Ecommerce Customer Relationship Management: How to Level Up
Your eCommerce CRM software is the key to your success. It’s much more than order fulfillment and loyalty programs. It enables you to build a relationship with your customers and deliver the personalized experience they are demanding.
The eCommerce industry lives or dies on the relationships it has with its customers and the experiences it is ultimately able to offer. That’s what sets apart a regular customer relationship management (CRM) solution from an eCommerce CRM.
In this article I’ll highlight the unique things that drive a modern and effective e Commerce business CRM and how you can use it to your advantage.
It’s all about customer engagement
Customers who are engaged by a brand make purchases 90% more often and spend 60% more per transaction than those customers who aren’t engaged.
One of the primary roles of traditional CRM software is recording and storing important customer information (i.e. preferred contact method, account information, and potential customer leads) all in one location.
Ecommerce CRM is different in that it focuses only on the sales and customer experiences that are conducted online. This is especially important for ecommerce, as it compensates for the lack of daily face-to-face contact with customers. Ecommerce CRM is able to analyze customer information and sales patterns and record and store data all day, every day.
- Conversion rates
- Customer click-through rates
- Email subscription opt-ins
- Which products customers are interested in
An effective CRM platform displays the customer journey, allowing you to collect, analyze, and use user data to boost customer retention and increase profits. By making the right conclusions from this collected data, you can adapt your marketing to the customers’ tastes, habits, and expectations.
The whole point of this is to provide customers with personalized experiences that drive sales.
The benefits of eCommerce CRM software
#1 Collecting Customer Data
Even basic customer data, like name, email address, and phone number, is a first step to creating a personalized experience in every customer interaction. But as you know, a good eCommerce site can be a magnet for customer data and finding out all about your shopper. Deals, newsletters, coupons and updates can all be subscribed to by the customer which gives you more and more data. The more data you know, the better you will target offers and increase conversion. An eCommerce solution can scoop up all this data whenever a customer shops and make it available and easy for you to use as you wish.
#2 Re-Engaging Customers
Shopping online is engaging most when it becomes a journey. Unlike a brick and mortar store which is laid out in a specific way, an online store can constantly adapt to the visitor. CRM for eCommerce makes it possible to suggest related products based on a customer’s interactions, provide personalized promo codes, gift discounts, bundles, shipping deals, and virtually anything you can think of to keep the customer engaged and coming back.
#3 Email Marketing
In the US, every dollar spent on email returns for $44 in ROI (DMA)
Email marketing is an indispensable tool to keep in touch with a client and increase loyalty. CRM enables you to automate your email marketing to send out personalized newsletters and offers that remind customers of incomplete purchases, upcoming availability and prices for something they’ve searched for, sales, deals, and new releases.
#4 Analytics and planning
Analytical data is the major pillar for retail strategic planning. The more relevant data is collected, the more accurate decisions can be made. CRM software provides in-depth analytics about the products in greatest demand, the most effective advertising campaigns, the purchase history of each customer, and a lots more. You can slice and dice it in the CRM to micro-target your customers and find out exactly what is going to be flying off the virtual shelves in the coming months.
#5 Customer Support
“Most companies must realize that they are no longer competing against the brand that sells similar products. Instead, they’re competing with every other experience a customer has.”
Dan Gingiss
Customer support is what separates brands, what differentiates shopping experiences, and what decides winners and losers. Customers need to feel cared for and your reputation counts. A CRM system constantly updated with valuable customer data enables you to provide personalized support that makes the customer feel heard. Whether it is built into the programming of a chatbot, or on the screen of a customer service agent.
#6 Social Media Integration
CRM integration into social platforms allows retailers to share in the enormous amounts of data that social media provides. They allow the integration of social data to add another layer to the data gathered on the eCommerce website.
This enables yet more personalized and targeted social communications whether they are messages, ads, or personalize content sent in response to social media queries on your pages.
Ecommerce business runs on customer relationships
9 out of 10 consumers say exceptional customer service is important when choosing where to shop this holiday season (Simplr).
Whether it’s timely and efficient order fulfillment, excellent customer support service, easy to use website features, helpful sales teams, or attractive product choices – it all adds up to the customer experience. And investment in a modern ecommerce CRM system is vital to get all those things right.