#11 Ernest Ang | Why comparing CRM to a race car improves your strategy

Meet Ernest

Currently leading CRM and Organic Social at Travel Circus in Berlin, Ernest has worked across Singapore, Sweden, and Germany. With a decade in marketing and a mind wired for frameworks, he’s obsessed with turning customer engagement into measurable growth.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

• Think of CRM as a self-sustaining growth engine
• Use race car metaphors to make strategy stick with stakeholders
• Balance data-driven decisions with marketing intuition
• Choose MarTech tools with a structured, no-fluff approach
• Align CRM efforts across departments - from tech to legal

Episode Breakdown

• 00:00 – Ernest’s international journey and current role at Travel Circus
• 02:40 – Changing the perception of marketing as a “cost”
• 04:50 – Attribution, AB testing, and the balance of data and intuition
• 06:55 – The “race car” CRM framework explained
• 10:30 – Fueling CRM: people, tech, process, and business goals
• 13:30 – Turbo boosts: campaigns like Black Friday and Valentine’s
• 14:45 – Using frameworks to communicate with stakeholders
• 16:45 – CRM tech migration: switching to Bloomreach
• 18:50 – Segmentation, RFM modeling, and tool evaluation
• 21:15 – The NABC framework for evaluating MarTech
• 23:00 – Why knowing frameworks isn’t enough - you have to apply them

Transcript

Jessica 0:00

So great to have you earnest in the call here, to talk about you and your experience. and I think you have some, great ideas about, how to think about CRM, what concepts to use there. before we go into that, it would be great if you can introduce yourself a bit and also, the company that you are working for.

Ernest 0:23

Great. Yes, sure. So, hi everyone. My name is Ernest and I'm originally from Singapore. I've been working in marketing the, almost a good past 10 years, I would say. I've been actually really fortunate to have gained. quite an international experience in, by working in Singapore, Sweden, and now also working in Germany now working in Berlin. So currently I am working in a company called Travel Circus. We are a travel tech company. Basically, we're selling travel, packages and short getaways to our customers. markets are focused mainly in. Dark region basically where I'm currently responsible and working for the CRM team and also the organic social media team. So my role is the team lead for these two functions in travel circus. basically my role here as part of the CRM agenda is to really help to drive. growth through repeat purchases and retention in that sense. And also to drive customer engagement, thereby building up a stronger relationship that we have with the brand I think this is a short introduction of myself. yeah, I really actually started off marketing journey working in a. Travel media agency, and then I moved on into the client side. ever since then, I've always been working more in the client side. And so I think I enjoy that more personally.

Jessica 1:56

How come?

Ernest 1:58

Well, I think it's also about personality, right?

Jessica 2:01

Hmm.

Ernest 2:01

feel that the word, suits my personality better, and I feel that, after my first experience working in the agency, I don't think it's, for everyone. There are people who can enjoy it and would prefer that. However, I think I prefer to be on the buy side than the sell side of

Jessica 2:18

Yeah,

Ernest 2:18

you will.

Jessica 2:21

I can understand that. and you were mentioning already one part that you focus on with, your CRM team is to generate, revenue. And also when we talked, you were mentioning that you are kind of. Passionate to figure out is CRM that is generating, revenue and, the idea around it. Can you explain, to me a bit, how did this passion grow or was the background, to it?

Ernest 2:48

Yeah. I think first things first, it's a personal mission of mine to want to turn the perception of marketing into a profit generating function The perception that we tend to hold when it comes to the marketing function in a company, and that is they are actually a cost generator because we are always taking money or always needing money to invest before we can actually, make more money from it. But that's the whole point. I think there is that ROI aspect to it. So I think there is a need to somehow change the perception of how it's being perceived as a marketing team. And I believe that CRM. falls into that, because it really does help to drive more revenue existing customers and also by nurturing those relationships to really push the envelope on that. And I think, that's really one of the reasons why. it is a passion point for me because I believe. There is a strong need to change that perception that we have here, because at the end of the day, it's not just about spending money but getting more revenue in return. So we should always be looking at ROI, but at the same time, what I think is also very fascinating, but marketing is that it's not always about dollars and cents, but it's also there is that more qualitative, the softer aspect to which is the brand, right? So how do we. Push the brand out together with the whole business agenda to really meet short-term and long-term goals. And I think that's really why I find it fascinating and I make it a personal career or business mission of mine that, you know, if I'm working in a marketing team, I want to be in position where we can really showcase that. Look, marketing is not just about spending money, it's really about. Investing and getting, and then getting a return from that.

