Optimising relationship marketing programmes: a holistic approach

Optimising relationship marketing programmes in terms of the mix of marketing activities represents a daunting task; however, it is crucial for the formation of successful marketing strategy. An analysis of research into optimisation of marketing programmes reveals models largely focus on the optimisation task, but fail to present a holistic view. Whilst adopting a systematic approach, this paper develops a model for judging the appropriateness of a relationship marketing programme from the optimisation standpoint. As such, relationship marketing programme optimisation is treated as a complex problem consisting of three partial problems related on a parametric basis. These are forming an optimal relationship marketing programme, measuring return on relationship marketing activities and calculating costs of such activities. The methods applied integer programming, multiple regression analysis, factor analysis and heuristic algorithms. The model was tested by using large-scale data on 40,000 SMEs provided by a bank. The results showed a dramatic increase in efficiency when optimising marketing decisions by applying the suggested model. This paper is among the first to present such a holistic approach and to offer an original framework.