In broad sense of the word, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is not a software but a philosophy of business. Even if you keep the information about your clients by making notes in your organizer book and you are able to find the necessary information quickly — it is also CRM.
Nowadays businesses have a huge volume of data and software helps to work with it. In this article, we’d like to emphasize CRM concepts in the e-commerce business and discover the personal approach to customers as a part of an online store strategy.
What is CRM Strategy?
CRM is a very powerful tool that allows companies to better interact with customers, provided that it works within a coherent and customer-oriented strategy. The introduction of a CRM system should not be at the beginning, but at the end of the road, when a company is organizationally, institutionally and technologically ready for change, when there are a clear strategy and resources for its implementation. We need to constantly review the strategy for its relevance and compliance with the objectives of the company.
There are a number of reasons why companies go to review their CRM strategies. Key drivers include:
- Standardization of decentralized processes that interfere with customer relationships
- Strengthen customer relationships with new technologies
- The use of new channels to improve customer service and introduce new multichannel and omnichannel consumption patterns
How Do You Manage Customer Relationship Management?
Implementing a CRM strategy is a large-scale change affecting all aspects of a company’s business related to customer interaction. Integrated CRM model covers:
- Customer business processes
- Information systems
- Interaction channels
- Partners of the company that interact with end-users
What are the Goals of Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
- Determine the problems that you encounter when dealing with customers
- Describe customer interaction scenarios
- Develop a KPI
- Identify important events and available resources
The preparatory stage will allow not only to formalize the initial requirements but also to evaluate the maturity of the processes, to understand the scope of work that must be performed before the start of CRM implementation.
Sales History and Cross-selling for Customer Relationship Management
The customer’s purchase history can give you a lot of opportunities to increase your sales. One of the most efficient methods is cross-selling or cross-marketing. It works very simply. You analyze what the client has purchased in the past and, according to this history, you make a special offer in which you propose related products.
CRM and Personal Approach to One-Time Clients
Some online stores can have only one-time clients. For example, on the B2C market, furniture online store that makes individual orders may only sell once to a specific customer because most people do not change the furniture more often than every several years. The probability of repurchase is very low here. So, the advisability of CRM and the necessity of personal approach can be questioned in such types of online stores.
How can one time clients help?
- They can recommend an online store to their friends
- Loyal customers can give reviews and inform potential customers about their experience of using products
- Sometimes you can ask customers to show how they use a certain product they bought at home
What should you do?
Remind about yourself. It is very important to look for opportunities to remind about the online store.
Email Marketing Instruments With Clients’ Personalization
E-mail marketing is not SPAM and it is a very effective and cheap way to communicate with customers. Personal e-mail marketing can be used in any online store.
Personal Design Products for Customer Relationship Management
Personal Design products can be a part of the CRM strategy. If you allow your customers to create a unique product design, this service gives you a competitive advantage. We have experience of implementing our extension — T-shirt and Product Designer for Magento ®.
Communications Planning
All communications should be planned. The CRM system keeps the history of all e-mails, calls, meetings, and purchases, so you can easily determine the last date when you communicated with the client. If you sent an email several days ago, your next email should be sent no earlier than in one month.
This is a brief summary of an article published on GoMage blog. If you would like to learn more about CRM strategies — read the full article.
