Campaigns Don’t Build Retention. Teams Do.
Practical Checklist for what a great cross functional CRM teams look like & how you can be one.
Most CRM teams don’t fail because of messaging. They fail because no one invited them to the meeting.
You can have the best campaign logic, clean segments, beautiful creative, and still get underwhelming results — simply because the CRM team was brought in too late, given too little, or left out of the conversation entirely.
In theory, CRM and Lifecycle Marketing are growth levers.
In reality, they’re often treated like execution arms.
This is the gap I want to address — and what this article is about.
CRM teams are often Siloed
CRM teams are often siloed from the very departments that determine their success:
Product teams launch features, or attempt to drive feature adoption without CRM in the room. I’ve found that most PMs aren’t aware of the capabilities that the CRM tools have around quick experimentation that can help them test out tone of voices, visuals but also drive feature adoption.
Data teams set measurement standards CRM can't access. Most Data briefs are standardised and don’t cater to a CRM marketer.
Engineering teams build logic without CRM use cases in mind. Event, User Attributes, Deeplinks - all built without sparring the use-cases with the CRM team.
Brand teams craft narratives CRM can’t personalize. A lot of apps spend a lot of time crafting the best onboarding experience, but fail to deliver the relevant user info to their CRM tools missing a huge opportunity in post onboarding comms.
When that happens, CRM becomes a channel, not a strategy.
This article will walk you through:
The 5 dimensions you can use to assess your team’s current setup
What good looks like — and what to do if you're stuck
A practical action plan to build trust, clarity, and support across teams