A CRM or Customer Relationship Management platform is a system for managing customer data and all your interactions with customers.
A CRM system ensures all information about your customers is easily accessible in one place to ensure smooth communications and to integrate sales, marketing, and customer service.
The CRM will normally store information including:
- Customer name, address, email, telephone number, and other contact information
- Order history
- Contact history
- Lead score
- Source of lead
- Personal information such as hobbies and interests
Why Do You Need a CRM for Your eCommerce Business?
You can use the data in a CRM to create a segmented marketing campaign, assist with customer service inquiries, use intelligence for sales, better understand your customers, and identify your most valuable customers.
A CRM will usually connect with several data sources including your website, manual entry from phone calls and emails, social media profiles, survey responses, and any other form of information.
You can link your CRM to your email marketing software and marketing automation tools to automate marketing campaigns and make them more targeted.
The Difference Between a Traditional CRM and eCommerce CRM (ECRM)
An eCommerce CRM is designed specifically for running eCommerce businesses. While traditional CRMs are intended mainly for salespeople to use, there’s less direct sales activity in an eCommerce model.
Instead of using your CRM to try to sell to individual customers, an eCommerce CRM is designed to help you to spot patterns and trends and automate and optimize your workflow.
Modern eCommerce CRM platforms integrate with modern technology such as social media ad networks, analytics platforms, and landing page software to create personalized experiences and help you to understand your customers better.
Features to Look for in an eCommerce CRM
There are dozens of CRM solutions to choose from. When you’re deciding on a platform for your eCommerce business, make sure it includes these features:
- Automated workflow – Your CRM should integrate with your marketing platforms and enable you to automate tasks such as sending email campaigns, user segmentation, and rewarding your loyal customers.
- Abandoned cart recovery – Sending a customer a reminder email or targeted ad when they leave items in their cart is one of the most effective ways to reduce your cart abandonment rate and make more sales. You should be able to configure your ECRM to automatically trigger a reminder if a customer leaves part-way through checkout.
- Analytics and reporting – Your CRM should give you a good overview of the demographics of your customers, average order value, customer lifetime value, revenue by campaign, and other valuable data.
- Lead scoring – Identify your most valuable leads and keep track of customers who are becoming disengaged so you can take steps to win them back.
- Visualizing customer journeys – Your CRM should help you to understand your customers’ journey from becoming a prospect to making a sale and returning as a repeat customer.
- Communication and case management – Your CRM is a customer service tool as well as a marketing and sales tool. It should keep track of all interactions so that your customer support agents can instantly see the customer history.
- Chatbots – Some eCommerce CRMs include chatbot functionality that can automatically add data to your CRM and look up information to automatically assist with customer inquiries.