Appreciating Internet of Things (IoT) & Its Impact on CRM & Email Marketing

Improved access to customer data—that’s what 74% businesses look for in a CRM system. No wonder, as that’s a core function of CRMs.

However, when bolstered by IoT, CRMs can deliver far more.

By leveraging real-time insights for proactive outreach, you can position your brand as both customer-centric and solution-driven.In this introductory post, we’ll explore how integrating the Internet of Things with CRM can revolutionize your business. Let’s dive in! 

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

Understanding IoT in the context of CRMs and email marketing

Challenges & considerations

What the future holds for IoT & CRM

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of inter-connected devices and everyday objects connected via the internet. Examples of IoT devices include smart watches, fitness trackers, smart thermostats, airtags, etc. 

In the last five years, the number of IoT devices has grown by 8 billion. As a result, it is of ever-growing interest to marketers. Let’s elaborate. 

You can think of IoT as the high watermark of de-localized experience. 

This means you can reach out to customers independent of where they are, whether or not they’re on desktop or mobile, and their state of being. 

Think of Alexa reading out your flash sale email to someone at breakfast. 

Your discount offer showing up on the smart watch of a morning runner. 
IoT gives your brand the chance to be a part of your customer’s everyday life. You’re no longer merely external noise, distant from the customer’s immediate awareness; instead, you’re part of the bubble. (See pic below) 

Understanding IoT in the context of CRMs and email marketing

A CRM system runs on data. Aimed at improving customer relationships, better-aligned marketing and sales, data is integral to CRMs. 

And this is where the possibility of IoT and CRM integration emerges. 

IoT devices excel in data collection. Consider the following instances:

• Smart home devices: A smart thermostat, containing a customer’s energy usage pattern and temperature preferences, can help utility companies send personalized recommendations. These companies can send out home-by-home energy usage guidelines, too.
  
• Retail beacons: A retail beacon captures how customers are moving in the store, which shelves they are frequenting or stopping by, how much time they’re spending at certain locations, etc. Stores can tailor their marketing efforts based on a customer’s geomobility.
  
• In-vehicle telematics: Thanks to IoT, even cars can be reservoirs of information. From GPS to car infotainment systems, automotive brands can leverage information on car performance, battery usage, location, and send relevant communication to their customers.
  
• Agricultural IoT: Agricultural service providers can leverage IoT sensor data, such as moisture levels, temperature, and precipitation, to guide customers toward achieving precision farming.
  
• Wearables: IoT devices like fitness trackers and smart watches capture health-related information such as heart rate, activity level, wake/sleep cycle, etc. which can be used by healthcare companies to anticipate and fulfill customers’ specific requirements. 

Now, how can CRMs leverage all this data? Personalization stands out as the biggest advantage, obviously. That’s the whole point. 

But it merits exploration. Subsequently, we’ll see how it segues into email marketing, too.

1. Proactive service & support

Traditionally, the customer support process starts with the customer reporting an issue. However, with IoT, the process is reversed.

Real-time updates integrated into CRMs enable you to anticipate and address customer needs proactively. For instance, automated product diagnostics can identify potential failures and generate service tickets dynamically.

One direct advantage is a reduction in support costs. Equipped with IoT sensor data, your support team already has the necessary insights to address the issue, eliminating the need for lengthy phone calls, emails, screen shares, or video conferences that might overwhelm communication channels.

Additionally, you can schedule maintenance periods in advance to minimize inconvenience for the customer. This proactive approach not only enhances customer satisfaction but helps prevent customer churn as well. 

2. Enhanced sales experience

Armed with historical information on customers, you can tailor your product recommendations to individual preferences and interests. 

It’s also a great opportunity to cross-sell or upsell to customers. 

Consider a scenario where a retail customer with a history of purchasing luxury accessories receives a targeted notification on their mobile device upon entering the relevant segment of the store. A network of strategically-placed retail beacons, connected with the store’s app, captured the customer’s movements, social behavior, etc. to notify them. 

Similarly, if the customer is checking out a handbag, the app can recommend  a more premium version of the product. 

In fact, with the help of IoT, you can adopt real-time pricing (RTP). Imagine a scenario where a utility company deploys IoT sensors in homes to monitor energy usage patterns. These smart devices transmit real-time data to the company’s servers. By analyzing the aggregated data, the company can identify peak demand periods and adjust pricing accordingly—raising rates to discourage excessive usage during peak periods, and vice versa.     

3. Proximate marketing 

Proximate marketing is marketing that is immediate and contextual. 

A smart fridge can identify which frequently purchased item is running low at a given time, triggering a replenishment email. 

