"Wally & the WOMs":CRM and Customer Lifetime Value

We hope you are enjoying our series of posts on the value of your "Wallys", the 20% of your customers who are responsible for 80% of your sales.

Here in the agency, we are passionate about this strategic focus, because it truly helps both B2C Marketing creatives, as well as B2B strategists. Instead of making the (grave) mistake of creating campaigns based on the now obsolete "Old Paradigm", knowing Wally helps them to focus limited resources, budgets and headcount on precisely those Customer+Fans who truly drive their businesses.

A Marketing focus on Wally, his needs and interests can also make it easier to embrace the "New Paradigm" of Business for the 21st century, the "Network" model.

That's Home for the billions of "synapses" taking place 24/7, conversations and connections that make up the true markets of the Digital Economy.

Think "Cluetrain". 

If you've ever heard Paul Fleming speak about the importance of Wally, you will know that he likes to joke about "Wally and the WOMs".

What, you might ask, is that? A new boy band?

You might think of pop hits if the ever-increasing sales that result from focusing on Wally and his friends, the WOMs
(Word-of-Mouth customers) is "music to your ears".

WOMs, simply put, are "Super Wallys": fans so fanatically in love with your Brand that they recommend you non-stop to whomever will listen to them. WOMs consider your New Brand their "Lovemark", a product, service or project so important to them that it occupies their HEARTS, and not their MINDS, the much touted mental (and rational) "Short List" of Brand Awareness studies.

WOMs make the cash registers of your e-Commerce projects ring, again and again.

Why is Wally so important?
And why should you especially want to get to know his friends, the WOMs?

It's actually quite simple: if you take good care of Wally, and hang out with the WOMs, sooner or later he'll present you to his cousin, ROI. That's right: ROI!

ROI (Return on Investment) is now, more than ever, the Holy Grail of Sales and Marketing in our crisis-ridden reality. What we propose to you is that you relax a bit more about your sales figures, and that you forget about stuffing your quarterly Excel-sheets with false fans, short-term customers that will not impact your long-term strategies.

It's far more intelligent to keep in mind the Lifetime Value of your best customers, a concept IE Business School professor Enrique Dans develops quite well in this brief PDF (in Spanish: for English resources on "Customer Lifetime Value", please also check out the excellent work of Peppers & Rodgers). Managing this crucial relationship is the very heart of CRM, Customer Relationship Management and its tools.

At Barcelona Virtual, our daily mantra is this: ¡La Rentabilidad nace de la Relación! ("Profitability is born from the Relationship!") Find your Wally, take care of your WOMs and soon you will meet Cousin ROI.

We hope it is a relationship that will last for a lifetime.

Photo Sources:

Wonderbra: http://pinterest.com/pin/91901648616239175/

Heart Balloon: http://pinterest.com/pin/91901648616131455/

Relax: http://pinterest.com/pin/91901648616172786/