In fact, subscription-based businesses have been on the rise in recent years, and the number of SaaS businesses for which churn rate (customer retention rate) is a key indicator, as continued good relationships with customers are directly linked to the survival of the business, is also on the rise.
If you are in the BtoB SaaS business, you may have heard the term "customer marketing." At my previous job at HubSpot, the US team also had a "customer marketing" team (at the time) that built good relationships with customers and carried out marketing activities that led to upselling and cross-selling.
In fact, the idea of customer marketing is very similar (almost the same) to relationship marketing, which is originally commonly known in B2B. Therefore, if you want to study customer marketing, you should understand relationship marketing.
Relationship marketing places great importance on the relationship between a company and its customers, and is an essential marketing concept for B2B companies that assume long-term transactions.
However, the relationship between customers and companies has changed in recent years, and relationship marketing must also evolve to better suit the times.
The internet has dramatically increased the ability of customers to gather information.
Due to the influence of social media, today's customers have multiple networks rather than just one.
Customers have the power to communicate and some have the power to act as critics or the media.
Overall, the power of the customer has increased. They are no longer just buyers.
However, this change also has a positive side for companies. It has brought them closer to their customers, and they can now obtain a variety of opinions and requests about products and services that were previously difficult to see. By increasing customer satisfaction, they can spread positive evaluations through social media and review sites, regardless of the company's reputation or size.
By implementing relationship list of taiwan consumer email marketing that is suited to the new business environment, companies and customers can build better partnerships. In this article, we will explain relationship marketing, which is something that marketing professionals at B2B SaaS companies should know.
What is Relationship Marketing?
Relationship marketing is a type of marketing that invests in relationships with customers. It is characterized by its emphasis on maximizing customer lifetime value (LTV), the total profit gained by building continuous, long-term relationships with customers, rather than on acquiring new customers or making one-time sales.
General marketing activities (such as demand generation) focus on acquiring leads and creating a sales pipeline. Therefore, the indicators are how many leads you have contributed to generating effective sales opportunities during a set period (this varies by company).
Relationship Marketing
( Transactional Marketing vs. Relationship Marketing )
On the other hand, relationship marketing focuses on customer retention and maintenance and building long-term relationships, so marketing activities need to be approached from a different perspective than commonly known ideas such as demand generation.
The historical background of the birth of relationship marketing
Marketing related to relationships between companies and customers began to emerge in Europe and the United States in the 1970s. Relationship marketing is a concept proposed by American Leonard L. Berry in the 1980s.
The background to this is the rise of the service industry in the U.S. As the importance of repeat customers in the service industry became recognized, research on customer satisfaction, customer retention, and customer relationships progressed.
According to Berry, relationship marketing is a marketing activity that aims to maintain and promote relationships with customers. The purpose is not only to acquire new customers, but also to focus on retaining existing customers, and ultimately to improve long-term benefits for both parties through collaboration.
Since then, various researchers and marketing practitioners have conducted research that proves that relationship marketing has a positive impact on many areas of a company. The idea that focusing on customer relationships is mutually beneficial for both companies and customers can be based on the ideas advocated by Berry.
Additionally, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), which you may already know, is software that evolved from direct marketing, which was common until the 1960s and was conducted (one-way) towards segmented people, to data-based marketing (database marketing) that builds relationships tailored to the customer's condition.
