Business School

MKTG6018
Customer Analytics & Relationship Management
2022, S2

Team CRM (ACURA) Strategy Plan Guide

You have been appointed to lead the Customer Analytics and CRM division at an Australian
fintech company called Raiz Invest Limited. Launched in June 2016, Raiz Invest is a micro-
investment services platform that enables customers to invest in a range of diversified portfolio
investment options for a fixed monthly service fee. The fee is payable only if their investment
balance is greater than $5AUD. The company has now grown to over 190,000 customers as of
August 2019. Other than the investment service, Raiz has expanded to offer Raiz Rewards (a
rewards program that invests a proportion of purchase amount from partnering companies into
the customer’s Raiz investment account), and Raiz Super along with life insurance.

Your goal is to design an ACURA (Acquire, Cross-sell, Up-sell, Retention, and Advocacy)
strategy report that identifies the key CRM issues and opportunities for the business, present
recommendations to better achieve the objectives of CRM, and convince the Raiz executive
team to invest in your CRM project. Toward this end you need to formulate an ACURA
strategy plan that is feasible, coherent, interesting/unique, actionable/realistic,
ethical/sustainable and profitable.

In your ACURA strategy report, you team must identify/select two key customer segments and
must discuss and develop two ACURA strategies for each of the two key customer segments.
 Acquisition
 Cross-selling and Up-selling
 Retention
 Advocacy

You are expected to conduct a detailed investigation of Raiz Invest, and use class materials,
academic research, professional databases, industry reports, surveys, company’s data etc - be
sure to reference it appropriately. You need to demonstrate teamwork, and critical and creative
thinking by being selective in including critical information that will justify your

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recommendations. Remember – your task is to impress and convince the executive team with
actionable and profitable suggestions which are organically connected.
Avoid providing recommendations that are too generic. You need to consider providing
strategies that are unique, interesting and inspirational. The suggested strategies need to be
supported with reference to the situation analysis, segmentation analysis, industry reports,
academic evidence and data analysis in order to convince the readers why they are most
appropriate. Attempt to make your report professional by achieving effective visual and written
communication.

Your deliverables include:

 A CRM report (up to 3000 words)

Specifically, your report should have the following components:

 Title page
 Executive summary 2.5%
 Introduction 5%
 Situation analysis 10%
 Customer segmentation 30%
 Acura strategy development/recommendation/action plans 30%
 Big data strategy document 20%
 Conclusion 2.5%
 References (not included in page count)
 Tables (not included in page count)
 Figures (not included in page count)

We consider the following questions when marking your report.

› How interesting/unique are the recommendations?
- (Problem Solving/Imagination/Creativity/Novelty)
› How Actionable/realistic are the recommendations?
› How Ethical/sustainable are the recommendations?
› How well your recommendations are justified using
- Professional databases
- Company data (Data/information gathering/processing/Analysis)
- Industry and Academic Research (Critical Reasoning /Critical thinking)
- Lecture contents (Use of literature/ Knowledge of theory)
› How much profit potential can your recommendations generate?
› How effective is the communication? (Logic/Flow/Structure/Presentation – figures,
tables & graphs/Clarity of Expression incl. accuracy, spelling, grammar, punctuation)
› How well do you perform as a group? (Interactivity and group skills including
Teamwork, Negotiation/Micro-Politics/Empathy)

GENERAL FORMAT INFORMATION

CRM strategy plan must be double spaced (including references) in 12-point Times Roman
font (no narrow fonts) with pages numbered consecutively. Allow margins of at least 1.5 cm on
all four sides. Use one font style only (e.g., Times Roman). The report should be around 3000
words (Word document) including all components listed below, but excluding references,
tables, and figures. A report with +3,000 words, nonetheless, will be accepted without any
penalty.

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SPECIFIC DETAILS OF REPORT FORMATTING AND ORGANISATION
I. Title page
The name of the Company of the report should be centred on the first page; Group Name and
team member names should be listed below the title. Do not write the name of your unit
coordinator here.