Similarly, consider IoT-deployed smart homes. 

IoT sensors monitor temperature, air quality, humidity, etc. In the event of a sudden abnormal variation in these parameters, the sensors can trigger urgent email alerts to the homeowners. 

We talked about IoT giving rise to de-localized experience. Implicit in Jenna Tiffany’s account of the use of voice technology in email marketing is the concept of de-localized experience. 

“If you have a device (a smart watch, an Alexa hub, even Siri on your phone) which can read your emails to you, a whole load of options open up – even if you’re not visually impaired. You can check your emails in the bath, while driving, during a run. Don’t want to blast your brain with blue light before bed? No problem, ask your voice tech to clear your inbox for you while you’re brushing your teeth,” Jenna explains. 

Notably, Eaton Corporation has developed IoT-enabled control devices which are integrated with email systems. The easyE4 nano programmable logic controller, for example, can collaborate with email servers to send out timely messages “at set parameters.” 
“…in a mechanical failure, like when a motor overload trips, an email can be sent to an electrician that a repair needs to be made to get the unit back up and running. By wiring an output, or aux contact, from the overload protector directly into a digital input on the easy E4 nano PLC, an alarm function block can be used to send a customized email to the electrician.” Below, you can see the email settings being configured.

The ever-growing adoption of IoT-enabled emails in healthcare is also a point in case. From creating personalized care plans to sending medical alerts, healthcare organizations can leverage HIPAA-compliant emails. 

“Let’s say a provider monitors a diabetic patient through an IoT-enabled glucose meter, they can securely email daily recommendations based on blood sugar trends without unnecessary in-person visits,” posits Caitlin Anthoney, founder of Paubox. 

So then, the benefits IoT-reinforced CRM and email marketing are:

• Real-time data collection, laser-specific segmentation, dynamic personalization
  
• Predictive analytics, anticipatory problem-solving
  
• Triggered email automation, spontaneous customer engagement
  
• Reduced churn, improved customer loyalty
  
• Improved ROI from better-targeted campaigns  

Now, it is critical to remember that when it comes to delivering superior customer experiences, IoT must not be viewed in isolation. It is rather a part of a complex IT architecture which involves CRM, Big Data analytics, edge computing, cloud-based aggregation, fog computing, AI, etc. ‘

Source

Inevitably, there are implementation challenges involved, not to mention privacy and security issues. Let’s take a look at these.

Challenges & considerations

The challenges of implementing IoT-enabled CRMs include: 

• The sheer amount of data collected by IoT devices demands highly efficient processing systems. Scalability is complex.
  
• Latency i.e. delay in data transmission and processing can limit the efficiency of smart CRM platforms.
  
• Real-time data is vulnerable to errors, which affects data quality. So, data validation and error control mechanisms are a must.
  
• High-level computation is required to interpret complex events in a way that is reliable and useful.
  
• Operating such a complex architecture entails resource optimization in a manner that is sustainable economically and technically.
  
• Integrating IoT data, as well as data from other sources, into CRMs is fraught with technical challenges.
  
• Since success depends on real-time data processing, CRM systems should be highly fault-tolerant and capable of swift recovery.
  
• In the context of email marketing, IoT devices such as smartwatches severely limit the scope of design. HTML text, CTAs, etc. won’t render on such devices. You can only depend on plain-text envelope content, a sort of telegraphic alert to notify the wearer/recipient.
  
• Data privacy is a perennial issue, more so in the case of IoT. In an era of fluid information, winnowing sensitive data from useful data is a challenge. IoT is infamously vulnerable to hairy data leaks. 

In response to these challenges, a number of organizations are adopting advanced technologies: from dynamic machine learning models to edge computing-driven low latency solutions to IoT-compliant time series databases – these are some of the ways organizations are stepping up. 

What the future holds for IoT & CRM

Despite the challenges, the future of IoT-integrated CRM lies in enabling organizations to unlock the full potential of their CRM systems.

More specifically, here’s the view from the mainmast as of today: 

• Faster, more reliable connections made possible by 5G technology may help IoT-driven organizations with marketing.
  
• Integration of AI into IoT devices (by dint of edge AI) is expected to overcome latency and bandwidth limitations.
  
• With IoT sensors getting smaller and more refined, they will be able to gather more in-depth information on customers.
  
• Blockchain technology would be particularly relevant with respect to IoT device management and secure data transaction. 

However, advanced technology can only take you so far — if you don’t have a well-defined strategy in place. In fact, our six-tier email marketing framework, applicable across 50+ ESPs, is based on a strategy-first approach, from discovery to reporting and analysis.

Speaking of strategy, catch our insights on CRM strategy next.