8 Reasons Why CRM Is Beneficial To Your Ecommerce Business
If you happen to think that running your online business without CRM is an effective strategy, you might want to think again. The world has moved on from the days when this software was used by corporate types to track contacts and sales deals. In this modern day and age, you can take full advantage of the advanced ecommerce CRM software that’s specifically designed to help online retailers like you get ahead.
Analytics, driven by detailed customer data, are the keys to success in today’s cross-channel ecommerce world. Yes, good website design and SEO are important to attract visitors, but without the right tools in place to convert those clicks into a loyal customer base, your online business won’t be in business for very long.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software empowers you to give online shoppers the products they want, when they want them as well as personalized customer care that will set your store apart from others in a $2 trillion per year ecommerce industry. Let’s explore exactly why CRM for ecommerce is so vital to your success.
Identifying Cross-Channel Trends
Did you know that more than 65% of shoppers use more than one channel to find what the products they are looking to buy? Utilizing multiple platforms to sell products or services is the norm. The problem is that your different sales channels rarely, if ever, connect well with each other, which makes it difficult to get a big picture look at trends.
Sure, with a lot of time and effort, or the expense of costly add-ons, it’s possible to piece together the information from all your different stores. But given the amount of time involved with that exercise, you might be looking at trends that are no longer trending.
Ecommerce CRM collects real-time data from all your sales channels and puts it all in once central place. This centralized data hub gives you instantaneous access to the comprehensive picture you need to stay on top of, and ahead of, buying trends, return patterns, where traffic is coming from, conversion rates and more. It’s a smarter approach to managing your multichannel presence and growing a loyal customer base.
Expanded, More Robust Analytics
There are any number of ecommerce platforms that will do the trick when it comes to the basics of selling, and they will all keep track of simple sales and pricing data. You are in the dark, however, as to who is making these sales, the time they’re buying, the average amount purchased, when or if they return for repeat transactions not to mention having zero information related to social media.
You can change all that with a CRM for ecommerce. Armed with the knowledge of who your customers are, what their interests are, what they’re buying and what they’re saying about your store on Facebook, Twitter and other social channels, you’ll be in a position to create powerful personalized sales campaigns, reduce returns and tweak your various sales channels to optimize conversion rates.
Team Communications
It’s common knowledge that effective communication can make or break a business, but too often it takes a back seat to the actual business. A CRM with team chat and tagging functionality integrates communication with your core business, so that it’s no longer an afterthought. With this feature in place, everyone on your team can stay aware of analytics, customer data and trends, while chatting in real-time using file sharing to review relevant data. Imagine everyone literally being on the same page and making progress together with increased productivity.
Improved Task Management
Regarding your team, you’re most likely already aware of how vital effective project management is to the core of your success. Rather than having separate software to keep track of projects, why not utilize the tagging feature of a CRM?
Newer CRM solutions give you the ability to assign tasks to people using a straightforward tagging function. For example, during a team chat you can simply tag Jane Doe with the task under discussion rather than opening up a separate task management system. The entire team knows who is working on what and can easily check on progress. This is a powerful way to improve team effectiveness, remove the need to pay for separate software and raise the level of accountability with your team.
Nurturing Leads
With statistics showing that almost 70% of shoppers abandon the cart before making a sale, online retailers need as much help as they can get with nurturing leads. New technology advancements mean that your ecommerce CRM can automatically track where the lead came from (e.g., newsletter signup, social media, one of your online shops, etc.), when the potential new customer was added, what their last activity was and more.
With this information, you can better assess the interests of potential customers and develop targeted marketing strategies to move your leads into your loyal customer base.
Sales Based on Customer Trends
Trend analytics is one of the most powerful benefits that CRM offers your ecommerce business. Over time, you can amass your own big data set that can tell you who is buying what, on which sales channel and when. With half of shoppers using mobile devices to purchase, and most buying from different sales channels, guessing is no longer an option.
And it’s not just sales data, either. Add in shipping preferences, number and frequency of returns, along with abandoned cart information and you have a comprehensive suite of trends to help you make truly informed decisions based on the needs of your own loyal customer base.
This puts you in the driver’s seat when it comes to adjusting your sales channels to offer specific products and services, designing your online specials, making checkout speeds faster and strategizing your next marketing move.
Collecting Data
CRM is also extremely beneficial when it comes to being able to collect customer data from your sales channels instantly through cloud-hosting; it’s one of the reasons why cross-channel CRM for ecommerce is the next evolution of this software.
Having instant, unfettered access to real-time data across all of your sales channels enables you to stay ahead of what your customers want. Knowledge is power, and it makes good sense to collect as much of these cross-channel data bits as you can when customers interact with your sales channels.
Knowing your customers means that you can better cater to their needs with more effective marketing and social strategies and a better product lineup — which translates to fewer returns, higher net income and a bigger market share.
Dealing with Returns
Customers are already very picky about doing business with companies as it is, so being impeccable with your return policy will foster more loyalty and repeat business.
With roughly one in three products that are ordered online being returned, you can’t afford to guess about your return policy. Once again, CRMs can help uncover reasons why customers returning products, so that you can take steps to improve your return rate.
With your CRM configured to collect and analyze returns data, you will have the tools at hand to determine what products are being returned more than others as well as who is returning products. This information will enable you to make improvements to your site such as beefing up your product descriptions, including better images, removing problem products from your inventory altogether, or designing comparison size charts or even how-to video tutorials for products that are more technical in nature. You will also be able to identify chronic returners and remove them from your marketing lists. Every little bit will help your bottom line.
Taking a good look at the most pertinent ecommerce trends that crossed over from 2016 to 2017, one thing is clear: Customers want an easy way to shop, checkout and return.
Shoppers also crave excellent customer service, and prefer to do business with retailers that strive to exceed their expectations. Setting your store apart from the pack in today’s crowded ecommerce world requires that you do something different and special. Getting there means that you are armed with the right tools from the get-go.
So make sure you don’t overlook CRM as one of those weapons that should be in your marketing arsenal along the way.
