Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are the modern-day equivalent of the rolodex and have plenty of upgraded features to help business owners understand their customers and make smarter moves.Whatever business you’re running, there’s no denying that fostering a good relationship with your customers is still a must. After all, they serve as the bloodline of your company and without them, it’s hard to imagine how you’re going to make it big with good results.
Ecommerce is one such industry where professionals greatly benefit from using a CRM, from increased productivity and sales output to serious savings on labor costs and marketing budget. That is why e-tailers around the world are turning to Shopify CRM software, among others, to help them enhance their online store operations. The best solutions are extremely robust and can help you realize up to 245% ROI by connecting you with your customers and automating your workflows.
If this metric has gotten you excited about signing up for Shopify as one of the top enterprise ecommerce software, you should know that that’s only the beginning. There are so many other benefits that you can gain by using this CRM software.
Here is what you need to know.
It Connects Shopify & Marketplace Accounts in One Hub
Most savvy e-tailers have invested in a multi-channel strategy so they can increase their total addressable market and sell where the buyers are shopping. Without a CRM, though, they cannot see all their data in one place and constantly must click between tabs or download multiple analytics reports to get an idea of how their business is performing.
This works totally fine when you’re still a small business. But once you’ve already started to grow, you need to be more efficient with your operations. Manually going through analytical reports just won’t cut it, as it’s very easy for you to get lost in the process.
The good news is that a Shopify CRM software solution saves the day by aggregating all Shopify and marketplace account data into one easy-to-use dashboard. Get a quick snapshot of your key performance indicators or dig deep into per-product and per-channel granularity. You will save the time you were spending clicking around your seller accounts and waiting for reports to download, and as a busy Shopify seller, time is money.
It Streamlines Reporting & Customer Service
Picture this: You have an issue with a product you ordered from an online store, so you call customer service. Each specialist asks for your name, what you ordered and what the issue is before transferring your call to a different specialist who can better assist you. It is frustrating, isn’t it? This process is streamlined with a Shopify CRM software, which stores details about each customer and keeps a detailed log of your interactions with them. With a CRM, when customers call your support team, they will skip right to getting their issues resolved. CRM software also saves you an average of 40% on labor costs, according to Forrester research.
It Expedites Growth Marketing & Remarketing with Key Data Points
Using a Shopify CRM gives you access to rich data reporting that you can use to make informed business decisions and smarter moves that supercharge growth. One area that benefits greatly from customer data is marketing, both in terms of growth marketing and remarketing, also known as retargeting. Growth marketing is made easier with customer data because you can instantly see if there are any areas where there are high concentrations of customers. Then, you can start with geo-targeted advertising to attract even more shoppers from those areas and grow your business more efficiently. For remarketing, you can use customer data to boost your email marketing and social media retargeting. Each customer should automatically be added to your email distribution list, which should then be segmented once you can determine clear distinctions between groups. These are often demographic segments, but you might also see a divide between different products. Segmenting lets you better customize messaging to resonate with recipients. At the same time, you can drive traffic to your website (using geo-targeted ads) and install a Facebook Pixel to serve more ads to those who visited the site.
It Connects Your Entire Back Office Team for More Synergy
As ecommerce businesses scale and more employees join the team to keep everything running smoothly, there are more opportunities for details to slip through the cracks. It is a natural phenomenon, even though it should (and can) be avoided. You can easily solve this problem with a Shopify CRM, which connects your entire back office team for more synergy. Sales reps can see who has recently made a purchase, so they can follow up accordingly. Customer service can see who has contacted the company with issues or other feedback. Marketing can see who is buying what and segment advertisement audiences for better retargeting. The organization provided by a CRM streamlines the tasks of each department and facilitates better collaboration—and, therefore, a better customer experience.
It Gives You a 360-Degree View of the Customer Journey
Shopify sellers who do not use a CRM can only see information about each customer when he or she places an order. There is no insight into the pre-order stage or the post-purchase experience, both of which provide huge opportunities to invite a purchase. For example, let us say a shopper searches for a product you sell and clicks on your website because you offer the product at a better price than your competitors. Perhaps she even adds the product to her cart before leaving the site. Up to 80% of carts are abandoned, so this is highly likely. Without a CRM, you have no idea any of this is happening, so the shopper will not be retargeted or sent an email asking her to retrieve her abandoned cart. Even if she does return to complete the purchase, she will not be added to the email marketing list or reminded to come back and shop again. All of these are missed opportunities to turn shoppers into customers, and they can be automated with a CRM.
It Helps You Benchmark Trending & Seasonal Products for Future Growth
A Shopify CRM software solution shows you store and customer data, which includes the performance of each product sold. As time passes, you will be able to see the seasonality of your products and what times of year are the busiest. This helps plan, so you are sure to have enough stock to meet demand—but not an overstock that costs you money to store in a warehouse.
It Helps You Automate Workflow, Customer Support, Shipping & Returns
Simply put, a CRM can do it all. It’s already a well-known fact that automation saves you time, money and plenty of headaches, but what a lot of e-tailers might not know is that a high-quality Shopify CRM software can automate most of your ecommerce workflows: customer support, shipping and returns. We have covered how your customer support benefits from the use of a CRM, so there are no surprises there. That leaves shipping and returns, both of which are natural additions to an ecommerce tool. Shipping and returns data enhances the customer profiles in your CRM, giving you insight into who’s ordering products on a regular schedule (so you can contact them to remind them to reorder) and who’s a serial returner (so you can exclude them from notifications about promos and sales.)
Because all these processes are now streamlined, you’re more likely to enjoy a higher customer satisfaction rating, which is key to business success.
It is Worth the Investment
There are dozens of CRM statistics that showcase why it is worth the investment. Here are some of the real-life statistics that should convince you:
# Innopple Technologies found CRM adoption increases sales quota by 65%.
# Trackvia reported customer retention rates improve by 27%.
# Conversions can improve by 300%, according to Cloudswave, and cost per lead is reduced by 23%.
The list goes on. More and more retailers are using a Shopify CRM software every year, and as you can see, it is in your best interest to invest in one as well.
When this kind of effective tool is available to use at your disposal, why even waste the opportunity by not grabbing it? Now that you’re convinced that it’s worth the cost it’s going to entail, there should be no reason for you to fall far behind in using this tool.
In Closing
Retailers and other businesses alike are enjoying the advantages brought about by technology. Yes, running a business today is still just as challenging. But making it big is so much more attainable now. Retailers have more resources such as Shopify to streamline the business processes for them. In turn, once you sign up for Shopify, you get to enjoy the benefits as enumerated above. This makes you a more effective and productive seller. If you haven’t already, you should definitely take a good look into signing up with Shopify today.