II. Text
Below is a list of issues. Not all issues/questions may be relevant. They are meant to give
you guidance, rather than to be followed strictly. You can also cover other topics that are
critical to the success of your plan. Be careful of too much repetition since a number of
things can fit into multiple categories, no need to repeat them.

A. Executive Summary (5 Marks)

Provide a brief description that substantively summarizes the key points made in the CRM
strategy plan. The executive summary should not simply introduce the situation but highlight
all critical aspects of the plan. You should write this section so that it’s highly interesting and
clear about what your main recommendations are. After reading the executive summary, the
reader should now all the key points of your plan, even if they read nothing else in the report.

This is the “three-minute sales pitch”. Make us think “Now that is a cool idea that will make us
better serve our customers in more profitable ways!” The executive summary should be the
most interesting part of the report. By reading the executive summary, the CEO should not
have to read the entire report to grasp the key points of the report. Make sure that the key
ACURA strategies that you recommend are highlighted in a succinct and persuasive way.

B. Introduction (2.5 Marks)

Give a brief introduction to the company and its background and customer base whom it
serves. Then, briefly propose the scope, “quantified” objectives and expected outcomes of your
CRM strategy.

C. Situation Analysis (10 Marks)

The situation analysis reviews the circumstances facing the company now. There are several
areas or domains that can be considered as detailed below. However, it is not necessary to
cover all these areas, and you may feel that it is necessary to add areas not discussed below.
What is important is to identify the key factors likely to affect the success of the organization
by identifying, acquiring, retaining and developing profitable customers in the immediate and
long-term future.

You are required to use statistics and figures from industry reports, surveys, or research
throughout this section.

C-1: Business Environment Analysis

• Economic Factors: How will economic factors affect the company and its prospective
and existing customers? For example, the global financial crisis was a huge boon for
Foxtel because people substituted staying home and getting cable for going out.
• Socio-cultural Factors: Some socio-cultural factors can affect the company and its
customer base. For example, an exponential increase in foreign-born population in
Australia would affect how the company serves its customers. In addition, these
customers would have different needs to be met.

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 • Technological factors: How does technology affect the interaction between the
company and its customers (e.g., communication, purchase, touch points)? It could
affect the entire processes involving ACURA. In addition, how does technology enable
the company to better serve its customers at profit?
• Competition Landscape: Your AUCRA strategy should be a winning strategy in the
battle with competitors. Who are the main competitors, what do they offer differently,
and how do they serve its customers? Do your competitors have different customer base
or do their customers have different needs? In addition, your team might need to go
broader with the following questions: how big is the market the company serve? What
are the key strengths and weaknesses of your company as compared to competitors?

C-2: Evaluate Current CRM Activities

 What activities, programs, and efforts does the company currently employ for customer
acquisition, retention, development, and advocacy?
 What are the weaknesses and strengths of the current CRM activities?
 Identify the areas of CRM activities that need to be improved and justify why such
improvements are required.

C-3: Business Model Canvas

D. Customer Segmentations (30 Marks)

In this section you will identify, select, describe and justify two key customer segments with
the greatest long-term profit potential and analyse their characteristics.