Jessica 4:42

Mm-hmm.

Ernest 4:42

I think that we can do that a lot more, especially in the digital world as compared to perhaps 15 years ago where all we had was, advertisements on billboards and TV where

Jessica 4:53

Yeah.

Ernest 4:53

track it.

Jessica 4:54

what kind of methods do you use to show that impact?

Ernest 4:59

I believe methods I would say would be, I think attribution, the attribution model modeling is always really important, I would say.

Jessica 5:08

Yeah.

Ernest 5:08

I think it's also about having that mindset that, you know, whatever that you're doing, how does it really help to add value from a quantitative and a quantitative standpoint? using the technology that we have to try to help us drive that more data driven approach towards marketing. I think that is probably the one way that I anchor myself and always consider, okay, does this make sense? if we are not sure, at least now there is this whole concept of AB testing. We can try it out and see what works. the way that I will actually go about doing this so fast and like I hold onto this, philosophy that, you know, yes, we should still be aware that we should not be too data led, but be data driven in that sense. I think that's really important. I think there are two very different things if we are just being led by the nose. Everything is just what the data says. I think we are missing the context here and the whole point at the end

Jessica 6:05

Mm-hmm.

Ernest 6:06

Yeah.

Jessica 6:08

Yeah, that's a good point. I just had it, with, one, topic in the company that we want to, get, feedback from the customer. But for this specific topic. We always asked it in an early touch point, and actually we needed to do it at a later one to get the data out that, was interesting for us. So as you say, we need to think about the context at one point can we also generate those data points. So that totally makes sense.

Ernest 6:37

Yeah.

Jessica 6:38

And also, when you think about, growth, you like to also connect, things with frameworks as I know. you're passionate about that. And you were mentioning to me that there is a framework that explains or compares. Growth to a race car, which is super interesting. can you explain, how that works and also how you see that in CIM, what are the transfers that you do there?

Ernest 7:07

yes, yes. I'm a fan of frameworks because I think it really helps to structure your thoughts and. Your way forward, I would say. I think it gives you a really good starting point, and that's why I'm a fan of. Frameworks. one of these frameworks, which you have already mentioned, I believe the one who invented it is Reforge. this company, which was then also taken and I read about it through Emily Marker. one of her newsletters. from there I was inspired to adapt the framework that you mentioned about this race car framework into a CRM strategy. maybe I can just quickly talk about the few components of the framework in that sense. So picture a race car. The growth engine, the engine itself, the lubricants to really drive the engine, right? And at the same time, what else do you need is fuel. You need the patrol to drive and move this engine forward. And from time to time, as this is a race car, Think fast and furious. We have the turbo boost, Like nitros. So apart from the chassis in itself and all the other, components that, you know, helps to drive a car, I think this is what the race car framework focuses on. These are the four key components, so I can repeat again, it's the growth engine, the lubricants, the fuel, and also the turbo boost in itself. So what is interesting is. I believe, when it comes to this framework, the growth engine is really the central aspect of it, right? this is where the self-sustaining growth happens. But at the same time, engine doesn't just work by itself just like that. I think there's a lot more inputs that need to go into it. There are a lot more, Processes that have to go through it before it starts moving and is before it's able to start accelerating and moving this car forward. So with the same, in the same chain of thought, the growth engine to me is really the central core piece here, which is where the CRM strategy lies. that to me is basically what we need to nurture and what we need to grow and what we need to constantly build. But to be able to build this engine, we need to be able to understand what are the other key factors that will help to. Really optimize and also drive this engine forward in that sense, thereby driving the car forward. when we talk about, lubricants, I would consider that as you know, running optimizations and AB testing experiments. These are the things that would consider, how do we then really fine tune, you know, the different aspects of this growth engine in order to keep it smooth and smoother in that sense. Then when I think of fuel, I think of fuel as something that goes beyond just the CRM team I'm thinking about. Which brings me to another key framework that I use, which is, you know, looking at the people, the business, the process, and the technology. what are these? And these are all inputs towards, you know, helping to drive that CRN growth engine forward to me and. So when I think of people, you know, who are the people in the team that needs to help to drive and, and feed towards or contribute towards the, the growth engine In that sense? who are the, what are the key processes that we need in that sense? You know, when it comes to, is it about, for us in our case, is it about the deal selection process? How do we choose to go about choosing certain deals to be pushed out? And what we should not be pushing out in that sense, who do we need to speak to? is the cross-functional. alignment and cooperation that we have between different teams. How does that affect CRM? Because CRM doesn't just work on its own.

