Succeeding in eCommerce is impossible without satisfied customers. The competition is fierce, and entrepreneurs devote a lot of time, money, and human resources to attract and retain clients. Modern buyers demand a personalized approach. To bring down your operational costs, improve customer acquisition, and gather necessary data to make informed decisions you need a reliable set of eCommerce CRM software tools. Let’s find out why it’s necessary to have a CRM for an eCommerce business and examine 5 of the best systems.
Is there a difference between an eCommerce CRM and an all-purpose CRM solution?
In short, yes. General-purpose CRM software helps streamline business processes and managerial tasks. CRMs store client data, provide analytics and prognostic tools that can predict buying behaviors. CRMs allow business owners to have control over inventory, marketing, and sales. Such systems may come with additional features that are useful for specific industries and niches.
If you take a look at popular eCommerce CRM software tools, you’ll see that they have all the features a general CRM does. However, they provide additional options such as a deep analysis of customer behavior and shipping preferences. A good eCommerce CRM will give you a clear view of how a customer journeys through your online store. It can even suggest related products and services you should offer. These systems usually have features that let you integrate with a popular shopping platform or build your digital storefront from scratch.
Implementing an eCommerce CRM tool for your business brings several advantages. These specialized solutions can boost your growth, automate marketing efforts, improve sales and conversions, and provide reliable inventory management.
Gather customer data to make better decisions. User data helps you personalize your offers and marketing tactics. Improving your products and upselling to regular customers will maximize your conversion rates and increase revenue.
New ways of engaging with your audience. If you have all the necessary customer data, you can use different sales channels to make more sales, offer similar products, provide bonuses, gifts, promo codes based on a consumer’s behavior. A data-driven loyalty program is much more efficient than other approaches.
Powerful analytics. Most eCommerce CRMs on the market can offer you in-depth analytics about your customers and prospects. Use relevant data to create buyer personas and streamline your marketing efforts. Analytics will help you find popular products, trends and even predict future sales.
Competent customer support. If your customer service reps are always available to answer questions, help choose a product, or solve issues with defective merchandise, you will gain trust with your customer base. CRMs for e-stores and marketplaces come with special modules or integrations that allow you to build an effective customer service department. Chatbots are also an increasingly popular option.
We have selected 5 of the best CRM solutions for eCommerce businesses. They can accommodate companies of different sizes and are easy and intuitive to use. When choosing a CRM tool, don’t try to overcomplicate. If a system has more features than you need, you will spend too much time implementing it.
Bitrix24 is a customizable eCommerce CRM tool that provides a great free tier option and integrates with other popular business-related apps.
Pros:
Provides all necessary features for running an eCommerce company.
A great fit for small and medium-sized businesses.
Can be used with more than one online storefront at the same time.
Excellent supporting functions.
Can help you manage inventory, sales, and marketing efforts.
Can be used to manage projects and human resources.
Product-bundling, advanced invoicing options.
Integration with all popular payment gateways.
Provides automation for customer interactions.
Can be used to run personalized promo campaigns.
Provides customer journey analytics.
Easy-to-navigate visual editor.
Has SEO tools for your online store.
Gives you an overview of your business processes and a centralized place to supervise projects, personnel, and inventory.
Bitrix24 can be used to build landing pages and business websites that integrate seamlessly with your eCommerce store and CRM. It’s a great option if you want a large set of tools in one place.
Unlimited Users Free
Freshworks CRM is another popular all-around eCommerce CRM. It has AI-powered contact scoring that lets you personalize your offers and increase the efficiency of your marketing channels.
Pros:
Allows to completely automate your salesforce
Provides powerful marketing segmentation, has additional tools for lead scoring and customer behavior analysis.
Chatbots that use AI.
Ability to create responsive, mobile-friendly landing pages.
Different kinds of marketing tests, including A/B testing.
Email marketing tool kit that includes autoresponders.
Personalize offers and target different segments of your audience.
Calendar, to-do list, and task management.
Can be integrated with popular third-party apps, from productivity boosters and project management software to billing, lead generators, and eCommerce platforms.
The mutual dashboard helps your team members collaborate on the tasks and stay productive.
While Freshworks CRM offers a 21-day trial, the pricing can be too expensive for smaller businesses. It’s more suitable for medium-sized and large eCommerce companies.
