Building the ECRM Model: Variables of interest

Usual variables of interest in building an ECRM Model for a segmentation of customers would fall into the following buckets.

A) Source Information
* Did he come from a vehicle we spent marcom $ on OR did he come otherwise?
* What was the source that first got him to the site and what has he used subsequently?
* Which specific marcom vehicle/site did he come from? Which search keyword he used etc

Nail down all the source information

B) Visitor Profile
* How many visits has he made in the past?
* Was there a learning/purchasing cycle evident in the visit pattern? Was there something specific he was looking for? (e.g: Deal/Price Point/Specific Product .. etc)

C) Paths on the site
* What navigation methods in terms of pages seen were used on the site? - E.g: Navigation methods on the left/top bar, internal search, page - groups seen (e.g: Deals pages, Normal non-deals product pages), did he add to cart/save cart, did he try configuring, did he start checkout etc

D) Integrate with non-online channel data
Can we integrate his online information with some of his offline behaviors?
E.g: He might have visited the support site after buying in your commmerce site. The quality of support might determine if he purchases in the future.
Did he visit the retail store or did he try buying through a sales call?
Did he visit competitor sites? (Many of this information is now available on shared marketing sites)

E) Product Affinity
Analyze those who bought - transactional history - to understand product affinity - products likely to be bought together OR products that a segment likes. Increase cross-sell/up-sells based on these.

Based on these it is possible to build a robust eCRM model -> I am building one using SAS and advanced analytics. Will keep posted once I get interesting results or results that are publishable based on a standard methodology

eCRM - how is it different from traditional CRM?

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is:
* understanding your customers needs and wants - so that you are able to customize offerings to them
* understanding your most valuable customers and retaining them; converting the rest to this bucket

Traditional CRM methods like at a retail store can customize only as much. E.g: At a Reliance Fresh outlet or at a Walmart outlet, there can be customization in the form of:
* Separate compartments by 'product type' or 'customer type'
* Coupons to improve loyalty (Points per purchase accumulated over time can be exchanged for purchases or discounts)
All the above are examples of converting a m:n problem where m are the offers and n the customers where m is always less than n.

ECRM differs from traditional CRM from a sheer capability standpoint. Theoretically it is possible in ECRM to have one offer per customer - i.e. 1:1 marketing.
* Based on prior visitor behavior it is possible to dynamically generate a page per customer which is true 1:1 marketing
* While we are yet to reach there, it is still possible to have a i:j solution where i is many times lower than m and j is many times lower than n in the m:n traditional CRM problem