I am a distant student in direct marketing. This obviously involves reading a lot – study papers, magazines, and books. Currently I just finished to work myself through “Up Close & Personal” (2nd Edition) written by Paul R Gamble, Merlin Stone, Neil Woodcock and Bryan Foss and published by Kogan Page. So it is probably about the time that I give you my newest op!

The book contains 371 pages (including Appendix) and covers the often-discussed theme Customer Relationship Marketing. To give you a short impression, here is a shortened structure / content of the book:

1. Customer relationship marketing: one more time
a. What is customer relationship marketing – and what isn’t it. General
Overview. Do you already have a CR-marketing?
2. Relationship with customers
a. Who is a customer? What do they want, how do they think? How can you improve your understanding and relationship?
3. Buy-in, policies and plans
a. How to prepare your company to be ready for this concept? Includes a checklist for REAP planning (retention, efficiency, acquisition and penetration).
4. Measuring the impact
a. How can you measure that you are successful? What is your performance concerning development, retention, acquisition and attrition? How to budget?
5. Segmentation and the top vanilla offer
a. Developing the capability for relationship marketing. How to segment customers and how to approach the different segments?
6. Getting the show on the road
a. Barriers to implementation and the implementation program. Customer Contact Strategy and key performance indicators.
7. Customer loyalty and continuity
a. What is customer loyalty? 6 steps to success for customer acquisiton, retention and loyalty management.
8. Transparent marketing, customer value and process management
a. Do customers want transparent relationships? Customer value management and process contribution assessment.
9. Customer knowledge management
a. Why is knowledge so important and how you can gain and use it.
10. Integrating the technology of customer management systems
a. Technological needs for a CRM System.
11. Managing good and bad customers
a. Who they are. How to treat them.
12. Justifying the CRM investment
a. What are the main advantages justifying the investment.
13. Appendix 1
a. A complete relationship marketing planning recipe
14. Appendix 2
a. Your customer relationship marketing audit tool

The book is quite clear structured and a table or graphic to make studying and understanding easier where possible enriches the text. The headings are clearly separated from the text and the relatively short paragraphs and script size make reading easier. Several case studies being highlighted in a grey box bring the content is a more practical context.

What shall I tell you about the layout? The book itself is black with golden letters at the side with the title and authors. The protection sheet covering it is blue with a big violet eye looking at you over half of the page. The title is written big in light grey letters.

Oh, the book also contains a free CD ROM that belongs to Appendix 2. I haven’t tried it yet, but it runs on Microsoft Access 2002 or alternatively on a version of Windows 2000. It is meant to be a introductory audit tool for organizations contemplating the purchase and implementation of a customer relationship marketing exercise or for organizations wishing to assess their current relationship management position.

The price for this book is £ 24.95 and should be available in all bigger bookstores or on amazon.co.uk. The ISBN Number is 0-7494-3831-2.

Finally, what is my impression of the book? I think it covers the main areas and is very good to give a strong overview about the thematic. But for my purposes I felt it is a bit too weak on the deeper details sometimes. However, when you are relatively new to marketing or customer relationship management, it is an ideal tool to get an understanding about what everybody is talking about.


Recommended: Yes