Connected Crm ― Implementing a Data-driven, Customer-centric Business Strategy

" Three macro trends are changing the marketing landscape and forcing massive change on most organizations: the digitization of media and channels; social media; and the ability for consumers to access media anytime, anywhere. Marketers are responding with data-driven, digital customer strategies and a collective business model transformation. For the first time, marketers are now able to put customers at the core of the business strategy. The challenge, now that there's "universal" buy-in on the philosophy, of 'every organization should be "customer-centric" is the "how". How do we successfully implement a comprehensive, data-driven, customer-centric business strategy? The answer is called "Connected CRM", the focus of this book. Customer-centric marketing isn't merely a tactical implementation plan. Executed correctly, it's a fundamental shift in the organization's framework, affecting every department, not just marketing, though it puts marketing at the heart of the business and leadership strategy for the organization. It's a new source of visibility and accountability for the CMO and a new basis of competitive differentiation for the company. CMOs of the future will play a much larger role in all aspects of marketing, sales, service and technology. Through years of work in data-driven customer relationship marketing and observations of successful (and unsuccessful) implementation efforts; Merkle has developed a customer-centricity blueprint for organizations. This book explains how to make it areality--for sustained competitive advantage"--

DAVID WILLIAMS is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Merkle, the largest and fastest growing privately held customer relationship marketing agency in the United States. He acquired Merkle in 1988 and became its twenty-fourth employee. Today, Merkle has more than 2,000 employees in locations in the United States, China, and United Kingdom.

Under David’s leadership, Merkle has sustained greater than 20 percent annual growth over the past 25 years and was recognized as a market leader by Forrester Research. In 2013, Advertising Age ranked Merkle as the twenty-second largest agency of any discipline worldwide and the seventh largest CRM/Direct agency in the United States. In 2012, Merkle was named to the “Ten Agencies to Watch” list in Advertising Age’s A-List Issue. David was recognized by Winning Workplaces and Fortune Magazine as one of America’s Best Bosses of 2006, and was the 2007 Maryland Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

David is a frequent speaker at industry events and has written numerous articles and white papers about topics such as Customer Relationship Marketing, Database Marketing and Analytics, Digital Media, and Marketing Technology.

David can be reached at davidwilliams@connectedcrm.com.