The ecommerce industry has been booming like anything for the past decade. Also, the recent coronavirus pandemic has acted as a catalyst and propelled this growth further. These developments also reflect in multiple surveys. For example, according to BigCommerce estimates, global retail ecommerce sales will reach $6542 billion in 2023!
In addition, enticed by the benefits of ecommerce and the uncertainty that the coronavirus pandemic has brought to brick-and-mortar businesses, many businesses are shifting to ecommerce.
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However, it is worth mentioning that moving the business online is one thing, but making it profitable is quite another. Also, we need to keep this fact in mind that competition in the ecommerce sector has intensified significantly over time.
For all of these reasons, it is necessary that before you join the bandwagon of ecommerce, arm yourself with the essential eCommerce tools and technology, such as eCommerce CRM software and others, to beat this fierce competition.
In this blog, we will learn about what ecommerce CRM is, the various types of CRM, and how eCommerce CRM can help businesses increase their sales opportunities. Let’s start with the basics.
What Is eCommerce CRM Software?
In simple terms, ecommerce CRM software is Customer Relationship Management software specifically designed to meet the needs of ecommerce businesses in terms of customer interaction and engagement. The CRM for ecommerce is pretty much similar to the typical CRM but comes with a slew of additional features and functionalities that are specifically incorporated to fulfill the varied needs of ecommerce businesses.
Moreover, the ecommerce CRM offers plenty of advantages, including the ability to manage demand and supply of products, improve after-sales service, reduce operational costs and eliminate unnecessary expenditure, plan targeted marketing, thorough data analysis, monitor your customer journeys, automate workflow, and effective order management, among other things.
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CRM software can be classified into three types: operational, analytical, and collaborative. What are these three CRMs, and how do they differ from one another? Let’s find out in the following segment.
What Are The Types of eCommerce CRM Software?
As previously stated, CRM software is classified into three types: operational CRM, analytical CRM, and collaborative CRM. Let us take a quick look at how they vary and what their primary functions are.
- Operational CRM: An operational CRM is designed to improve day-to-day operations and customer interactions by integrating various sales, marketing, and customer support processes. Data aggregation systems, call centers, and contact centers are some examples of operational CRM.
- Analytical CRM: As the name suggests, analytical ecommerce CRM is a technology that enables businesses to collect and analyze customer interaction data. Using these data, companies can outline future strategies with a goal to improve customer experience, customer retention rate, and satisfaction level.
- Collaborative CRM: Collaborative CRM enables businesses to collaborate with multiple departments and teams within an organization by establishing a centralized repository of all information. It also synchronizes numerous communication channels such as phone, email, fax, internet, etc., to provide customers with seamless and timely services.
So these are the three principal types of ecommerce CRM. As we can see, each type has a unique role to play and a set of benefits to offer. Keep all of these factors in mind to select the best ecommerce CRM that perfectly meets your specific business needs.
Let’s now move on to the next section of this blog, which discusses how an ecommerce CRM system can help your business increase its sales opportunities.
7 Ways eCommerce CRM Can Boost Your Sales
The following are the 7 ways how an ecommerce CRM can increase your sales prospect. Let’s take a quick look at each one.
1. Help You Know Your Customers Better
One of the most remarkable benefits or ways in which ecommerce CRM assists organizations is by enabling them to understand their customers and their needs better. Businesses can use CRM software to gather all the necessary information about their customers through various means and then use that information to understand their needs better.
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For example, with the help of CRM for your business, you can deep dive into various information such as your customers’ spending power, their preferences, the weekdays they prefer to shop, the payment mode they choose, and so on. This information will ultimately allow you to know your customers and their interests better while empowering you to develop tailored approaches for each of them.
2. Simplify, Streamline & Automate Business Activities
It is common knowledge that as your eCommerce business grows, your workload and responsibilities will also grow in parallel. For this reason, you will need certain practices and mechanisms to ensure increased workload can be carried out efficiently and without hiccups. Using the CRM for eCommerce, you can substantially simplify, streamline, and automate customer engagement activities.