D-1: Customer Segment Descriptions

 Provide a detailed description of their general profile (who are they) and their needs
(what they need) with Customer Persona
 Describe the selected segment in depth by using demographic, geographic,
psychographic and behavioural characteristics as well as by 5W and 1H,
 Be very clear about what characteristics define these segments. (e.g., what market
business/consumer/govt., if consumer, what demographics, geographics,
psychographics, lifestyles, values, behaviours)
 How well does the segment meet the criteria for good segments? (measurable,
substantial, actionable, accessible, differentiable)
 What factors are likely to influence their entire customer journey (e.g., awareness,
interest, information-seeking, purchasing, repurchasing, switching, advocacy,
terminating relationship)?
 Describe how your competitors serve these segments
 How will you identify and reach the segment? Why are these approaches the most
suitable for identification and reach?
D-2: Customer lifetime value
 Describe how you measure customer loyalty and customer lifetime value and provide
customer lifetime value for your segment.
 What factors are considered in your metrics and why are these factors most predictive
of customer loyalty and customer lifetime value?
 Be specific about acquisition/retention costs, revenue, profit, discount rate, etc.
Describe them how they are decided.
 Provide a “neat” or “even beautiful” excel/Tableau spreadsheet in the appendix that
clearly demonstrates the factors considered in the metrics and the relationships between
CLV and customer characteristics that you identified in D-1.

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E. ACURA Strategy Development/ Recommendations and Action
Plans (30 Marks)
In this section you will discuss your ACURA strategy and how and why it relates to your
selected customer segment. Make sure to present interesting, rather than generic,
recommendations and justify your recommendations using references to the situational
analysis, segmentation analysis, data analysis, and other academic and industry research.
Recall that you need to develop two strategies for each of the two key customer segments.
Please avoid the overlaps in the strategies, meaning that if you develop acquisition and cross-
selling strategies for a key customer segment you would develop retention and advocacy
strategies for the other key customer segment.

Some points to help you start:

Acquisition Strategy
 What is your value proposition for each segment for customer acquisition?
 What kinds of strategies would you apply for each of customer segments that you chose
for acquisition? These include all promotional activities for customer acquisition
including all forms of advertising, sales and trade promotion – such as in-store displays
and point-of-purchase promotions. Direct marketing expenditure – such as direct mail
and email campaigns. Most other promotional methods – such as events and
sponsorships.
 Other acquisition strategies beyond promotion – sales force, new store, and new
product development if necessary.
 Any acquisition strategies in order to get switching customers from your competitors?
 What are the cost associated with your acquisition strategies?

Cross-selling and Up-selling Strategy

 What kinds of cross-selling and up-selling strategies would you employ for each
segment (e.g., bundling, discount, product recommendation, enhanced benefits)? If so,
how would you use them for each segment?

Retention Strategy
 What retention strategies would you use to increase customer loyalty among existing
customers (or decrease customer switching) for each segment?
 Do you have any win-back strategies for lost customers?
 What are your recovery strategies in the case of product or service failure (customer
complaint)?
 How to divest unprofitable customers if necessary?

Advocacy Strategy
 How would get unpaid advocacy by your loyal customers? In other words, how would
you increase positive word-of-mouth for the company and how to convert prospective
customers into actual customers?
 How to measure the effectiveness of customer advocacy and WOM marketing?
 How would you respond to negative customer advocacy or negative WOM (or how to
prevent them)?

E-1: Recommendations and Action Plans (Implementation Plans)

 Provide concrete and actionable strategy recommendations
 Describe, explain and justify your ACURA strategies

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  Provide a time-scheduled roadmap for recommended actions in holistic ways (e.g.,
Phase 1, 2, and 3).

E-2: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for CRM Activities

 What kinds of indicators will you use to measure the overall performance of the
recommended CRM activities?
 How will you measure and monitor KPIs?

F. Big Data Strategy Document (20 Marks)

In this section you will develop a big data strategy document for ACURA strategies that you
have developed in the previous section.

