Strategic Use of CRM For eCommerce Start-ups’ Growth

Today, online businesses are looking for vivid channels to connect with their customers and potential leads effectively. eCommerce businesses need to manage themselves properly so that they can offer the best user experiences. They need to be on the top of everything to deliver the orders on time without altering the customer experience in any way. This can only become possible when eCommerce businesses adopt a proper CRM solution.

What is CRM?

Before we start understanding the benefits and uses of CRM for eCommerce businesses, it is important to know what CRM is in the first place. CRM is a software system which can be used by companies, including those in the eCommerce sector, to manage the interactions with their customers. Apart from eCommerce, CRM can be employed across different industries. Businesses are different and so are their needs, hence it’s inevitable for a CRM, especially when provided by a trusted Web Development Company, to be tailor-made to meet specific requirements. CRM systems are mainly focused on finding and gathering the consumer information that comes to the eCommerce business. This information is then used as a part of marketing and advertising campaigns by offering strategic leads.

Benefits of CRM

Tailor-made CRM offers a number of amazing benefits to eCommerce businesses. Such solutions work towards meeting the business expectations of the clients.

Customer segmentation

If you are a frequent internet user, then you would have for sure noticed that the ads shown on the pages are for something that you have interest in. Based on search patterns, they go ahead and display advertisements which can interest you; the ones can go ahead and click on. So, how about such kind of interaction planned for your eCommerce business? With tailored eCommerce solutions, you can enhance the way your business connects with potential customers.

Now you can offer personalized customer service to your customers through proper and effective segmented data of customers. You can segment data based on different criteria like age, gender, spending history, interests, etc. Based on the received information, it will become possible for the sales agents to target the customers precisely and communicate with them in the best possible manner.

80% of shoppers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences. – Source

Effective use of time

If we look at the work of the sales team, it has been seen that they get only 11% of their time contributed towards active selling.

The rest of the time is spent on problem-solving and managing other kinds of administrative issues.

When you use customized CRM for your business, you will be able to have a series of processes automated which will save enough time of the agents. This way, they will be able to spend their time on other important jobs. The workflows of businesses need to be properly organized, smart and the best way to let this happen is through proper CRM services.

Get hand on most relevant information

Users are different. Some just visit the website randomly and leave while others go through products, like them and even add to the carts. Some shop for products or even abandon them in the cart. With the use of an effective CRM system, it is possible to get deeper insights into customer behavior on your online store. This will help your team to take the precise action on each of them before it’s too late.

As per a study, the average cart abandonment globally is 77.73%.

For mobile specific study, the average cart abandonment rate is 80.79%.

Now, these numbers are quite huge. By implementing CRM smartly in your business, you can work towards reducing these numbers while bringing in more sales for the business.

Social media interactions centralized

If you are into an online business, then there is no way you will be going ahead without taking care of your social media pages. Social media referrals and paid campaigns are a good source of traffic that comes to eCommerce stores. Today a large number of customer queries is received through social media and the way businesses respond to those queries is what customers look for to judge you. Mostly, consumers expect the businesses to respond back within an hour or two and with proper social media integrations; it will become possible for the online stores to manage the response time in a better manner.

Order management

Order management takes care of everything that comes in between lead generation and revenue generation. You can check out and take actions on order processing, order placement, tracking shipment, delivery of the product and finally, customer feedback. This has to be one of the main functionalities to look upon when you go ahead to have a CRM for your eCommerce business.

Payment data

It will not be easy to analyze the payment at once if you have multiple payment channels available on your site. By using a CRM, it is possible for you to know about bill invoices as well as the list of successful and failed payments. Integration with payment gateway is also possible for CRM.

You can track payment trends by using advanced analytics in CRM. This will offer the facility to analyze the highest value customers, best revenue sources and different metrics which can be used to offer customized services.

Grow your eCommerce startup business with CRM strategies

For an organization’s growth, customer relationships play a key role. This means you should manage your customers effectively and efficiently. There are a number of ways to do this and the best is the use of CRM technology for your eCommerce business. CRM can help you with…

Help with building strong customer relationships

Have a deep understanding of customer activities. This can start by having a complete history of the customer. This will help you build a strong relationship with him or her in the long run.

By using a CRM system for your business can help you with:

• Know the challenges of customers
• Engage with customers with relevancy
• Build a 1-to-1 relationship

Decrease sales cost

For the continued growth of the business, customers are the most important element. Now the issue is that they are not cheap and you can’t find them with ease. You can work on repeating sales of your existing customer base by using the budget of the new customer acquisition approach. In the customer portfolio, you will be able to see more gains in terms of renewal opportunities, upsell and cross-sell, leading to repeatable sales.

You can improve the performance of a business using CRM system in terms of:

• Improved sales efficiency
• Find new referral business
• Increased opportunities for upsell and cross-sell
• Increased effectiveness of sales
• Time to close reduced

Find the right customers

You have tried your best; put your time and resources in order to have new leads. So, what about things once you have got the leads? Did they move to the sales team? If yes, was your team aware of the different opportunities in them? Here you have a small window of opportunity and so you need to make the best out of that time. Do your best by making use of marketing tools like social, email, marketing automation, etc. along with your CRM. This way, the marketing and sales will have a complete idea of the leads. They will be able to work on having engaging communication with the targets so as to turn the prospects into customers.

As per Pardot, 79% of the leads coming from marketing efforts are never converted into sales without using a CRM system.

Boost employee productivity

When you decide to make use of the right technology in your business, you will be able to free up the time of your teams so that they can concentrate on more important business processes and tasks. This will make it possible to connect with customers. It is possible to eliminate or automate the manual operations like looking for the contact information of the customers or entering it, completely from the processes related to customers. It will be possible to free the employees through automation in marketing, sales, and service. This will give the time to work on strengthening the relationship with the existing customers and talking with the prospects.

Improve customer retention

It will become possible for the teams to proactively address issues with customers as well as approach the satisfied customers with newer opportunities by having proper visibility of business-customer relationship. The team can aid with best service experiences and satisfying purchases by having transparency into active campaigns and customer buying histories. When done well in this area, it will become possible to have a stronger relationship with the customers that will lead to a better future for the business.

Offer unmatched customer service

The product will be considered the best only if it comes with equally well service after sales, just like before. You should not bombard your prospects with multiple marketing promotions, which can easily annoy them and drive them away from you. Now if you end everything just after the sale, you will truly lose a valuable customer as well as the time and effort you put in the first place to have one.

Once the complete history of the customer is made accessible to the entire team, they will be able to work instantly towards offering personalized solutions and messages. Regular and easy interactions with the customers will build a bond and trust eventually, which will lead to repeated purchases.

Best CRMs for eCommerce Business

Wrapping it up

For eCommerce businesses, CRM solution work as an effective tool to track customer patterns, find high-value customers, offer personalized services and carry out targeted campaigns. Using CRM, businesses can work towards having a long-lasting relationship with customers all the while resolving big and small challenges in the way. They can increase customer retention and boost sales through expertly planned customer-centric activities.