using?
We have Optilise integrated to our tools in each country for offline marketing strategies such as offline campaign. This tool is integrated into our CrossEngage platform for collecting prospect details. We also use Twilio to gather numbers and we export CSV files to get calls.
Key Question 6:
So you are mainly managing inbound leads or contacts?
Yes, but I am more focused on our mobile applications and not physical phone calls. Each country team selects their provider for phone calls or call centers. We can import localized leads for CrossEngage and in the end we will reach them by phone.
Key Question 7:
We do not have a CRM right now, but we are about to launch a product. When is the best time to have a CRM?
I will recommend having a CRM on the first day of launch. Start gathering data as soon as possible if you have the budget and resources allocated for it. MailChimp for example is free and easy to use for this purpose. You will have a better understanding on what is going around when more data is gathered. You can try to understand your customers early on to tailor your marketing strategy accordingly.
Key Question 8:
Does the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) affect e-mail marketing strategies?
Yes it does. It will dramatically effect the rate of people opting in for an e-mail subscription because people, in general, would not complete the second step of an e-mail subscription. You can leverage this by stating to your customers that you abide by the GDPR which would let them trust you more. It’s going to be very interesting looking at how this affects the global market.