In the world of eCommerce, or any kind of online business, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools become even more important because of the intense competition on one hand and the quick transactions and lack of personal touch, on the other. Hence it’s important to build a strong, trusting relationship with your customers so that anyone who chooses to buy from you could become a regular customer.
So, eCommerce CRM tools are the tools that provide a centralized repository for all your customer data, improve communications with customers by providing insights about them from data, personalize your marketing efforts by slicing and dicing the customer information, and help you improve your customer care by understanding the customer problems better through centralized customer information.
E-commerce CRM tools should also stand out from generic eCommerce in ways like providing powerful insights from customer data, past orders, and shipping details. It should give you clarity on your customer’s journey on your store and suggest related products and offers in a customized manner. It should also have smooth integration with your site without much manual intervention or data entry.
It should also be able to automate repetitive tasks like sending welcome emails, auto-mailing the products upon purchase, and autogenerating offers for each and every customer section. Unlike other CRM software which are more suitable for B2B customers, eCommerce CRM tools should integrate with your website and collect data from every individual customer in order to draw insights from that.
In this article, I have put together a list of 11 CRM tools and explained the features that make them powerful for eCommerce and how well they gel with your eCommerce website to provide you with a seamless solution.
(G2 Rating- 4.5/5, TrustRadius Rating – NA)
Metrilo offers a comprehensive analytics, CRM, and email marketing Platform to help eCommerce website owners grow their businesses using the power of data analytics. It integrates seamlessly with your site and quickly churns data to bring up a specialized dashboard with key insights.
It helps you Monitor important KPIs of your store in real-time. It also offers you revenue breakdown, product performance, funnels, and other marketing channels which you can plug and play with.
Metrilo’s magic goes further to segment your customers based on their behavior patterns which help you customize their experience on your website. You can play around with numerous filters to reach your ideal segment and use them for retargeting and email campaigns.
With Metrilo, your emails are highly targeted and personalized thanks to the analytics and insights generated by the platform. It allows you to set up automated emails for over 20 different customer actions and trigger events that lead to maximum personalization.
With end-to-end tracking and management of data for every individual customer on your eCommerce store, you never lose touch with any of your customers. This means more customer retention, which means lower costs by cutting down on ad spend for new customer acquisition.
This tool works particularly well for eCommerce because most eCommerce website owners, especially budding entrepreneurs, burn a lot of cash on ads, be it social media ads or search engine ads, to drive traffic to their stores. Thus if they could churn out the maximum repeat business for every unit of purchased traffic, that would mean maximum return on their investment and accelerated growth.
You should Metrilo if you are interested in the power of data analytics and are keen on using it to grow your business.
(G2 Rating- 4.5/5, TrustRadius Rating – 8.5/10)
HubSpot offers tools that can be easily integrated into your Shopify or WooCommerce websites and help maximize inbound conversion.
You can sync products, contacts, and
orders to create personalized deals for every customer segment.
It also helps you send targeted content to your customer segments and automate your ad campaigns, so that you can focus your time and energy on converting and delighting your customers.
HubSpot also has pre-set workflows, which include welcoming new customers, reaching out to customers who abandoned their carts, and re-engaging with customers who haven’t purchased in 3 months.
It also offers email templates that you can use to nurture your leads until conversion or engage existing customers into purchasing more from you. The abandoned cart email template pulls in the product details, customer details, and other order details automatically into your email for abandoned carts.
Further, HubSpot collects data from your eCommerce site and you can use this data to analyze the current status of your business, for example, target vs actual sales. You can also use the insights from this data to form your future strategy, like which new markets to target.
What makes HubSpot powerful for eCommerce is its ability to minimize your cost of traffic generation, and maximize the return on ads spend by driving maximum conversion for the traffic generated.
You can go for HubSpot if converting your leads into customers is your problem area and you want some help to optimize that.
(G2 Rating- 4.5/5, TrustRadius Rating – NA)
Freshworks offers a specialized product for eCommerce CRM called Freshmarketer. Freshmarketer uses the power of segmentation of data to create an extremely personalized experience for your customers.
