Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Anna,

I think of it this way:

CRM is the computer program that holds all of your customer data and allows your other systems to access this data. This is an oversimplification of what it actually does but good enough for this discussion.

Customer relationship Management is the process of using that data to understand your customer and their buying habits. It allows you to cross reference all of the data that you have about your customers and try to find the commonality amongst them so that you can make assumptions and draw conclusions about the types of products your customers will buy in the future. Again an oversimplification because it can mean a lot more to other people depending on the industry.

Customer relationship marketing is the process of using that data that you mined from your customer relationship management process to sell additional products to existing customers.

Relationship marketing is essentially the same thing but you are marketing to people with whom you have a relationship. It might not be specifically a customer, it could be people who requested information from your website, or through trade show leads etc.

So these terms are interrelated and often interchanged.

I hope this helps,

Andy Fracica