NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – March 18, 2010) – The New York City-based Luxury Institute today announced the launch of the Luxury Customer Relationship Management Association (LCRMA), a network of Luxury CRM practitioners dedicated to building customer-centric luxury enterprises. The association’s key objective is to enhance the global education of the luxury industry on Luxury Customer Relationship Management (CRM) benchmarks and best practices through primary research, educational events, networking, and conferences.
LCRMA members’ benefits include:
Networking events focused on best practices, benchmarks, and vendor reviews
Luxury CRM webinars dedicated to luxury executive research, consumer research, and brand case studies
Affluent consumer and executive research coupled with industry insights issued twice yearly
Luxury CRM vendor assessment research to identify best-in-class resources to build and support your CRM strategy issued annually
Luxury Institute CRM workshops and additional surveys at special LCRMA rates
“We were approached by CRM executives at The Ritz-Carlton® with the request to create an independent and objective body, a safe haven, where Luxury CRM executives could network and share best practices,” says Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute. “We were honored by the request and saw a tremendous need for luxury brand peers to gather and learn best practices from the Institute’s research and from each other. Although we began recruiting members only in January, we now have top-tier members including The Ritz-Carlton, Jurlique, Team One, Bacardi, Buccellati, Moet Hennessy, The Capital Grille, Polo Ralph Lauren, and David Yurman.”
“The Ritz-Carlton is delighted to partner with the Luxury Institute in creating the Luxury Customer Relationship Management Association,” says Kevin Walsh, CRM senior director at The Ritz-Carlton and vice chairman of the association. “It will provide an opportunity to meet other marketing practitioners while building stronger relationships.”
As part of its member research benefits, LCRMA recently ran a survey with over 100 luxury executives globally using the Luxury Institute database and the database of top luxury and retail recruiting firm Martens & Heads. Following are some key takeaways:
Luxury brands recognize the true importance of CRM as it relates to short and long-term brand success: Nine out of ten Luxury CRM executives believe that having a customer-centric culture and values is linked to long-term growth and financial success.
Luxury brands are still implementing the basics of CRM: Only about two-thirds of Luxury CRM executives know their current customer retention rate. For these companies, the average rate is approximately 57%. Traditional RFM (recency, frequency, monetary value) is the type of data most commonly found in Luxury CRM systems and used in marketing campaigns for luxury brands.
Luxury brands are behind on the use of formal customer experience research: Reported data from front-line executives and staff are the most commonly used source of knowledge about the customer experience.
Most luxury brands have not yet recognized the role of the employee selection process in creating a truly customer-centric culture: Just 36% of CRM executives say that their luxury brand selects employees that are service-oriented based on formal testing.
Luxury brand employee key performance indicators (KPIs) are not aligned with achieving basic CRM goals: Only one quarter (27%) of Luxury CRM executives say that their organization has financial incentives that encourage front-line staff to collect customer data.
Online represents a significant growth opportunity in 2010 as it is the channel with the highest reported average customer growth rate.
The multi-channel luxury consumer is on the rise, but not a strong focus for all CRM initiatives: Most Luxury CRM executives surveyed report that they have multi-channel customers but only 33% of these executives report that they have specific retention and reactivation strategies in place to grow multi-channel customers.
“Today it is essential for luxury brands to be customer-centric at every organizational level,” says Felicity Lewis, senior global manager of interactive and direct marketing and LCRMA vice-chairwoman. “Jurlique strongly believes in the social approach of the Luxury CRM Association. Delivering extraordinary customer experiences to drive sales is a must for every brand in 2010.”
About the Luxury Institute (www.LuxuryInstitute.com)
The Luxury Institute is the uniquely independent and impartial ratings, research, and Luxury CRM consulting institution that is the trusted and respected voice of the high net-worth consumer. The Institute provides a portfolio of proprietary publications, research and consulting services that guide and educate high net-worth individuals and the companies that cater to them on leading edge trends, high net-worth consumer rankings and ratings of luxury brands, and best practices. The Luxury Institute also operates LuxuryBoard.com, the world’s first global, membership-based online community for luxury goods and services executives, professionals and entrepreneurs.