The multichannel approach gives you the power to reach your customers with personalized messages based on what they like on the channels that they prefer. The channels include WhatsApp, SMS, email, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Apple Business Chat, Line Messenger, and Google Business Messages to name just a few.
Personalized engagement makes it extremely valuable in eCommerce because it removes one of the biggest weaknesses of an online business- the lack of personal touch. You are able to build personalized relationships with each individual customer as if they were visiting you personally at your physical store.
You can go for this tool if you want to build a brand that wants maximum visibility and connects with customers on all channels and devices.
(G2 Rating- 4.5/5, TrustRadius Rating – 6.6/10)
You can integrate Copper into your Google Workspace and save all your leads within the interface under various heads depending upon the stage of the sales pipeline they are in, through drag and drop.
Copper extracts lead directly from Gmail which helps you avoid a lot of manual data entry work. Copper also allows you to schedule email campaigns on Gmail to each contact based on the stage they are in, in order to nurture the leads into customers.
You can also set automated responses for common questions or requests, receive notifications for open emails and send bulk emails. The copper CRM system has been designed to integrate natively with Google Workspace and its look and feel is also like a Google product. Thus it is easy to use and is almost intuitive, so you do not spend much time or effort in training your sales team to use this.
Copper can be beneficial for eCommerce businesses by offering an additional lead conversion channel outside their eCommerce site. You can invest in lead generation and the creation of sales funnels, and once you have generated relevant leads, you can automate the lead nurturing workflow through Copper.
Use Copper if you want to handle lead nurturing and conversion separately from your main website.
(G2 Rating- 4.2/5, TrustRadius Rating – 8.2/10)
Pipedrive offers a visible sales pipeline that allows you to track leads, spot opportunities, streamline sales workflows and focus on sales success.
It also has automated reminders and follow-ups so that you can be more organized and do not have to spend time on repetitive tasks. From its real-time reports, you can make out what areas are working smoothly and what areas need your attention or prioritization.
In the Pipedrive interface, you can choose the stages of your sales funnel into which you want to place each of your leads and track their progress, for example, generated, qualified, consideration, converted, regular, etc. It allows you to use analytics and AI technology to identify opportunities to maximize sales closure.
Like many other CRM systems, Pipedrive also allows you to segment your leads and see the full history of communications with each of your leads.
Further, you can use its web form, which you can place on your eCommerce website to collect leads and those can be flown into your sales pipeline. Once they are in your pipeline, you can start tracking their progress and send set automated marketing follow-ups.
Increased visibility of leads in the pipeline can be really valuable in eCommerce, where sales cycles are rather short. Pipedrive’s unique interface gives you clarity and structure to work on your leads and buy some more time with your contacts.
Use Pipedrive if you or your team struggles in visualizing the overall status of your leads and which areas need how much focus and effort in nurturing.
(G2 Rating- 4.3/5, TrustRadius Rating – 8.7/10)
Capsule focuses on nurturing your relationships with your customers. It offers all contact management solutions in one place, tracks past conversations with each individual contact, and delivers personalized experiences to them. The past conversations can include emails, calls, file transfers, notes, or any other mode of communication.
It can be integrated with the contact form on your eCommerce website, thus requiring no data entry. It also helps import or export your data through CSV, spreadsheets, or vCard.
Further, Capsule keeps track of all information about your contacts in real time, from their latest tweets to the most recent invoices. It has numerous integration options including Zapier, Gmail, Mailchimp, Xero, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts to name a few.
Thus you go into any conversation with a contact backed with every possible information about them so that you can have a meaningful conversation that your customers can relate to. This helps build deep relationships with your customers.
Once again it is especially valuable in eCommerce where a personalized relationship with customers has always been a challenge. Building and nurturing deep relationships with your customers can always add some extra sales, which means extra growth in the long run.
You should go for Capsule CRM if you are a strong believer in the traditional principle of building your business based on deep meaningful relationships.
