How to Maximize CRM with Product Affinities

Companies are always looking for new ways to build relationships with their customers. Often companies research ways to provide product upgrades, improve customer service relationships, etc., all in order to locate the secret to improving their revenue stream from their current and future customers. One of the more profitable ways is to look for product pairings – purchases that are often coordinated with the initial purchase.

Finding these predictive affinities can be tricky business. Yet there are several easy examples of how some companies look for product pairings in their own business models.

Online it is a bit easier, because you can track every individual by something specific like account information or IP Address. Companies like Amazon do this regularly – by analyzing the views and shopping carts of their customers and trying to link what the customer buys together, in order to create more connections. Visit any Amazon page or add a product to your shopping cart and you’ll see plenty of recommendations for other products that are based specifically on the relationships they have found in their research.

Grocery stores and other companies are using product affinities all the time, tracking these relationships through the use of store cards, credit card numbers, shopping card groupings, etc. Purchase relationships when they occur at one time in one store are also a great way to discover items that may be linked, so that they can be marketed better towards customers.

Often the most effective method of increasing your profits is not necessarily to spend money finding more customers or use your basic CRM methods to keep your customers on longer. Sometimes the simplest way to help improve your CRM and your profits is to simply boost the amount of a single purchase order using product relationships. By doing so you can: Cut the cost of attending to customers (who are presumably spending less time at the store) Boost profit and revenue at the time of purchase.

Improve relationships by offering everything they need at one time. Focusing your research on product pairings may be equally as valuable in your CRM research as looking for ways to create and maintain customer relationships, because the value you get all at once from each individual customer may be more valuable than any of your other efforts, depending on what your research discovers.