Jessica 10:46

Yeah.

Ernest 10:46

closely with our customer service, we are working closely with our sales team. I even have to work with legal from time to time. Of course, I have to speak to finance as well. And of course one other key player I would say would be our tech IT team, right? So all these different functions. Somewhat playing a part towards building up the CRM strategy or CRM engine in that sense. And I think we need, especially from a CRM team or a CRM practitioner, you need to be really comfortable with that. If you, you don't really enjoy that, then maybe it's going to be quite overwhelming and difficult in that sense. that's the fuel aspect. And, sorry, there's also one other part too. I think I talked about the people, the business. correct. So the, the business part as well. So when we talk about business, of course, it's about what the business goals are, what's the business trying to drive, what, how does the CRM team, helps to. You contribute towards or impact the, the overall business goals at the end of the day, but for us in travel circus, it's really about, you know, drive, driving and growing the revenue pool for the business using, basically more organic and almost free channels, if you will, CM newsletters. So it's not entirely free, but it's, it's a very, very low cost compared to paid marketing and,

Jessica 12:06

Yeah.

Ernest 12:07

marketing, if you will. So, yeah, and then we have processes itself as well. what are the current processes of how things run? I mean, this is all specific to businesses. I don't need to go into too much detail, but I think it's important to be cognizant about what those processes really mean and how does it play into the CRM strategy as a whole. And then

Jessica 12:28

Yeah.

Ernest 12:28

Technology is very important and I think that plays a very key part. But of course, at the end of the day, I see technology as a tool, not a means to an end, It is really about using the technology to help drive the agendas that we have from A CRM strategy perspective. it can actually make or break the strategy as well, simply because I've experienced it before. you have a tool that limits you, it limits your thinking. It limits the whole team's capabilities. You can't move forward more than that because it's just so difficult to steer a really heavy and. very old ship. If you can't move it and you can't steer it, then it's just really, really very difficult and it's always a constant uphill battle. So these are the key components to the fuel in itself. And then last but not least, I will talk about the Turbo Boost. I think of it as key campaigns that you have, your Black Fridays, your Valentine's Day campaigns, your Christmas campaigns. How do you make use of those campaigns help to accelerate revenue performance in that sense?

Jessica 13:34

All right.

Ernest 13:34

this is basically the framework that I use, and also to help build up the strategy for 2025 for travel circus. So far,

Jessica 13:43

So then is it a framework that you use for yourself to figure it out, or is it also something that you use to maybe visualize it towards stakeholder and discuss it there?

Ernest 13:54

yes, I don't just use it to structure my thoughts. I actually use it. As a starting point as well to open up the whole topic about the strategy that I was about to create because I think something a little bit more illustrative, it helps to relate with key stakeholders as well from the beginning and from the start. And I think it's quite memorable to remember a race car.

Jessica 14:17

Yeah.

Ernest 14:18

So I think it's worth out and saying like, okay, you know, imagine picture a race car. And then from there we start going into deeper details as we speak of, as I just, elaborated a little bit more on So I think it makes it more relatable, and I think so far it's been good. I think my manager, is very satisfied with the way the proposal of the strategy is. So I think that works for me in this sense.