a. Identify what you believe should be Raiz Invest's key business initiatives over the next
9 to 12 months for each strategy.
b. For each business initiatives, critically evaluate the key business entities that impact
that selected business initiative. It is around the individual business entities that we
want to capture the behaviours, tendencies, patterns, trends, preferences, etc. at the
individual business entity level.
c. Evaluate the key decisions that will need to be made about each key business entity
with respect to the targeted business initiative.
d. Provide a grouping of the decisions you have identified into common use cases: cluster
those decisions that seem similar in their business or financial objectives.
e. Identify different data sources that you might need to support the categories you have
identified:
i. Identify potential internal structure (transactional data sources, operational data
sources).
ii. Unstructured (consumer comments, notes, work orders, purchase requests) data
sources.
iii. Identify potential external data sources (social media, blogs, publicly available,
websites, mobile apps) that you also might want to consider.
f. Use the data assessment worksheets to determine the relative business value and
implementation feasibility of each of the identified data sources with respect to the
different use cases.
g. Use the prioritization matrix to rank each of the use cases vis-à-vis business value and
implementation feasibility over the next 9 to 12 months.

G. Conclusion (2.5 marks)

 Describe whether and how your ACURA strategy meets the objectives stated in
Introduction.

III. Possibly Useful Web Sources

 Here are some useful links to CRM:
General
www.customerthink.com
www.crm-forum.com
www.contactcenterworld.com
www.enterpriseappstoday.com/crm

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 www.destinationcrm.com
www.crm.ittoolbox.com
www.crmcommunity.com
www.tandfonline.com/toc/wjrm20/current (Journal of Relationship Marketing)
Vendors
www.sap.com
www.ibm.com
www.oracle.com
www.siebel.com
www.salesforce.com
www.sas.com
www.teradata.com
www.pega.com
www.microstrategy.com
www.microsoft.com
www.infor.com
www.broadvision.com
www.crmonline.com
Analyst firms
www.forrester.com
www.gartner.com

IV. Additional Formatting Information

A. Headings (three levels only). Main headings are centred and in all capital letters. Secondary
headings are centred, italicised, and in capital and lower case letters. Tertiary headings are left-justified,
underlined, and in capital and lower-case letters.

B. Footnotes
Use of footnotes is discouraged. However, they may be required where the source of information is a
conversation or interview with an expert from industry.
If you must include a footnote, please leave it on the page where it will appear, rather than moving it
to the end of the document (no endnotes). So, for example, you might have the following in the text of
the CRM plan:

The cost estimate for this advertising expenditure is $55,000. 1

At the bottom (or foot) of the same page you would include.
1
Based on conversations with Tom Jones, Advertising Director for the Sydney Evening Tribune.

C. Internal Citations (These are suggestions only. Students may use any standard referencing
guidelines they prefer, provided they are used consistently throughout the report).
Citations by the author’s last name and date of publication enclosed in parentheses without
punctuation: (Kinsey 1960).
Multiple citations listed alphabetically and separated by semicolons: (Gatignon and Robertson
1985; Green and Gold 1981).
Multiple citations by the same author(s) separated by a comma: (Moschis and Moore 1978,
1979).
Citations alphabetical. Articles by a single author precede co-authored works by that author.
Co-authored works are listed alphabetically, name by name: (Green 1978; Green and Gold 1981;

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 Green and White 1980).
When it is necessary to reference a particular page, section, or equation, the page number should be
placed within the parentheses: (Andreasen 1984, p. 785).
 Verbatim quotes from any source should always be placed inside quotation marks, with the author(s)
cited just after the closing quotation marks and the page number(s) included in the parentheses:

Areni, Duhan, and Kiecker (1999) have explained the effects of point-of-sale displays in terms of attribute
salience, noting that “special point-of-purchase displays essentially reorganize products within the store.
When the featured brand is strongly associated with a given attribute, this reorganization increases the
salience of that attribute for purchase decisions” (Areni, Duhan, and Kiecker 1999, p. 428).

The failure to use quotation marks and page numbers to indicate verbatim quotes is plagiarism!

If an author has published two or more works in the same year, list them alphabetically by title in the
references, differentiated by letters after the date in both the reference list and the text: (1988a,
1988b).
Four or more authors: always use first author’s name and et al. (Smith et al., 2002)

D. Formatting guidelines for the reference list (Again these are suggested formats. You may use
alternative formats as long as you are consistent throughout the manuscript).
Journal and Periodical Articles: List author names, including first names, publication date, article title in
quotes, unabbreviated name of the periodical in italics, volume number, issue designation (month,
season, or number), and full page numbers:

McCracken, Grant (1986), “Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and
Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods,” Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (June),
71–84.

