CRM as never seen before

Not too long ago I had the chance to step in to a client I had never had access to. Among a lot of new information, I saw their business plan for the next year. Basically they needed to increase their revenues in order to comply with certain legal aspects defined by a local authority. One of the ways found by the marketing team was to go abroad, and by that I mean exploring markets other than their own local hub.

Everything seemed to be logic and made perfectly sense. However, the whole theory went down after I knew the company had a database of 500,000 local people who had purchased their product at least once, inquirers and other segments who’ve given them enough info to explore. From these 500,000 less than 20% actively kept a regular relationship with the company.

For many years I’ve learned and seen CRM happening, but this occasion was special for its more than self-explanatory clarification. Mentally, without a single supporting document I could see how easier would be to work with 400,000 people who had already consented to provide their personal data instead of going abroad and looking for a tiny piece of market in places the company has never been before.

Obviously there are other omitted details involved that would make the decision even plainer to see, but the scope of the problem was answering a simple question: what to do with 400,000 people who once said they wanted to exchange something with the company, but never again activated their profile? Nothing is something simply unimaginable these days. We were being paid to say forget about 400,000 people? That’s close to 10% of Norway’s entire population. If we didn’t work these people, someone else, a competitor, would. If that happened, how to tell the company’s board of directors that the revenue didn’t increase because we were lazy enough to leave 400,000 people sitting still? Involved in the process of suggesting alternatives to deal with these people was an American company. For my dismay, they said 500,000 was a small database.