Jessica 14:43

And remind me again, where does, the customer sit in the model?

Ernest 14:47

The customer will sit in the business,

Jessica 14:50

Okay.

Ernest 14:51

in the business

Jessica 14:52

I.

Ernest 14:52

is where you keep the, the, the customer in, in the center of it all. I mean, that's the whole point. Without the

Jessica 14:59

Yeah.

Ernest 15:00

The central, focal point of the whole strategy that then I think that's not really CRM anymore. Then it's just rm I think relationship management and not customer relationship management. So obviously didn't put the customer in a particular box simply because it's pretty clear that, you know, at the end of the day, if you go into the business aspect of it, these are the people and these are the customers that we need to serve.

Jessica 15:28

Okay. Makes sense.

Ernest 15:29

Yeah,

Jessica 15:30

And based on that, framework, which components are you currently focusing on?

Ernest 15:37

currently focusing on, okay, so I think I would have to focus on all four. at some point. All at once. I think it's about a spectrum of how much focus you put on it or how much you're really working on. I think at this point since I have been, I've just recently, implemented or migrated into a new system. So I would say that, we are more in, I'm now currently focusing more on the fuel aspect of it. Because when it comes to key campaigns, these are things that you could have already planned out at the start of the year, or you already are aware. What are the key kind of, campaigns that we will be pushing out in the future and how basically the fuel need to somehow support. that the other components that are available in the race car framework. So now I'm focusing more on the technology aspect, considering that we have a new system or a tool called BloomReach. it's been serving us really, really well so far. And I'm quite happy that, the tool was implemented really smoothly without much hiccups, I would say. so it's good that we can, get it up and running almost on day one, basically.

Jessica 16:48

How long is it running for you now?

Ernest 16:51

It's almost two months, I would say it has been two

Jessica 16:53

Okay.

Ernest 16:54

Yeah. Since, we've implemented it It's a huge learning curve because it's. a very complex tool. It can be as complex as you want it to be, and it can also be as simple as you want it to be, but there's so many, possibilities that you can explore right now. I think one key. Value point, from the whole tool is that you're able to segment better. because we're able to pull in all our customer's data, regardless whether they are subscribers or not, we pull in all our customer's data and then we can start slicing and dicing and creating different segments from there. And I think that really brings a lot of value to us because now. we can actually do RFM modeling as well. So that's really cool because we can see What is our average, recency and frequency and monetary values of our customers in different segments or different cohorts,

Jessica 17:46

So when you decided for Bloom Ridge was. Like the segmentation part, for example, one key factor that, make you switch in the end.

Ernest 17:56

Indeed, one of that's definitely one of the key factors because we realized that in our previous tool, we were not able, the segmentation was lacking, I would say.

Jessica 18:08

Mm-hmm.

Ernest 18:09

And we weren't very trustworthy of the data that we've gotten. I mean, I, I sort of inherited the tool and I think the tool has exchanged so many different CRM hands. And so a lot of the times we don't really understand the logic behind how some things have been done.

Jessica 18:26

Yeah.

Ernest 18:27

obviously that really adds some friction to that point. and then when you start to pull up the numbers, you start putting together the data that you get. a gut feeling perspective, I guess it's more of a marketing intuition that you realize it doesn't quite add up or something is just amidst and, then Now we, we are going into this question of, does it, does it really make sense to spend so much time figuring this out Yeah. How does this really break the business in that sense? If we don't figure it out?

Jessica 18:57

Yeah,

Ernest 18:58

some of the key considerations that would have to weigh out in that sense.

Jessica 19:02

I think deciding for a tour is always tricky, right? You also have to think about what are the different components, use cases that are important to me. And, I think you need to have a strong case that you can say, okay, it does make sense to move. because it's a lot of effort to do that, right? It's an investment.

Ernest 19:24

Yeah.

Jessica 19:24

I.

