Powerful technology cannot compensate for missing insight, or the absence of an actual fan relationship.
Let me begin with something that may appear slightly contradictory, given that big, bold title up there. But hey, I believe artists, managers, clubs and rights-holders should invest in CRM. They should be collecting first-party data, reducing their dependence on third-party platforms and working to develop direct relationships with their audiences.
CRM can help them organise information, segment audiences, personalise communications, automate journeys, measure responses and make far more intelligent use of the fan data they own. That’s all extremely valuable. But - and here it comes, people - CRM does precisely what it was designed to do. The problem begins when we expect it to do something it wasn’t designed to do.
Because your CRM is not your fan strategy.
“…THE EQUIVALENT OF WALKING UP TO A FAN’S HOUSE ONCE A MONTH AND SHOUTING THROUGH THEIR LETTERBOX.”
THE GREAT CRM REVEAL
Every month, one of us at Sound Effects will speak to an artist manager who is understandably enthusiastic about their CRM. They’ll list the extraordinary functionality available through platforms such as Openstage, Klaviyo and others.
The segmentation. The automation. The direct access. The personalised journeys. The ability to reach fans without relying upon an algorithm controlled by somebody else. And, of course, the apparently affordable price. And hey, they’re right to be enthusiastic, because these shiny systems can be incredibly powerful. But then we ask a fairly simple question:
“So, what are you actually doing with it, and all that functionality?”
There is sometimes a short pause. Eventually, it transpires that, in the majority of cases, they send perhaps eleven or twelve emails each year, almost always containing some form of “buy” message.
At which point, the limitation becomes clear. That isn’t meaningful fan engagement, and it certainly isn’t a functioning fan relationship. Twelve emails in 365 days, each effectively saying, “buy this,” is the equivalent of walking up to a fan’s house once a month and shouting through their letterbox.
Having access to extraordinary functionality is not the same as using it.
Some organisations go further and employ a dedicated CRM manager. Yet even then, concern about unsubscribe rates can mean communication remains restricted to those moments when there is a sufficiently important “buy” message again.
The data may now be segmented with far greater sophistication, but it’s still being used to deliver only a handful of predominantly transactional emails. The difference is that the organisation may now be spending £50,000 - £60,000 a year on the expertise required to operate all that extraordinary functionality.
A Formula One car is an exceptional piece of technology. But if you only take it out once a month to visit the supermarket, most of its potential becomes irrelevant. Many sophisticated CRM systems risk becoming very expensive mailing lists.
BUT, CRM CAN ONLY USE WHAT IT KNOWS
A typical fan record may contain some combination of:
Name and contact information
Age, gender and location
Socio-economic or demographic characteristics
Purchases and transaction history
Email opens and clicks
Event attendance
Website or app activity
Competition entries
Membership or loyalty status
Depending on how the system is configured and what information has been collected, it can then segment people according to those characteristics and behaviours.
But here is the limitation:
CRM can only segment the information it contains.
If the system knows that someone bought vinyl, attended two concerts and opened four emails, it can place that person into a behavioural segment. But it can’t automatically tell you why the artist matters to them.
It does not know whether buying vinyl represents nostalgia, identity, collecting, gifting, sound quality, status, emotional connection or the need to own something physical in an increasingly intangible world. Unless somebody has deliberately investigated those motivations and added that understanding, CRM cannot manufacture it.
Nor can it independently reveal:
What fans believe
What other things they like
What overlapping interests they have
Why they have disengaged
What would make them advocate
What else competes for their attention
Which new proposition could create value
And then there is the biggest limitation of all.
CRM can help an organisation understand and activate the people already inside its system. It can’t identify the people outside that system who might become fans, or reveal what could motivate them to cross that threshold.
CRM is not failing when it cannot answer those questions. We’re failing when we expect it to answer questions it‘s neither designed nor equipped to address.
AUTOMATING THE WRONG STRATEGY
Automation can make communication faster, more timely and more personalised. But automation doesn’t determine whether the underlying message is relevant.
It can ensure that a lapsed ticket buyer receives a beautifully timed offer based on their previous behaviour. It can’t explain why they stopped attending, or whether another ticket offer is remotely capable of bringing them back. And that's kind of more important.
A/B testing can identify which of two subject lines generated more opens. It can’t reveal the much stronger message nobody thought to test.
A sports club can use CRM to offer a discounted family ticket to thousands of local parents. It may personalise the communication by location, previous attendance and the ages of their children. But if those families are staying away because of transport difficulties, fixture times, concerns about atmosphere or a belief that the experience simply isn’t for people like them, the club has merely delivered the wrong solution with impressive precision.
That is the danger.
The danger is not merely that CRM might send the wrong message to the wrong fan. It is that an organisation can efficiently automate the wrong fan strategy.
THE TECHNOLOGY IS ONLY PART OF THE COST
There is another uncomfortable reality. Sophisticated technology requires people with the time and expertise to operate it properly.
Someone must manage the data, create the segments, design the journeys, produce the content, interpret the results, maintain consent and turn the available functionality into meaningful fan communication. For a stretched artist-management team, that is not a minor undertaking.
Once an organisation realises that properly optimising its apparently affordable CRM may require a dedicated specialist costing £50,000 - £60,000 a year - before employer National Insurance, pension contributions and other employment costs - the technology suddenly doesn’t look quite so inexpensive. And even then, that person still needs something meaningful to communicate.
Technology can distribute and scale communication. It cannot create the relationship on its own.
COMMUNICATION IS NOT NECESSARILY A RELATIONSHIP
Direct access should not be confused with a direct relationship. A relationship cannot be sustained by one party appearing only when it wants the other to buy something.
Genuine fan engagement should allow people to feel heard, recognised and valued. It should create a two-way dialogue through which artists, managers and sports organisations can ask questions, explore responses and understand the human explanations behind the behaviour visible elsewhere.
This is the gap Superfan Engine was deliberately designed to address.
It does not replace CRM. It supplies something CRM cannot produce by itself: an ongoing source of attitudinal understanding, direct fan dialogue and insight into the audiences that remain outside the existing database.
If a manager sees an unexpected fall in ticket sales, a change in engagement or resistance to a new proposition, they can ask why. Not guess why. Not simply infer motivation from clicks, streams or purchases. Ask.
Superfan Engine can also look beyond the existing database: identifying latent and adjacent audiences, understanding what could make them care and revealing the propositions capable of bringing them into the fan ecosystem.
The resulting insight can then enrich the CRM, creating better segmentation, better messages, better propositions and more meaningful journeys. That is the relationship between insight and technology that we should be building.
The relationship should be complementary. Superfan Engine discovers why existing fans care, what they need next and who else could be persuaded to care. CRM then turns that understanding into better segmentation, communication, journeys and activation at scale.
CRM manages and activates the fans and information an organisation already knows. Insight reveals what - and who - it needs to understand next.
CRM is a hugely valuable part of the toolkit, but owning a sophisticated toolkit does not tell you what to build.
And it certainly does not constitute a strategy.
NEXT WEEK:
Community platforms promise belonging and direct fan relationships.
But they can rapidly become hungry monsters demanding a constant supply of content, access and rewards, and not every fan wants to live inside another platform.