CRM for Ecommerce Businesses

Regardless whether you are a B2B or B2C business, online or offline, every business is about customers. A lot of time, money and effort is spent on acquiring new customers and keeping existing ones happy.
 
As mentioned in previous blog posts, acquisition is much more expensive than retention. It’s therefore no surprise that the continued success of any business heavily depends on repeat purchases from your existing customers. This is even more important for ecommerce businesses as online competition is fierce and relentless.
 
For every ecommerce business it is vital to stay in touch with their customers, learn about their buying habits and communication preferences to then determine their needs and wishes. This is where your CRM and your CRM strategy come into place.
 
Why should you invest in a CRM?
 
1. Collect, Store & Analyse Data
 
As we all know, data is the new oil. Data allows you to get to know your customers better and provide them with a more tailored communication and sales approach. Just think about all the data that we provide when we shop online: name, address, age, email address, phone number etc. All this data is just waiting for you to be used and to contrary popular belief, customers do value it if used in the right way.
 
2. Email Marketing
 
It’s a key tool that you should be using for your retention campaigns. The good thing is that many of the email marketing campaigns can be automated such as abandoned cart, follow up purchase emails, delivery confirmation just to name a few.
 
3. Social Media Integration
 
Social media is one of the newest CRM communication tools. It still is primarily used for acquisition and brand awareness, but more and more systems can now integrate your social media channels and provide valuable input into your customer preferences. Even MailChimp which is not a CRM as such provides in-depth statistics once you set up ad campaigns.
 
4. Analytics
 
Many of the ecommerce pages such as shopify provide you with some great analytics. Just imagine what you could do with them if they were linked up with your communication campaigns! All of a sudden you can link certain spikes of sales to specific marketing messages.
 
5. Reactivating Customers
 
Keeping customers loyal to your brand has become more challenging but it’s not impossible. The key to great conversions and even better retention is continued communication with your customers. To be very blunt: Don’t assume! Don’t assume just because they liked product A, they will come back for product B. Don’t assume, just because they’ve found you on their own that they will return. Keep talking to them with targeted content and always use their preferred communication channels.
 
There are many CRM softwares available and each one of them has their pros and cons. Having said that they all provide you with the same thing: DATA. And data will play an essential part in keeping your customers happy.