Pipedrive is hailed as one of the more reliable eCommerce CRM systems on the market. It’s a great app for teams focused on sales.
Pros:
Inventory and pricing management.
Customer contracts, lead scoring, and segmentation.
Can be used as a task manager for teams of any size.
Transparent and easy billing, quoting, and order fulfillment.
Can be integrated with third-party apps.
Integration includes email platforms, team communication software, call-center apps, customer support chats, and accounting software.
Tracking data is easy and intuitive.
Can be used by people with no previous CRM experience.
Can track the progress of your sales team.
Visualizes your sales pipeline.
Consistently rated high for its usability.
Has a simple and convenient dashboard.
Almost 100 thousand businesses large and small, use Pipedrive for their tasks related to sales and marketing. Pipedrive offers a free trial and a straightforward pricing plan, depending on the size of your team.
Salesforce is one of the most popular enterprise-level eCommerce CRMs on the market. It is designed for large teams and allows you to manage your client list, analyze customer buying behavior, and close deals.
Pros:
Provides insight into marketing channels.
Partner and affiliate network management.
Advanced email marketing options.
Can be integrated with popular third-party apps.
Integration options include accounting, electronic signatures, multi-channel marketing.
Geared towards large sales teams.
Allows to assign roles, distribute leads, and track results easily.
Scalable, a good fit for a large or growing online store.
Provides tons of customization options.
Extensive, in-depth tracking and analytics.
While Salesforce is probably the best-known CRM tool, it has a slightly outdated design and a relatively steep learning curve. It’s the default option for eCommerce corporations. Smaller teams and startups may find it too big and clunky.
Hubspot is a cloud CRM solution for medium-sized and large teams. It’s free to use for individual sales representatives. Hubspot covers all the bases when it comes to eCommerce business needs.
Pros:
Automatic data capturing.
Powerful customer analytics tool.
Mobile app.
Intuitive dashboard for task management with daily reports and information about deals in progress.
Can assign tasks with deadlines to your sales representatives and other team members.
Customer segmentation and lead nurturing.
Easy integration with all major platforms and apps.
Integrates with social media apps, team communication software, calendars, call-center apps, video platforms.
Collects data from a variety of third-party interactive web forms.
Advanced email marketing and list management options.
Several pricing tiers and a long list of integrations allow customizing Hubspot according to the needs of different businesses
Hubspot offers a free-tier option that has limited options. It can be used by solopreneurs, individual sales reps, or small businesses. Larger teams will have to pay for advanced features.
There are dozens of eCommerce CRM software tools on the market. Before you make your choice, think about your business needs and future prospects. It takes time to implement a CRM solution, so you need to be sure that it will suit your needs in 6 months, a year, or 2 years from now. Some eCommerce CRMs are geared towards smaller businesses and solopreneurs, others have an extensive set of features that is a better fit for marketplaces and large online stores.
If you are a small business with an opportunity to grow, choose an easy-to-implement solution like Bitrix24 or Pipedrive. They can scale as your business continues to grow and have all the necessary features to manage your inventory, sales, and customer data.
API and integrations. The first thing that you should keep in mind is how well a CRM connects with your eCommerce platform. Most of them can work with major platforms out-of-the-box. Others require some tinkering. Before making a purchase contact the eCommerce CRM vendor to make sure that the system will integrate with your current tech stack. Their customer support can also set everything up for you.
How big your business is. Small online shops and large marketplaces have different needs. CRM providers usually tailor their offers to either group of customers. Universal solutions do exist, but they might not be the best fit in your situation. Are you fulfilling orders personally? Do you have a large sales team? How many orders do you have daily? What kind of customer data do you collect? Do you need a powerful analytics system? Answer these questions, and you will better understand what CRM software works best for you.
On-premise vs. cloud. eCommerce systems geared towards small and medium businesses are mostly cloud-based. Some of them, like Bitrix24, can also offer you an on-premise option. Cloud CRMs are a great choice if you don’t want to spend a lot of money to set up the system. On-premise CRMs are usually the choice of large companies that need to have physical control over their data and the ability to customize the system to fit their needs.
Value for money is also important. A value of a CRM solution is based on its available features, pricing model, general usability, and customer support.