Increasing Sales and Customer Loyalty: 7 Benefits of CRM for Ecommerce

Customers can have a long-lasting impact when it comes to ensuring the success of your business. It’s highly important to set up a healthy relationship between you and your customers for increasing loyalty. Customer relationship management (CRM) matters a lot and allows almost all consumer interactions to be digital. 

Everyone is selling something when you run an online shop and if you keep making an effort to make attractive offers for your audience, it can bring you closer to them. Especially in ecommerce, CRM is considered one of the most effective tools. 74% of businesses claim that CRM software has granted them improved access to customer data. 

Let’s dive deeper into this article to see what kind of benefits CRM holds in the ecommerce industry. 

A Few CRM tools we recommend for your ecommerce store 

CRM tools for ecommerce stores are important and they are what allow you to manage your customer data much more effectively and streamline the internal processes for your sales cycle. 

Before you choose a CRM tool, make a checklist of what you think the ideal ecommerce tool will be for you. Here are some criteria you can follow for choosing the ideal CRM tool: 

• Usability: Book a demo with the CRM provider to get a deeper feeling of the UI. During the demo, you can consider if the design is intuitive and includes all the features you need to support your marketing. Also, identify if the platform is easy to use or not. What kind of documents does the tool support, and what kind of training or service does the CRM offer? 

• Features: Learn more about the types of analytics the CRM software provides you with that help grow your business. A good CRM will allow you to run reports and create customizable dashboards. 

• Automated workflows: Usually, most CRMs will have this built-in, but you need to ensure that you can send out automated emails when you need to. 

• Customers’ history: Does the CRM tool allow you to analyze the consumer’s behavior and identify their purchase history? 
• Cross-channel tracking: Does the CRM have the ability to track the customer’s journey across your marketing channel or not? 

If you want a general idea of what kind of CRM tools you should use, here are some we recommend for you: 

• Klaviyo: Specially designed for ecommerce and is an automated marketing CRM platform that empowers brands to create a personalized experience. Some of the main features Klaviyo offers are Yieldify integration, both SMS and email combined, predictive analytics, historical views, and more. Pricing with Klaviyo starts at around $35 per month and goes up until around $1970 per month. 

• Pipedrive: Is trusted by more than 100,000 companies across the world. Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM tool for teams of all sizes with a user-friendly dashboard. If you are a beginner, Pipedrive is an excellent choice. Pipedrive is excellent for managing leads, insights, reports, and has an email builder with a drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to conduct email segmentation too. 
• Capsule CRM: Was created mostly for online businesses that are either small or midsize. More than 10,000 companies use Capsule. Its main features include contact management, email marketing, sales pipelines and analytics. Pricing with Capsule begins at around $0 until $40 per month. Furthermore, you have a 30-day free trial that allows you to access paid packages. 
• Ollie: There are many CRMs that are designed for a specific purpose, and you may need one of these to maximize your efficiency and profitability. Ollie’s cutting-edge software can transform brewery operations because the makers of this tool understand the industry. In the end, Ollie enables brewers to better manage customer relationships, brewery production, reporting, and more on a single dashboard.

7 Benefits CRM has in the ecommerce industry 

• Automation 

While it’s highly important to treat each customer as an individual, you can’t ever individually reach out to all customers and buy something from your store or sign up for SMS messages. Marketing automation helps you ensure that no one is getting missed. 

Ecommerce sites like WordPress, Squarespace, and Shopify, have a marketplace with additional apps, and plug-ins that allow you to sift through for automation help. Also, you have easy digital downloads (EDD), a plug-0 that allows your users to download digital products after you purchase them, so you don’t need to waste time trying to send files to yourself. 

• Provides a single user ID for each customer 

A user ID allows you to keep track of your customers and record all of their actions, purchases, and searches. One of the greatest ways for doing this is by having your customers sign up for your store. This way, their account is associated with actions that can be considered and provide the best methods for staying in contact with them. 

Sometimes, it might be challenging to persuade people into signing up for something new. However, cookies can identify IP addresses that visit your store. That way, you can develop a unique user ID for all of your customers even if they are just regular buyers. 

For the richest customer data, consider a club or membership. Users will be much more likely to create a profile if they see they’ll benefit from it. Try to implement some urgency, such as “buy one, get one free”, or anything creative you can think of. 

• Reduces costs 

Managing your clients is much more effective than trying to gain new ones. It takes time, work and money for establishing credibility with your current consumers and it takes lots of dedication for transforming your customers into loyal ones. 

Customers who are already loyal and have gone through your acquisition stage already know what your trip looks like and thus, make much more frequent purchases compared to new customers. 

• Customer satisfaction 

E-commerce businesses always reward programs that provide customers with a much better shopping experience. Something that customer loyalty programs guarantee is client satisfaction and pleasure. You shouldn’t ever view your customers as a one-time purchase, but always establish an excellent relationship with them in the future. 

• Distinguishes you from competitors 

Whenever your customers think about where to buy, they have the right to choose from wherever they think is the best fit for your company. Treating your customers with respect is a must, but if you want to offer a more personalized experience, it’s better for you because it distinguishes you from the rest and allows you to look better than your competitors in front of customers. 

Always make your customers feel appreciated because 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a company that offers a personalized experience compared to those that don’t. 

• Loyalty program 

When using a CRM tool, you can create a loyalty program. Loyalty programs allow you to organize discounts and give your loyal users more than the rest because they are regularly buying at your company. Many companies have incorporated gamification in loyalty programs to improve the user experience, foster community development, and collect user-related data in order to keep these programs exciting and enjoyable. Loyalty programs are good, but it all comes down to what your customers want. You know them best, so what looks most appealing to them is what will work for you. 

Here are a few examples you can use for your loyalty program: 

• Extended product warranties for your members. 
• Exclusive member-only product catalogs 
• Free shipping for loyal members 
• Buy one get one free discount 
• Any type of discounts 
• Points on purchases that can be redeemed later 

• Top-notch customer support 

It’s normal to say that one of the biggest things customers can judge your business for is how they can handle any customer inquiries. If your customer isn’t happy with how you do business, or how you solve problems, they most likely won’t return and will tell everyone about how unsatisfied they are with people. 

If you can handle complaints well, customer satisfaction increases and it encourages customers to come back all the time. Moreover, they’ll inform their family and friends about their good experience and this will spread from person to person, especially nowadays since social media has become so popular. 

Studies show that customer complaints that can be handled quicker will usually make people spend more money than they thought so. When customer complaints can’t be handled well, things might turn upside down and it becomes a profitable challenge for you and your business. 

The whole point 

Increasing sales and customer loyalty is a main concern for businesses and CRM tools are great at helping you improve how your business works. Running an ecommerce online shop isn’t always easy and you need to implement certain strategies to increase sales and promote customer loyalty. 

CRMs are great for increasing customer satisfaction, but at the end of the day, it’s important to choose a CRM tool that will fit your business requirements. Many fall into the same trap, rushing the process and choosing the wrong tool for themselves.