Victoria’s Secret Customer Relationship Management Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the aspect of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service related. CRM enables businesses to understand the customer, retain customers through better customer experience, attract new customers, increase profitability, and decrease customer management costs. CRM helps businesses to emphasize a continuing, long term relationship with customers to nurture customer stability in today’s market. In today’s evolving market, technology and the Web have changed the way companies approach CRM. Advances in technology have also changed consumer buying behavior and offered new ways for companies to communicate with customers and collect information about them. With the increase of technology, such as smartphones, customer relationships are now being managed electronically. A new aspect of CRM has emerged though this innovation: Social customer relationship management (SCRM). “Social CRM is engaging in a customer dialogue to ensure the best product and service experience, by first obtaining customers’ input and then responding to their preferences”(Maher). This is used to describe the addition of the social element in traditional CRM processes, and then builds upon that by leveraging the social element which enables a business to connect customer conversations and relationships from social networking sites. Organizations are using SCRM as a way to personalize online experiences though tools such as email organizers and social media advertisements. SCRM has allowed businesses to get “real-time” customer insights and rapid response, prompt reaction to positive or negative news, align marketing and product development with customer preferences, enable social commerce transactions, and to develop a measure of social ROI. (Maher) Victoria’s Secret is a leader in SCRM. Since 2009, Victoria’s Secret (VS) has dramatically increased their online activity and presence. VS has expanded their social media presence to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Their previous marketing techniques consisted of a calendar delivered to customers monthly. However, VS is now stepping into the social media age as a leader in technological marketing. They now send targeted retention and trigger emails. VS monitors the time between customer store visits and then emails customers whose time between trips is increasing to help prevent attrition. Trigger emails are also sent as gift reminders to encourage purchases, both online and in-store. Yet, Victoria’s Secret SCRM is not just about email; they have focused significantly on mobile acquisition. VS has acquired mobile acquisition channels through online, in-store, and e-mail. VS recognizes the importance of customer acquisition for mobile communications. This company uses mobile communication for customer engagement. For example, VS has its PINK members opt-in