Customer Relationship Management (henceforth 'CRM') is crucial to e-commerce. The aim of CRM is that of optimising the relationships between a company and its customers in order to increase the size of the company's customer base and to keep customers loyal to the company. As such, marketing strategies for gaining and retaining customers, and for winning back customers who have stopped interacting with the company, are central to CRM ¹⁾. Attention to marketing, to branding, and to the targeting of specific groups of customers in particular ways, are all important ways in which CRM can enhance relationships between corporations and their clients.

Mobile CRM is an exciting development within the wider field of CRM. It is a tool which utilises available technologies to gather and evaluate customer data online. As well as providing statistical computerised analysis of customer data, this form of CRM also enables companies to communicate more effectively with their customers by using messaging services online ²⁾.

The deployment of Mobile CRM for sales people is the hallmark of a truly international company, or at least of a company with global aspirations. This is because one of the key advantages of this form of CRM is that it enables a versatile and mobile connection to the totality of customer data from anywhere in the world. This also entails that, once gathered, new customer data can be inputted into a company's system from anywhere in the world. This enables a company's branches to benefit from strategies of information-sharing. Greater knowledge about a company's potential and actual customers enables that company to tailor its branding and marketing strategies to suit the preferences of those customers, thus increasing the company's sales (often by very large amounts indeed).

Social media content has, in recent years, emerged as a crucial source of customer data. Social media sites have also proved to be a very effective way for companies to reach out to both potential and existing customers. Several companies already use Mobile CRM and social media in conjunction to great effect.

• Taco Bell is a prime example of such a company. As a recent article shows, Taco Bell has been using up to the minute iAd software to advertise its products and to initiate and sustain communication with customers. One of the reasons that Taco Bell's approach has been so successful is that it has integrated its CRM with location analysis. This has enabled Taco Bell to pinpoint where its customers are located and to tailor its CRM strategies to suit what is known of customers in that location.³⁾ IKEA is another notable example of a company using these mobile marketing and customer engagement strategies.

• Many of IKEA's advertising campaigns are now conducted through social media sites. Online analytic software integrated with these social media platforms enables IKEA to keep track of the types of people that engage with its adverts, and to thereby build up a picture of potential and existing customers. The success of IKEA's approach lies precisely here, in the way in which IKEA combines marketing with the harvesting of customer data. As a recent article demonstrates, IKEA combines online loyalty programs and online advertising with software that analyses the data about the people who engage with these mobile customer engagement strategies.⁴⁾

• Components of a CRM-system
• Types of CRM databases
• Social CRM

• Buttle, Francis. Customer Relationship Management: Concepts and Tools. Amsterdam: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2004. Print.
• Kats, Rimma. "Taco Bell Taps IAd to Amplify Brand Awareness." Mobile Marketer. Mobile Marketer, 31 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
• Tsirulnik, Giselle. "IKEA Launches Mobile Loyalty Program." Mobile Marketer. Mobile Marketer, 16 July 2008. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
• Unhelkar, Bhuvan. Handbook of Research in Mobile Business: Technical, Methodological and Social Perspectives. Hershey PA: Idea Group Reference, 2006. Print.