Books: List author names, including first names, publication date, book title in italics, place of
publication, and name of publisher:

Lincoln, Yvonna S. and Egon G. Guba (1985), Naturalistic Inquiry, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Excerpts from books: List author names, including first names, publication date, article/chapter title
in quotes, book title in italics, editors, place of publication, name of publisher, and excerpt page
numbers:

Taylor, Shelley E. and Jennifer Crocker (1981), “Schematic Bases of Social Information
Processing,” in Social Cognition: The Ontario Symposium, Vol. 1, ed. E. Tory Higgins,
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 89-134.

Unpublished papers: References to working papers, presented papers, unpublished dissertations,

and such must include author names, including first names, year of submission or presentation, and
title in quotes. The words “report,” “working paper,” “review paper,” etc., are not capitalized unless the
work is part of a numbered series. Include information about the sponsoring university or
organization, such as name of department, college, city, state, and post code.

Wallendorf, Melanie (1987), “On Intimacy,” paper presented at the American Marketing
Association Winter Educators’ Conference, San Antonio, TX.

Anderson, Paul F. and John G. Thatcher (1986), “On Borrowing, Epistemology, and Category
Mistakes in Business Research,” Working Paper No. 1–786–035, Harvard Business School,

MKTG6018: Customer Analytics & Relationship Management Team CRM Plan Manual 2022 8
 Boston, MA 02163.

Simmons, Carolyn J. (1986), “Effect of Missing Information on Product Evaluation,” unpublished

dissertation, Marketing Department, College of Business Administration, University of
Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611.

Proceedings, edited works: Proceedings citations are treated as excerpts from an edited book.
References must list author names, including first names, publication date, article title in quotes,
conference proceedings title in italics, volume number, first and last names of the editors, place of
publication, name of publisher, and page numbers:

Olson, Jerry C. (1981), “Toward a Science of Consumer Behavior,” in Advances in Consumer

Research, Vol. 9, ed. Andrew A. Mitchell, Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Consumer
Research, v-x.

Lastovicka, John L. and David M. Gardner (1979),“Components of Involvement,” in Attitude

Research Plays for High Stakes, ed. John C. Maloney and Bernard Silverman, Chicago:
American Marketing Association, 53–73.

Government publications

U.S. Bureau of the Census (1983), Statistical Abstract of the United States, Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office.

Different co-authors, forthcoming works

Wittink, Dick R. and Phillipe Cattin (1981), “Alternative Estimation Methods for Conjoint Analysis:
A Monte Carlo Study,” Journal of Marketing Research, 18 (February), 101–106.

Wittink, Dick R. and Lakshman Krishnamurthi (forthcoming), “Rank Order Preferences and the
Part-Worth Model: Implications for Derived Attribute Importances and Choice Predictions,” in
Proceedings of the Third Annual Market Measurement and Analysis Conference, ed. John
W. Keon, Providence, RI: Institute of Management Sciences.

Web sites and URLs

Doe, John R. and Mary Smith (2000), “Learning from the Web,” http://www.learning.org/now/, (accessed:
dd/mm/yyyy).

Please note: There must be a reference for every internal citation, and an internal citation for every
reference. Please do not include references that have no corresponding citations in the text, and please
be sure that you have provided the complete reference for every internal citation.

G. Tables & Figures

You are welcome to use tables and figures to organize and convey information. Each table or figure
should be numbered consecutively. They can be collated at the end of the manuscript after the reference
list, or inserted in the text as appropriate. Always refer to tables (or figures) by number (e.g., table 1). Do
not use phrases like “above,” “below,” “preceding” or “the following”.

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