Also, you can assign each customer call or complaint to the appropriate department or agent, track their progress, notify customers in real-time, and complete the task within the specified deadlines. All of these actions would undoubtedly be tough to carry out without the help of technology such as eCommerce CRM. This means, not only does CRM strengthen customer relationships, but it will also increase sales and revenue.
3. Allows You To Segment Customers
When running an ecommerce business, segmenting customers based on their behavior and other variables is necessary. It is crucial to segment customers based on various factors such as age, geography, buying power, order frequency, product preferences, etc. You can achieve this goal at a significant level using ecommerce CRM software.
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In addition, some of the major benefits of market segmentation include finding market opportunities, managing inventory stock, designing new marketing campaigns or revising existing campaigns, increasing strategic resource allocation, and higher customer retention and satisfaction levels. All of these benefits will directly or indirectly help generate new sales opportunities.
4. Let You Integrate Multiple Tools & Services
In this technology-driven era, very few firms use none or very few tools and services. Rather, most firms are reaping the benefits of technologies by using as many tools and services as possible. For this reason, it is vital to integrate all of these tools and technologies in one place and establish a unified system so that all data can be catered to, monitored, and analyzed efficiently.
Fortunately, you can accomplish this task quickly and effectively with the help of an ecommerce CRM. Besides, most of the best ecommerce CRM platforms feature exceptional integration capabilities, allowing businesses to integrate multiple tools and services such as VOIP phone systems, digital payment processing systems, shipping service integration, and advanced analytics and tracking, among others. The better the infrastructure, the higher the sales.
5. Help You Offer The Quick & The Best Customer Service
Another way an Ecommerce CRM helps businesses increase sales prospects is by enabling them to provide rapid and excellent customer support. Since every customer expects the quick and best resolution to their problem, it is necessary that you have the best tools at your disposal and best practices in place.
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You can easily achieve this goal using CRM for ecommerce since it allows you to integrate various tools, services, and communication channels. Moreover, because CRM streamlines and automates most customer interaction activities, it becomes easier for organizations to understand the customer issue better and eventually provide on-time resolutions. This will also help in portraying a customer-friendly image of your organization besides boosting customer satisfaction levels.
6. Empower You To Perform In-depth Analysis
When it comes to ecommerce business, campaign analysis is a crucial exercise that you must not overlook. For example, suppose you ran a sales or marketing campaign for a specific product category. But you didn’t conduct any analysis to find whether the campaign was successful or not! Is it an ideal methodology? Obviously not. Remember, when it comes to ecommerce, every campaign and every piece of data must be evaluated.
The in-depth analysis will help you identify where you went wrong, which elements of your strategy failed to deliver the expected outcome, and which ones surpassed your expectations. You can efficiently conduct all of these evaluations using ecommerce CRM. Eventually, based on the results, you can identify and fix any loopholes, as well as replicate the successful strategy in the future.
7. Help Improve Overall Performance
Although this blog centers on how ecommerce CRM software increases sales prospects, it is important to note that the CRM software will also help you enhance the overall productivity and performance of the firm along with sales. For example, you can increase customer satisfaction, boost revenue generation, and ultimately, ensure business success.
However, it is worth noting that all of these advantages will eventually help bring more sales opportunities to your company. Not only that, but ecommerce CRM will assist you in reducing the stress on your workforce while also empowering them to perform jobs more efficiently.
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That concludes the 7 ways ecommerce CRM software can assist your business in creating sales prospects. We are very hopeful that this information has answered all the questions you may have had about the CRM role to help increase business sales.
Summing Up: There is no doubt about the slew of advantages that ecommerce CRM offers to organizations, including increased sales, enhanced productivity, a satisfied workforce, streamlined operations, improved customer experience, and business success, among others. However, as we have seen in this article, one of the most significant advantages is that it helps ecommerce businesses to generate more sales opportunities. So, if you haven’t already invested in the best ecommerce CRM, it’s not too late to correct that mistake!
