Alongside the devasting impact on Covid-19 on people’s lives across the world is the huge numbers of people who will soon be looking for new jobs.

CRM Managers are perhaps one of the more in-demand job roles still but are in no way immune to the jobs crisis based upon the number of LinkedIn posts from newly unemployed CRM staff.

A common question in interview might be “what would you do in the first 30 days or 3 months?” so here are some simple ideas to bring along, with these ones highlighted for their ability to demonstrate how you can make an instant impact.

1) Explore sending more email

If you are going for a job at Groupon maybe don’t use this one. But generally speaking, there will be room to add more emails into the plan – whether that be additional sends to all or resends to non-openers.

The room will probably shudder at the thought of yet more emails. They might think they send a lot already. But reassure them with an explanation of numbers – resends to non-openers can boost response by 50% again, and you can keep an eye on unsubscribe rates. Additionally, you can add a control cell of those who won’t get the extra emails and compare engagement and revenue after a few weeks to see if you are right.

It is the quickest way to get numbers going upwards if not the most sophisticated approach.

2) Auditing – Check for simple leaks

It is worth making sure there are no problems that can easily be resolved that will boost the numbers.

Things like what’s the inbox placement rate at the major domains? Are you getting spam issues causing open rates to decline at say Gmail or one of the other big domains?

What is the opt-in rate for new customers ordering online? If this can easily be optimised and improved, then adding say an extra 20% of customers opting in is effectively booking a 20% improvement in revenue over time.

Just as a website manager would track customer drop-off in the conversion funnel do the same across the CRM programme.

3) Capture More Emails

Most brands do not do a lot of additional data capture, often just leaving a box somewhere in the footer hoping someone will fill it in. Adding data capture lightboxes across the site, timed to display at the optimum time should easily convert significant web traffic to subscribers – perhaps 2-3%.

Even where some of this activity already exists it might not be optimised and simply set to fire on the first page load.

You can quickly demonstrate how you will start building the size of the list dramatically with this and increasing the list size is always an attractive KPI everyone understands.

4) Test New Approaches

A business tends to get stuck doing the same old things because that is how they have always been done. That is not to say these can’t be bettered. With limited effort you can run some quick tests such as using a personal ‘from’ name which should give you a quick uplift of c.20% on opens and clicks, adding basic personalisation or testing timings and frequency.

5) Optimise the production process

Nearly every ecommerce or Marketing department will have stressed staff rushing to get the next email out. A fresh pair of eyes can observe the process and identify where this can be streamlined so less time is spent building emails. Perhaps this is briefing or signoff process causing emails to drag, perhaps it’s about introducing better planning or testing tools like Litmus and Email on Acid.

No matter what it is I’m sure everyone would be delighted if you could make email less of a hassle in their everyday lives by talking about how you have previously streamlined production.

6) Review Overall Strategy & Run the numbers

Anyone with a good understanding of CRM will know that the first areas we have listed will give you an instant boost, and much of that will last over the long term. However, you can’t live off that forever and you need to make a strategic difference to your CRM.

Start by creating a vision of what a perfect email programme would look like, right down to example wireframes of what different emails look like with what personalisation – and then run numbers to get basic estimates on what revenue you might achieve.

For example, if you estimate 100,000 lapsed customers, with a £50 AOV, a 1% return would generate £50,000.

Add innovation to your examples – whether that is personalised images, countdown timers or clever personalisation, it all helps make it more engaging.

With a few of these examples you do 2 things. Firstly, you get them to visualise what their CRM programme could look like and get them excited about ideas. And secondly you can show how it can start adding up to chunky revenue.

For those of you looking good luck in your job search in these difficult times.