Relationship marketing: the secret to getting closer to your customers

By Samantha Mur

Published: 5 May 2025

Have you ever heard of relationship marketing ?

As you may already know, this type of marketing strives to weave a quality relationship between your brand and your prospects or (future) customers. It's a counterpoint to transactional marketing, which is purely promotional and quickly reaches its limits in the face of intense competition.

If you want to know more about relationship marketing, understand how it works and its importance, don't stop there!

The rest of this article will show you how it fits into your overall marketing strategy and what you can do to cultivate and maintain excellent relationships with your customers.

Armed with our advice, you'll have everything you need to build a well thought-out relationship marketing strategy, and succeed in building customer loyalty!

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What is relationship marketing?

Relationship marketing: definition

Relationship marketing encompasses all activities that focus on satisfying customer needs and expectations. Based on customer-centric strategies, it aims to establish a direct, ongoing and personalised relationship with a company's customers and potential customers.

The principle? To move away from a one-sided approach in which the company presents a product or service to potential customers, encouraging them to take action - to buy - in order to meet their needs.

In this case, relationship marketing proposes first and foremost to establish a link with the target audience before embarking on any purchasing process. By first building a relationship of trust with your prospects, you present your brand in the best possible light in order to :

make yourself known
be appreciated,
generate trust.

It's your brand personality, your world, and the values you share that your target audience will focus on first, before considering your offer. This approach is based on creating a real bond and on a conversational approach, conducted with sincerity and transparency.

The difference between transactional and relationship marketing

As we have seen, relationship marketing focuses on the customer, unlike transactional marketing, which focuses primarily on the product and the act of buying, and is based on the marketing mix and the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion).

☝️ The main differences between transactional marketing and relationship marketing are as follows:

Company-customer exchanges: in traditional marketing, these are unidirectional, with a top-down approach, whereas relationship marketing focuses on a horizontal, person-to-person relationship.
Audience targeting: traditional marketing targets large audiences with a standard message (billboards, mass email campaigns, etc.), whereas relationship marketing takes care to segment its audience, so as to convey the right message at the right time and create a personalised conversation with its customers.
A long-term business relationship: with traditional marketing, marketing campaigns and actions are generally one-off or limited in time. Relationship marketing, on the other hand, focuses on the customer's entire life cycle.

How does relationship marketing work?

To achieve this degree of personalisation, you need to set up a circular process to satisfy consumers' needs on an ongoing basis.

The aim is to respond ever more precisely to customer needs, and even to anticipate them with predictive marketing.

This individualised, ultra-personalised and even predictive approach is now possible thanks to the most sophisticated tools available. For example, marketing automation functions can be used to :

automate the sending of messages based on actions taken by the customer,
programme personalised actions (such as an email with a special offer for their birthday) for each of them.

CRM software is another tool for personalising customer relations:

It centralises all customer data, from contact details to the history of interactions with your company, so you have an overview of the entire customer journey.
It allows you to listen to your customers, identify their needs and any difficulties they may be experiencing, and then act accordingly.

The long-term benefits are considerable:

less time spent looking for new customers,
an increase in the value of the average basket
recommendations and positive reviews from loyal customers.

3 effective examples of relationship marketing

The key to a successful relationship strategy is to establish a lasting relationship with your customers.

To achieve this, you can use all kinds of marketing activities , particularly digital marketing, to ensure that the company is always present in the customer's life. Newsletters, blogs, publications on social networks, emails, personalised text messages, etc. are all ways of capturing the attention of prospects or customers on an ongoing basis.

Some major brands have understood this challenge and are using it to personalise the customer experience, as these 3 examples show.

Relationship marketing example #1: Addressing customers by their first name

It's in your interest to address people, rather than consumers, by calling your users by their first names in your digital communications. Each individual has their own story, their own needs, and will feel valued if they are considered as a unique person and not lumped together in a mass. Personalising the title of your emails, text messages, etc. encourages the development of a more authentic , one-to-one relationship, with a greater impact .

Example of relationship marketing #2: offering personalised attention

Your customer is king, so make them feel like one! Start by sending them personalised content to develop a special relationship with your brand, taking care to identify their expectations.

You can go even further and offer them "surprises" on special occasions or to reward them for their loyalty. For example, you could send them a special offer for their birthday, or a welcome gift with a number of loyalty points credited to their card, etc.

Example of relationship marketing #3: play on proximity and emotion

To build a relationship with your customers, don't hesitate to use emotion. A kind word that surprises or makes them laugh, and that's it! You trigger their empathy and support, and not just to encourage them to make a purchase. It's also about maintaining a link and positioning your brand as a figure in their daily lives, like a friend.

For example, regularly ask your customers for their opinions in a fun way before the launch of a new line or product range.a new product line or range, about their favourite colour or material, about the date or time of an event you want to host, etc. They will feel fully integrated into the brand's adventure and as active contributors to its success. The possibilities are endless, so let your creativity do the talking!

Why is relationship marketing important?

Relationship marketing is an essential way of setting yourself apart from the competition. It allows you to highlight :

your positioning,
the personality of your brand
the values you stand for.

It gives you the opportunity to create a differentiating advantage based on the strength and development of your brand-customer relationship. When you consider that acquiring a new customer costs on average 5 times more than retaining one, it's easy to see how important it is to concentrate your efforts on your customer loyalty strategy.

Today's consumers may be difficult to retain over the long term, but they remain sensitive to a brand's personality, the consideration it gives them as individuals, and the efforts it makes to satisfy and reward them.

With the advent of technological and digital tools, the possibilities for creating ever more personalised, customer-focused strategies have multiplied. Here are a few ways you can give your marketing plan more scope.

How can you improve your relationship marketing? 3 tips

1 - Identify your target audience

If the aim is to create a special relationship with each customer, it is first and foremost essential to identify the potential customers you want to reach and to target your marketing precisely. You can't do relationship marketing without gathering information about your target audience.

It is important to segment your customer base on the basis of rigorous market research. This will enable you to understand the precise needs you are meeting and the type of communication you should be focusing on.

In practice, plan to replace massive mailing campaigns with ultra-personalised scenarios. Marketing automation tools will be very useful in helping you to achieve this.

2 - Understand your customers' needs and act accordingly

At this stage, it's important to analyse the behaviour of the target audience you've identified. Using a psychological approach, try to identify what they like about you and what needs to be improved. To get a good understanding of your customers, use their own verbatims in the feedback you gather, or tools that help you decipher their emotions as they experience your brand.

Once you've understood their expectations, all you have to do is put into practice the actions needed to satisfy them as best you can: assert your positioning, proudly display your values and get your audience on board!

👆 Satisfying your customer in every way is easier said than done. However, customer loyalty can really make a difference in the long run. Long-standing customers, who help to convey a positive image of the company, tend to consume more and will be less likely to be attracted by competitors' offers.

3 - Choose the right tools

As we mentioned earlier, relationship marketing requires you to be well equipped, by opting for digital solutions tailored to your business:

CRM tools
self-care tools (chatbots, FAQs, tutorials, etc.),
customer engagement tools
emailing tools, etc.

The rise of SaaS solutions has considerably democratised the software market. As a result, even micro-businesses can now use modular, flexible, high-performance tools without having to commit to excessive expenditure. Choose yours!