(G2 Rating- 4.0/5, TrustRadius Rating – 8.3/10)
Zoho promises to help you keep your customers happy. It helps you build an omnichannel presence and deliver a personalized experience to build customer loyalty. It allows you to connect with your customers via email, chats, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, and others
Its unique analytics allows you to segment your leads based on region, their needs, or lead source and run targeted marketing campaigns. Thus it allows you to empathize with your customers at a deeper level. It has a WordPress plugin that tracks every visitor on your site and their information is captured automatically. Thus lead generation is a cakewalk with Zoho.
The area where Zoho has an advantage over other CRM tools is its flexible contracts and easy upgrade options, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. This is where Zoho offers unique value for budding eCommerce websites. Since new eCommerce businesses often have rapid growth, the ease of adaption to any size of business is where Zoho wins the game in the e-commerce industry.
You can go for Zoho if you are worried about changing or upgrading your CRM provider as you grow in size.
(G2 Rating- NA, TrustRadius Rating – NA)
Although this is one of the most important purposes of CRM, and most tools offer this, Salesforce Customer 360 offers the most effective unification of data and consent management within your teams. This means your sales team, your marketing team, your customer service team, and you as a business owner, all are in sync with the most important information about each of your customers.
All businesses have experienced the challenges faced when their teams are working in silos. For example, If the marketing team wants to send qualified leads to the sales team, they might have to send it over an email in spreadsheets.
After sending the data, if the marketing team receives a new communication from a particular contact, and so they want the sales team to exclude this particular lead from their list, they might need to communicate again with the latest updates.
All this might become too tedious as your business grows in size with multiple teams and more customer leads. With real-time access to the latest customer information, a lot of extra work can be avoided.
Customer 360 also stands out with its powerful artificial intelligence features, which help enhance your understanding of customer behavior. It can provide valuable insights on what products to be pitched to which customers based on their past click data and purchase data.
In eCommerce, data management and communication need to be quick and easy, since online transactions are really fast, and customers expect quick resolutions of their complaints or any other issue.
This is the unique value Customer 360 brings to the eCommerce business, providing effective communication and unification of information across an organization, and preventing errors during data transfer.
You should use Salesforce Customer 360 if you or your team gets lost in the huge data, communications, and information about your customers flowing within your business.
(G2 Rating- 4.5/5, TrustRadius Rating – 6.8/10)
Omnisend is a tool specialized for eCommerce businesses, particularly small and budding businesses which do not have enough resources to handle the workload. Omnisend offers personalized emails and SMS campaigns for a consistent experience for your customers.
It also automates the sales process, including during-purchase and post-purchase email and SMS communications. With customer segmentation, you are able to target the right message to the right contacts, which means deeper relationships and more sales.
For small, new eCommerce businesses and solopreneurs, this can make life really easy and reduce a lot of workloads by taking care of communication efficiently.
Use Omnisend if you find it difficult to handle all the workload needed by your budding eCommerce business.
(G2 Rating- 4.5/5, TrustRadius Rating – 7.7/10)
SendingBlue markets itself as an end-to-end Digital Marketing tool and includes email marketing, SMS Marketing, WhatsApp Campaigns, etc. It also enables you to live-chat with your customers through Facebook or WhatsApp or add a Chatbot to answer their typical questions.
It helps you to automate multiple types of communications, which makes it stand out when compared to other CRM or email marketing tools. Its comprehensive automation capabilities are why you might choose it over other tools.
Its features include email marketing, transactional emails, SMS marketing, Transactional SMS, Marketing Automation, free unlimited contacts, email client testing, advanced statistics, and email and phone support.
You should go with this CRM tool if you are looking for end to end solution under one roof.
(G2 Rating- 4.1/5, TrustRadius Rating – 7.9/10)
Bitrix provides the complete solution needed to run your eCommerce business, along with a CRM solution. It helps manage your inventory, sales as well as marketing efforts. It can also be used to manage projects within your business and Human Resources functionality.
It also provides smart invoicing, where you can create an order within the CRM, and send the invoice along with the payment details to your client where they can pay through multiple options. Further, it also offers automated interactions with your customers like any other CRM tool.
You should choose this tool if you are looking for a single solution to help you manage multiple aspects of your business, rather than going for separate tools for CRM, project management, payments, and marketing etc.