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Sense & respond marketing

Written by: Martha Fumagalli

Article Overview: Customer relationship management has been around in various forms for twenty years. Companies that do it well have built good customer databases, analysed them, worked out which customers they want to keep, develop more business with, or get rid of, developed marketing, sales and service strategies to manage customers to achieve their objectives, implemented systems that enable their people (or web-sites) to manage customers properly day to day.

Sense & respond marketing

Customer relationship management has been around in various forms for twenty years. Companies that do it well have built good customer databases, analysed them, worked out which customers they want to keep, develop more business with, or get rid of, developed marketing, sales and service strategies to manage customers to achieve their objectives, implemented systems that enable their people (or web-sites) to manage customers properly day to day.


Yet still as customers, we are exposed to lots of irrelevant stuff from companies, and also can find it difficult to get what we want. I believe the problem is not to do with databases, or even CRM. It’s because marketing is lagging behind customers, Today, I believe it’s possible to have a more even balance between supplier and customer, in which each engages in a useful dialogue about their future plans. I call this “sense & respond marketing”. You can see it emerging in companies whose websites allow customers to tell them what they want, and which communications they’d like to receive, like Amazon, ebookers and lastminute. This approach is rare because most marketers believe they know customers better than the customers themselves. Their credo is: “We, the clever marketers, gather data from you, the customers. We analyse it, profile you, and tell you want you want next.”


In sense & respond marketing, businesses sense customers – who they are, their actions, thoughts and intentions. The business translates information from sensing into a statement of targeting – which customers to deal with, a statement of customer requirements – what customers need, when they need it etc. They respond by giving customers what they want, and will want, when they want it, at the right value – now and for the future, through the right channels – now and future, customised where appropriate, while making profit. They keep sensing to identify whether they have really achieved what they want with customers.


How might customers behave in this world? They sense businesses, to find which business or organisations are likely (now and in the future) to offer goods and services which meet their needs, which businesses can use information about their needs properly, so as to meet their needs, the details about the propositions they offer, the channels through which they are available, their value, the pre- and post-sale service etc. They use the information derived from this sensing to enquire, buy, give information, develop relationships – where they want them and obtain service.


Sense & respond marketing requires faster, smarter use of customer information – much faster, smarter response to customers, not just in day to day interaction, but also in attunement of marketing budgets (marketing resource management) and adjustment of total proposition (enterprise marketing management). Is this all feasible? Funnily enough, it’s not as hard as it looks, because sense & respond marketing is based mainly on what companies do already – in terms of systems, and processes, but with a much enhanced data set (past facts, preferences, intentions), working at much greater depth, faster, more comprehensively (blending intentions and facts) and with better integration. The real change required is a change in the marketing mindset.

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