Every business is about customers. A lot of effort is spent on attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
The task of attracting new customers isn’t simple, on account of the fierce competition. However, there’s little doubt that the success of ecommerce companies depends on how well they interact with their customers.
Ecommerce businesses strive to reach out to their clients, learn their preferences, and determine their needs. That’s exactly what customer relationship management (CRM) systems help businesses do. This article will focus on effective CRM solutions for online stores and consider choosing the best one for your business.
What is a CRM for eCommerce?
Any system for managing a company’s interactions with clients can be called a CRM system. CRMs come in handy for a variety of organizations, from healthcare institutions to logistics companies. The functionality required of a CRM solution depends on what kind of company it’s meant for.
As far as ecommerce is concerned, a CRM solution for eCommerce must be tailored specifically to sales. What does that mean? An ecommerce CRM system must provide a business with as much customer-related information as possible: shopping habits, interests, shipping preferences, and more. An efficient CRM solution for online stores must give a clear customer journey map to come up with better marketing strategies and increase sales.
In simpler words, a CRM solution for ecommerce helps you gather, organize, store, and analyze information about your company’s customers. Let’s go over the significant advantages that CRM systems provide for online retailers.
Benefits of Ecommerce CRM Solutions
Many business owners who aren’t eager to spend money on a CRM system ask: “What exactly can a CRM solution help me with?” There are plenty of time-consuming tasks that such software can facilitate.
- Generating leads through various channels.
- Providing on-time customer support and communication.
- Launching email marketing campaigns.
- Leveraging social media channels.
- Providing advanced analytics.
- Managing valuable customer-related data.
More advantages could be added to this list, but the gist is that a properly chosen customer relationship management solution is the most potent weapon in the hands of salespeople.
So, if you’re ready to use some cutting-edge technology to boost your business, it’s high time to determine what you need in a CRM solution for ecommerce. Here’s an important tip we’d like to give to you: don’t rush for scores of features. The best ecommerce CRMs provide impressive functionality, but do you need all of it? Consider the needs of your business and select the functions you need. Remember that if someday you need additional functionality, you can always upgrade your subscription.
Ecommerce websites need a CRM solution that provides the following crucial functions:
Gathering Meaningful Customer Data
The best way to gather helpful information about customers is to require them to create accounts. When filling in a registration form, a person enters a lot of information that eCommerce websites can use (email address, phone number, and more). All this customer data is valuable to an eCommerce business, as it can be used to target each customer most efficiently.
Re-Engaging Customers
Reasonable CRM solutions provide businesses with many tools for encouraging their customers to make extra purchases: personal coupon codes, newsletters, loyalty points, and notifications about discounts. Using these promotion tools is undoubtedly going to attract customers and increase sales.
Email Marketing
According to the “Email Marketing Industry Census 2017” conducted by Econsultancy & Adestra, email marketing takes the lead regarding the return on investment it provides. The best eCommerce CRM solutions allow online retailers to automate email marketing campaigns, tailoring them to each customer (in this way, customers receive the individual treatment). For instance, if customers don’t finalize purchases, a CRM system can automatically send them emails reminding them of what’s in their shopping carts.
Providing Informative Analytics
Reports and analytics are crucial for planning and strategy building, so CRM solutions for online sales must provide plenty of analytical information. Providing several fundamental indicators won’t be sufficient to analyze your company’s performance. An effective CRM system must give deeper analytics about the most in-demand products and services, the most successful promotions, sales history, and more. The most advanced customer relationship management solutions even provide predictive analytics that facilitates predictive planning and sales forecasting.
Customer Support
Many businesses underestimate the importance of customer support, which is a grave mistake. According to an article by Forbes, businesses lose more than $60 billion per year due to insufficient customer support.
In ecommerce business, your company’s reputation is its supreme value. Customers mustn’t feel left behind. To keep them engaged, the best CRM solutions for online stores offer powerful toolkits for interacting with your customers. For example, chatbots allow you to improve customer service significantly. Read this article on our blog to find out why chatbots are a real advantage for CRMs.
