Relationship marketing: the secret to closer ties with your customers

By Samantha Mur

Published: May 5, 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 acts as 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 why it's so important, 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 focused on satisfying customer needs and expectations. Based on customer-centric strategies, it aims to establish a direct, ongoing and personalized relationship with a company's customers and potential customers.

How does it work? To move away from the one-sided approach of presenting a product or service to potential customers, and encouraging them to take action - to buy - in order to satisfy their needs.

In this case, relationship marketing proposes first and foremost to establish a bond with the target before initiating any purchasing process. By building a relationship of trust with your prospects first, 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 will focus on first, before considering your offer. This approach is based on the creation of 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 is customer-centric, unlike transactional marketing, which is primarily focused on the product and the act of purchase, and is based on the marketing mix and the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion).

☝️ The main differences between transactional 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, in order to convey the right message, at the right time, and create a personalized conversation with its customers.
A long-term business relationship: with traditional marketing, marketing actions and campaigns are generally one-off or limited in time. In contrast, relationship marketing focuses on the customer's entire life cycle.

How does relationship marketing work?

To achieve this degree of personalization, you'll 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 anticipate them with predictive marketing.

This individualized, ultra-personalized, even predictive approach is now possible thanks to the most sophisticated tools available. For example, marketing automation functions can :

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

CRM software is another tool for personalizing customer relations:

It centralizes all customer data, from contact details to the history of interactions with your company, to provide an overview of the entire customer journey.
It enables 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 feedback from loyal customers.

3 effective examples of relationship marketing

To succeed in your relationship strategy, you need to establish a lasting relationship with your customers.

To achieve this, you can use the full range of marketing actions , particularly digital marketing, to ensure that the company is always present in the customer's life. Newsletters, blogs, publications on social networks, e-mails, personalized SMS messages... these are just some of the means you can use to capture the prospect's or customer's attention on an ongoing basis.

Some of the world's leading brands have understood this challenge and are using it to personalize 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 his or her own story, his or her own needs, and will feel valued if he or she is considered as a unique person and not blended into a mass. Personalizing the title of your emails, SMS messages, etc. encourages the development of a more authentic , individualized relationship, with greater impact .

Relationship marketing example #2: offer personalized attention

Your customer is king, so make them feel that way! Start by sending them personalized content to develop a special bond with your brand, having taken care to identify their expectations.

You can go even further and offer them "surprises", on the occasion of events 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, and so on.

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, that makes them laugh, and that's it! Your aim is to trigger their empathy and support, and not just to encourage them to make a purchase. It's also about maintaining a bond and positioning your brand as a figure in their daily lives, like a friend.

For example, solicit your customers' opinions regularly and in a fun way, before the launch of a new line or product range.a new product line or range, on their favorite color or material, on the date or time of an event you'd like to host, and so on. They'll 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 indispensable means of setting yourself apart from the competition. It allows you to promote :

your positioning,
your brand personality,
your brand values.

It gives you the opportunity to create a differentiating advantage based on the strength and fulfillment 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 focus your efforts on your customer loyalty strategy.

While today's consumers are difficult to retain over the long term, 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 personalized, customer-centric strategies have multiplied. Here are a few tips to help you expand your marketing plan.

How to improve your relationship marketing? 3 tips

1 - Identify your target audience

If the aim is to create a special relationship with every customer, it's essential to identify the potential customers you want to reach and to target them precisely. After all, you can't do relationship marketing without gathering information about your target audience.

It's important to segment your customer base on the basis of rigorous market research. This will enable you to understand the precise needs you're meeting, and the type of communication you'll be focusing on.

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

2 - Understand your customers' needs and act accordingly

At this stage, it's important to analyze the behavior of the identified target audience. 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, you can rely on their own verbatims, in the feedback you gather, or on tools that help you decipher their emotions in their experience with your brand.

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

👆 Satisfying your customer in every way is easier said than done. However, customer loyalty can really make a difference in the long run. Long-term customers, who help 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 democratized the software market. As a result, even micro-businesses now have the opportunity to use scalable, flexible, high-performance tools without having to commit to excessive expenditure. Choose yours!