The Best CRMs for eCommerce
Growing a successful online retail business can be challenging. Selling amazing products is only the first step, you also need to build long-lasting relationships with your customers so they keep coming back to repurchase, increasing your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
If you’re looking to harness your data to create a personalised customer journey and automate your business processes, you need a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) that is tailored to your needs.
In this guide, we’ll be breaking down what an eCommerce CRM is, which features to look for, and our recommendations for CRMs that could suit your business needs.
What is an eCommerce CRM?
A CRM for eCommerce is a tool designed to help online retailers manage their customer data and give them a full 360-degree view of their activity: what they bought, what they looked at, when they last spoke to customer support, and more. This is made possible by connecting your storefront (such as Shopify or WooCommerce) to the CRM.
What to look for in an eCommerce CRM
Integration capabilities
Integrations should go beyond simple contact syncing. There should be a bidirectional flow of data between your CRM and your other platforms, namely your storefront and marketing platform. This ensures that users have a 360-degree view of every customer interaction and action, such as previous purchases, customer support tickets, and recently viewed products.
Automated workflows
Integrations bring us to automated workflows. These take repetitive tasks off your plate so you can spend your time more efficiently and work best when paired with integrations for cross-platform workflows.
Customer segmentation
Targeting every customer with every campaign is a thing of the past. Segmentation allows you to categorise your audience into specific groups based on their behaviour. For example, you could split your contacts into active and inactive and send those who haven’t purchased from you in a while an incentive to do so, such as a discount code, while rewarding your loyal customers with early access to a sale.
Predictive analytics
In order to stay ahead of your competitors, you need to be able to look forward, not just back. Predictive analytics uses machine learning to identify patterns that can help you be proactive in your decision making.
Our CRM recommendations
Our preferred CRM systems, SugarAI and EspoCRM, are built to work well with other platforms. Their API-first design means they can easily integrate with the third-party tools you already use, providing a bespoke solution that fits your business.
EspoCRM
If you’re looking for a highly flexible, cost-effective solution, look toward EspoCRM, an open-source CRM ideal for growing eCommerce organisations.
EspoCRM excels at streamlining the sales and purchases side of your business. With its built-in modules for products, pricing, and invoicing, as well as inventory management tools, Espo is a lightweight operations hub.
Due to Espo being open-source and API-first, it is highly customisable and can be configured to automate processes such as post-purchase messages, refunds and returns, and manage loyalty schemes via its Business Process Management (BPM) tool.
SugarAI (formerly SugarCRM)
SugarAI is a great enterprise-grade solution for e-commerce businesses looking to go beyond basic data storage. Its standout feature is its AI-generated recommendations tool, which analyses a year’s worth of your sales data to suggest what a customer is likely to purchase next. SugarAI then provides your team with a clear explanation of why the recommendation was made and how to act on it so they can personalise their outreach effectively. This information could also then be utilised to inform which products should be highlighted on your homepage.
The source of SugarAI’s power lies in its API-first connectivity, which creates a single source of truth by syncing your storefront, marketing platform, and ERP into your CRM in real time. By integrating these systems, your customer service team can resolve complex enquiries easily while the marketing team triggers segmented campaigns based on customer behaviour.
Interested in SugarAI or EspoCRM for your eCommerce business?