Once a problem has been reported, you’ll be able to assign priority to it, fix it, and attract the customer back to your online store. For more prominent companies, a CRM for ecommerce will streamline the workflow of customer support departments.
When customers’ questions are answered quickly, customers will feel that your company cares about them. Therefore, brand awareness and visibility will grow, boosting your ecommerce website’s profits.
Social Media Integration
Social media plays an increasingly important role worldwide. According to figures provided by Statista, Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion in 2025. An article by Business Insider indicates that in 2014, the top 500 retailers made $3.3 billion from social shopping, and their income from this revenue channel has most certainly grown by today.
Therefore, adding social media integration to a CRM system is crucial for any ecommerce company. Social media can bring thousands of new leads, helping your online store to generate more significant profits. Another critical aspect of social media is that customers are more likely to purchase after reading a positive review.
A Few Notable CRM Tools
Salesforce
This is the world’s largest CRM software provider: in its 2015 report, Gartner put Salesforce at the top of its list of the most prominent CRM vendors, with a market share of nearly 20%. Salesforce offers an efficient out-of-the-box CRM for ecommerce called SalesforceIQ, which is tailored for small- and medium-sized businesses. Plans start from $25/month per user, and several other options with more functionality are available. The SalesforceIQ ecommerce CRM offers several deployment options: cloud, SaaS, and web, plus support for mobile devices (iOS and Android native apps).
Notable Features
If your business grows and SalesforceIQ no longer provides you with sufficient functionality, you can quickly upgrade to Salesforce’s Sales Cloud CRM with Einstein artificial intelligence. Einstein is a helpful tool that analyzes all the data stored in your CRM and provides sales representatives with extra opportunities, such as predictive intelligence, for example.
Zoho
Zoho offers an affordable and functional CRM for ecommerce companies that wish to build strong relationships with their customers. Even a standard plan (available at $15/month per user) offers sales forecasting, mass emailing, reports, and other essential features. Zoho supports the most convenient deployment options, such as cloud and mobile (iOS and Android).
Notable Features
Starting from the Enterprise plan, the Zoho ecommerce CRM solution offers the benefits of Zoho’s cutting-edge Zia artificial intelligence. Zia uses state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to boost your business.
Act!
The act is an affordable and helpful ecommerce customer relationship management solution for small businesses and individuals. The tool retains all of the essential customer-related data, allows you to group your clients in a database, launch targeted email marketing campaigns, and more. The starting plan, Act Premium, costs $25/month per user. Act Ecommerce CRM software offers the following deployment options: Windows, web, and mobile devices (iOS and Android).
Notable Features
If you happen to go offline, the Act CRM will synchronize your recent changes as soon as you’re connected to the internet again. This way, you can work from literally anywhere.
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a series of intelligent sales, customer service, finance, marketing, and more. The solution for sales (ecommerce website management falls into this category) is available from $95/user per month. This CRM solution for online stores allows you to leverage predictive intelligence to increase sales and target your customers with the most effective campaigns. This ecommerce CRM software can be installed on Windows computers and supports deployment to the cloud, SaaS, and web.
Notable Features
The Microsoft Dynamics suite allows you to add different apps according to the needs of your business. Apps are available for collaboration, marketing, human resources, and more.
HubSpot
The good thing about HubSpot is that this CRM ecommerce software is free for individual sales representatives. HubSpot’s ecommerce CRM software is a simple way to keep all your customers in a single easy-to-access database. Also, the CRM automatically logs all interactions with customers. More functionality is available in HubSpot Sales Pro (starting from $50/month). Deployment options include cloud, SaaS, web, and mobile (iOS and Android).
Notable Features
HubSpot allows you to turn repetitive emails into customizable templates. The CRM will show you which templates work and which don’t so that you can target your customers as efficiently as possible.
Moreover, starting from HubSpot Sales Pro, you can contact your leads by phone (2,000 min/month); all calls can be recorded so that you always know exactly what you discussed.
