Successful Customer Relationship Management: Antecedents and Imperatives

This paper argues that there are four key conceptual techniques used in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which should be considered Imperatives for contemporary 21st century e-Business today. Customer Relationship Management itself may be defined as an attempt to find the most efficient way to focus the Marketing effort in order to generate revenue. The antecedents of successful Customer Relationship Management techniques may be found in 20th Century and even 19th Century traditional Direct Marketing constructs. Years of data from this sub-discipline of Marketing, data analysis, and testing confirm the efficacy of these key techniques. Customer Relationship Management concepts which are examined as Imperatives for 21st century e-Business are: 1) Customer Lifetime Value (LTV); 2) Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC); 3) Split-Run (A/B) Testing; and 4) Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value (RFM) Analysis.