This week IDInteract, a formerly stealth startup based in Seattle, publicly revealed what CEO and Chief Architect Matthew Standish had been leading his team towards: a product they call "Demand Exchange" that promises to change traditional CRM systems by, according to Standish, "changing the direction of supply-based marketing to demand-based interaction."
"Traditional CRM is passive-we're more concerned about demand-based economics," said Standish this week. "Even social CRM is more passive listening and then analysis, but not really customer engagement." The difference with the Demand Exchange, Standish explains, is the creation and use of what IDInteract calls "personas".
"A persona is a 360-degree profile of a customer. We'll see what [brands'] apps you've downloaded, email addresses, and create a single record with all of those profiles to create one view of a customer," Standish said. Then, by using what they call "demand signals", they can identify likely, high-value personas to determine how best to engage with those consumers.
"If I look at article on Wired about a Cadillac and share that on Facebook, that's a demand signal," said Standish. When companies use the Demand Exchange, they see these demand signals as part of what IDInteract calls "propensity to buy". They can also determine upsell/cross sell possibilities, customer loyalty and retention, and more. This all allows companies to "proactively identify, prioritize and interact with current and prospect customers based on their likelihood to convert to revenue," IDInteract said in a statement.
"This is an offer fulfillment recommendation engine on steroids," said Standish. "Not only from the demand signals do we create the propensity of buying product, but we also see the propensity to churn, and also to win back."
Ultimately, Standish sees the problem with current solutions "is how to collect, analyze and leverage all that data so it's truly useful for driving meaningful customer interactions leading to revenue. With the launch of Demand Exchange, IDInteract ups the ante, flipping traditional supply-focused CRM on its head with a fully integrated offering leveraging multi-channel data to monetize consumer demand."
So far he and IDInteract seem to be on the right path: Standish says their pre-launch clients have already seen a 4-5% revenue uplift alone by using data intelligently learned from the Demand Exchange.