What is customer relationship management (CRM)?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a strategy and technology used to manage a company’s interactions with current and potential customers. A CRM system centralizes information, such as contact details, communication history, and transaction records. 

Originally developed to manage sales and customer service operations, CRM systems have evolved into central platforms for marketing and analytics.

CRM in marketing focuses on applying customer data and interaction history to manage marketing communications, audience segmentation, and campaign coordination. Widely used CRM tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk demonstrate how marketers manage and analyze customer data across teams.

In mobile marketing, retaining user attention is a constant challenge. App marketers must analyze behavioral data and deliver timely, personalized engagement to keep users active. CRM systems make this possible by consolidating user-level data from multiple systems, automating campaigns, and providing insights that drive long-term customer value.

A mobile CRM helps marketers connect data from app interactions, purchases, and campaign results collected through attribution tools. These insights allow marketers to group users by lifecycle stage, lifetime value (LTV), or in-app behavior and deliver personalized campaigns through push notifications, in-app messages, and email. Tailored communication based on user actions or inactivity helps marketers reach audiences at the right moment with content that boosts engagement and conversion.

Beyond acquisition, CRM systems are critical to lifecycle marketing, helping teams understand user engagement patterns, identify where activity drops, and target customers at risk of churning. CRM data integrates signals from multiple sources, such as attribution and analytics platforms, to enable automated re-engagement workflows and win-back campaigns. CRMs also strengthen collaboration between marketing, product, and analytics teams by providing a shared view of customer data across the organization.

Integrating your CRM with Adjust creates a single source of truth for mobile app performance. As a mobile measurement partner (MMP), Adjust links user-level CRM data with attribution and analytics to reveal how users engage, convert, and retain over time. This integration helps marketers align acquisition and retention strategies, automate campaign optimization, and measure ROI—all within a unified analytics environment. Adjust transforms CRM data into deeper insight, enabling teams to segment audiences, personalize engagement, and evaluate long-term impact across every marketing channel.

To learn more about how Adjust can help your app scale to its fullest potential, request a demo today.