Synopsis
Today the hottest new area of marketing is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) -- the discipline of identifying, attracting, and retaining a company's most valuable customers. Drawing upon more than ten years of testing, tryout, and implementation in hundreds of companies, CRM expert Jay Curry, and his Internet-expert son, Adam Curry, have written a clear, step-by-step guide to profiting from this exploding movement, with strategies that are aimed at the small and medium-sized business owners who need them most. Jay Curry explains how CRM can help managers boost profits by implementing a customer-focused strategy. Using easy-to-understand graphics, he introduces the customer pyramid -- segmented as "Top," "Big," "Medium," and "Small" -- to help the reader visualize, analyze, and improve customer profitability. Success comes to those who follow this three-step Customer Marketing Strategy: (1) get new customers into your pyramid; (2) move customers higher into your pyramid; (3) keep the customers in the pyramid. Combining practical how-to directives with vital CRM reference information, the book includes a case study, "InterTech," that allows readers to see customer-focused strategy in action. The final third of this practical, easy-to-read book is devoted to the Internet. Here Adam Curry introduces the "Permission Pyramid" and the "e-Customer Marketing Pyramid" to explain the nature of "virtual customer relationships" and how to use them to create, keep, and upgrade customers. This section includes mini-cases and tips to help managers use the Internet to complement current marketing and sales activities and ends with guidelines to test out the new paradigms of e-commerce. Throughout "The Customer Marketing Method," the emphasis is always on practical steps to "make it happen." It is essential and timely reading for owners of small and medium-sized businesses as well as managers of small business units within larger firms.
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Review
Robert Thompson President, Front Line Solutions Anyone thinking about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) should read "The Customer Marketing Method" first -- definitely before buying any CRM software. Curry clearly explains what CRM is, how to get started, and what the payoff is for companies that really understand their customers. Don't start your CRM project without it!
From the Author
Customer Marketing: Where did it come from?
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your interest in "Customer Marketing: How to implement and profit from Customer Relationship Management".
You can also get more information and download some free implementation tools if by visiting our website: www.customermarketing.com.
You may be one of many people who wonder why, when and where the Customer Marketing method was originated. If so, here's the story:
During the 1980's, I was a consultant specialized in implementing direct marketing in non-direct marketing companies in Europe. More often than not, the top managers of my clients did not really understand what direct marketing was all about ("It's doing the mailings, right?") or had negative attitudes about direct marketing ("I don't like junk mail!").
In 1989 I was asked to give a one-day direct marketing seminar to top managers. To resolve the misunderstandings and negative attitudes, I decided to call the activity known as direct marketing "Customer Marketing", and developed the idea of the customer pyramid to represent and segment a company's customer base.
Encouraged by the audience response, I went on to write my first book on Customer Marketing which in the early 1990's was published in the UK, Holland, Germany, France, Italy and Brazil.
In 1997-1998 we were able to refine the Customer Marketing method with a grant from the European community.
This grant funded pilot projects with the Dutch and Italian telecoms companies and the development of Customer Marketing software, consulting tools and training materials.
The period 1998 to today witnessed two major business developments: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the Internet.
Of course the Customer Marketing method is actually a form of CRM. And If CRM were a religion, I guess you could say that practitioners of Customer marketing are "methodists".
Thus there was clearly a need to re-vise the original Customer Marketing books to show how the method can be used as a platform for CRM implementation.
The Internet was a different story. While I had some personal knowledge of online technologies, I was not equipped to write Part III of the book: "Customer Marketing and the Internet" on my own.
Fortunately, I happen to be the father of a Adam Curry, a real Internet pioneer, who agreed to contribute his knowledge and experience to the book.
The father/son collaboration was a special happening for both of us. But I want to make clear that Adam was the right guy to contribute to this book even if his name were Adam Smith.
Thanks for your attention, and please feel free to let me know what you think about the Customer Marketing method and the book.
Best regards,
Jay Curry
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