Ernest 19:24

on all fronts, right? Time, money. resources in that sense as well. So I guess maybe I can share another frameworks,

Jessica 19:32

Yeah, sure.

Ernest 19:33

to, to, to sort of help me make sense of how to evaluate my choices of tools or technology that I would love. I use this very simple framework. It's called NABC, which is needs approaches or advantageous benefits competing Alternatives. this is what I use to help me structure my evaluation or assessment of each of the different tools that we've shortlisted. when I think about needs, I think about business needs. what are the business needs that we are trying to fulfill here, Does the tool meet those key needs? And if it doesn't meet the key needs, then it's out of the game. that's my number one. The next thing is after looking at the needs, the question is what is the approach? How is it helping me achieve my goal or my business needs at the end of the day? So want to understand how, how easy, how quickly can I get to my goal

Jessica 20:26

Mm-hmm.

Ernest 20:26

how much intervention would be required externally? Meaning, do I have to engage my IT team all the time, or do I need to constantly pay for change requests?

Jessica 20:37

Yeah.

Ernest 20:38

are things that we want to consider as well, And then the next thing I will look at is benefits. What are the key benefits? by looking at the approach, I will be able to understand what are the key benefits for the business, for me and the C part is where it comes to helping you to align. Basically having, if you have done maybe four to five or even three. short lists or evaluations with across different vendors, then you can start comparing your alternatives. So I use basically this framework to help me to understand are the, you know, what's important for us? how do we then rank and evaluate the different vendors that we have to understand the suitability of these tools that we are going to onboard in the future.

Jessica 21:23

So do I need to mention you create like a sheet and then you have those parts in it, and then you add your list and afterwards you do a crosscheck with different, tools that you have available and then you compare. How much of this has a checkbox, let's say.

Ernest 21:40

Yes. I mean the whole implementation or the evaluation process for a vendor becomes quite complex or it's a very large project, I would definitely try to turn that into a process in that sense. Then by

Jessica 21:54

Yeah.

Ernest 21:54

However, if it's really not such a big project, I wouldn't go through that trouble. So I think this framework gives you the flexibility to do that at the end of the day. I mean, for us, the next thing we are going to start considering is a loyalty. Tool. Right. And then depending on how many, vendors that we have reached out to and short lists of by then, I might have to really start to turn, you know, document out, what are the different needs, turn that into a checklist, and basically see how everything is stacking up against one another.

Jessica 22:31

Yeah, great. I love how you always pull out like a framework to the different topics.

Ernest 22:40

it's quite important, for me at least, this is how I've been motivated and inspired by different people in my life that have, actually instilled such a. Thinking process in me, and that's why I think it's always good to, I am always collecting different frameworks and keeping it in my arsenal and, of course, reviewing it from time to time, looking at it and then expanding from there.

Jessica 23:03

Nice.

Ernest 23:03

important is to know the frameworks, but then what's important is learning and understanding how to apply those frameworks that would be suitable for your business in that sense.

Jessica 23:14

Totally, and it's great that you shared already, three that have been working for you and, what were the use cases so people can, adapt this and, use this, themselves? Great.

Ernest 23:26

that it inspires people to also consider and think about how those frameworks could work for them as well.

Jessica 23:33

Thank you so much, Ernest, for sharing your experience, your insights.

Ernest 23:37

are most

Jessica 23:37

yeah, I said,

Ernest 23:38

welcome.

Jessica 23:39

I hope it inspires people, to use some frameworks

Ernest 23:43

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm happy to also connected and discuss more with the, the other audience that you have, other CRM practitioners and maybe even exchange new frameworks that they have. I'm sure there are a lot of professional CRM professionals are also using different types of frameworks, which I'm not aware of. that could perhaps, really be added into the arsenal or frameworks and. Working processes to help us become better. CRM marketers.

Jessica 24:11

We can start a collection.

Ernest 24:13

Yeah. Yes. Go there. Pick up a library of that. You can go through the whole framework library in that sense.

Jessica 24:19

Now we have an idea what to do. Thank you so much.

Ernest 24:24

No problem. It was a pleasure.