Developing good customer relationship management (CRM) applications can be vital to businesses during the current recession, it has been suggested.
Louella Fernandes, a principal analyst at Quocirca, has explained that maintaining good CRM is important when businesses are faced with greater competition and fewer customers willing to spend as much money.
Keeping hold of existing customers is crucial to a business' success during the downturn, she explained in her article for IT-Director.com.
One way in which businesses can retain good contact with their clients is through direct marketing campaigns, which can often provide a cheap way to update customers and keep them interested in the company's operations.
However, to ensure a direct marketing initiative is having the best impact, it is important to maintain high standards of address data quality so that relevant customers are effectively targeted.
The return of banks to the direct marketing fold after the crisis at the end of last year has helped improve the direct mail industry in the US.