CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system, has been a buzzword for way too long. Yet, the buzz is not dying down. On the contrary, the number of businesses adopting CRM for eCommerce to boost customer retention and drive sales continuously increases and will keep increasing in the future.

In the growing and ever-changing field of eCommerce, using a CRM for online store built on an eCommerce platform system represents a strategic decision. It will allow eCommerce firms of all sizes to leverage their contacts and truly put their customer information to use.

What Is an eCommerce CRM?

A CRM stands for customer relationship management, a software that allows you to store relevant data about your existing and prospective customers. The greatest advantage is that all the information is stored in one place.‍

Thus, CRM helps you determine potential sales opportunities and give you an overview of your business operations. For e-commerce businesses where things are developing very fast, CRM is a goldmine, as it allows any business owner to organize all the customer interaction information.

A CRM solution for ecommerce provides functions like tracking interactions, anticipating next steps, and providing sales, marketing, and customer service with other tools, as well as features tailored to digital sales, including storing customer histories, tracking shipping preferences, and suggesting related products.

Through various features, an ecommerce CRM system tracks your customers’ journey through your site to give you an accurate picture of future marketing and sales opportunities.

Importance of CRM for eCommerce Sites

Incorporating a CRM tool into your ecommerce site can help you track customers’ journeys through the sales funnel, send personalized offers automatically, access up-to-date customer information and track all customer interactions on your website and social media channels.

1. Enhances Sales Performance

   Design customized analytics dashboards for your eCommerce company that displays your sales crew’s most critical metrics. You can standardize the sales process by using workflows that prompt your sales reps to take the appropriate actions at each stage.

   In addition to tracking new leads from your website and social media channels, an integrated CRM system will provide the sales team with better visibility into their sales pipeline and the ability to follow up and qualify leads.

2. Improves Inventory Planning

   You can make knowledgeable judgments about which products to fill and which to discontinue by analyzing your customer from a 360-degree perspective, including their buying patterns, preferred payment methods, and spending habits.

   Based on documented stock turnover, current order levels, and future sales expectations, the CRM also forecasts future inventory requirements by combining sales forecasts with inventory data.

3. Provides a Competitive Edge

   Using CRM tools, you can see AI-generated insights in real-time — allowing you to stay ahead of your competitors by responding in real time to new developments. For example, you might find that a user persona usually purchases two related products simultaneously.

   You could suggest a pile of related products in your online store the next time somebody attempts to buy that item to boost your average order value.

4. Boosts Email Marketing

   When you know your customers’ context, you can make more relevant offers to them. You can, for example, reach out to a once-loyal customer and offer to rectify the situation if your CRM system tells you that a once-loyal client has left a great review.

   You can also run an email campaign in winter if the demand for a particular product surges during spring.

Why Use CRM for eCommerce?

When a company plans to expand, leaders realize that getting a custom CRM solution will be a great help. Investing in technology has always been an important factor in business, as technology can help a business drive results, improve productivity, and stay competitive.

CRM software solutions are valuable for improving sales and marketing operations while helping companies organize valuable data about their customers in one place. Still, it is very important to make good investments with good ROI. Regarding CRM solutions, research has shown that these tools pay businesses $8.71 for every dollar they invest.

However, even though there are various off-the-shelf CRM solutions available, businesses’ unique processes on their daily plates often demand a custom solution that will suit the needs of a certain organization. Today, we will advise you on designing a custom CRM solution that will offer all the benefits your business strives for.

1. Determine Business Needs

   Off-the-shelf CRM solutions are designed to fit according to the requirements. This means there are some functionalities and features that you will be using and a lot of those that are not needed (but you will still pay for them). Not only are you wasting money, but these obsolete features might make things more complicated than they should be.

   If you already had a CRM that didn’t work for you, think about the features and functionalities that were missing and that made your work more difficult. If this technique doesn’t work, carefully analyze your sales and marketing processes, find out what can be improved or talk to other departments to get valuable feedback and outline your needs precisely.

   You can optimize a custom solution according to the requirements of the business, and comparatively, it takes less time to learn. You also reduce your CRM costs and pay only for the things you need and use.

2. Automate Tasks

   A custom-designed CRM allows your team to automate workflow, processes, and tasks quickly. When determining your needs, you must also see which you should automate day-to-day tasks. This can be very helpful, especially with manufacturing companies or businesses that have thousands of orders regularly.

   Look for places where there are maximum chances for human error. This will customize your CRM to leverage all automation opportunities and give your customers faster service and better-quality products. For example, if you provide long-term services, you can use automation like this – the eCommerce CRM system will inform your sales team that a certain service is about to expire.

   On the other hand, you can improve your customer service by installing automation that directs customer calls and other inquiries to the right person who can give the right answers. The possibilities are limitless, and automation can boost productivity to a great extent.

3. Seamless Integration

   All businesses have different needs. Therefore, the solutions they use and the assets incorporated into their business processes vary from business to business.

   For example, many companies rely on their websites to sell products and services, which is their main revenue source. Other companies rely on social media, and some rely on videos. The problem is that all companies have different needs in terms of design and functionality.

   Instead of having customer relationship management (CRM) as a separate service and adding entries manually to your website (as the system is not designed for your website), you can create a custom CRM solution that will integrate seamlessly with your website. You can have all the actions customers take on your website easily and automatically added to your CRM solution with custom integration.

   On the other hand, many other tools companies rely on might not be compatible with basic CRM solutions. Moreover, even if they are integrated, some companies have different integration needs as they use this integrated software in a certain way.

   Instead of working around it, by changing processes and workflows, you can create custom integrations with your custom CRM.

4. Create a Scalable Ecosystem

   When you build a custom CRM solution, one of the major decisions is whether to build it for internal use or transform it into a SaaS platform.

   SaaS-based applications are gaining popularity, but that’s not why you should go for them. However, if you do, you must ensure a scalable and flexible system built for yourself.

   CRM in e-business includes many individual applications designed to simplify and streamline various business processes. As a result, every department might have different requirements, and new requirements will emerge once the business grows.

   You might not be able to develop all the applications simultaneously. But keeping room for scalability can help you develop system elements in small sessions.

5. Provide Analytical Solutions

   A CRM in e-business is incomplete without an analytical tool that can provide insights into your prospect’s or customer’s behavior.

   An analytical CRM for online business can help you effectively manage your processes. With all the customer data analysis, it can provide actionable insights to help improve customer acquisition and retention processes.

   It gathers, stores, organizes and analyzes customer data from various channels so that you can study and find out the problems your prospects are facing and how to solve them.

List of 10 Best CRM for eCommerce Business in 2023

Among today’s best ecommerce CRM tools, these  are the best CRM for eCommerce & most effective for managing your customer data and enhancing internal sales processes:

1. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM in e-business is a colossal and comprehensive platform that offers your business various services like sales, customer services, and CRM Marketing. From enticing the prospects to converting the lead, and customer retention to professional support, this comprehensive automation tool has got everything covered. As a result, most enterprises have acclaimed it as a successful solution as it fosters every business need.

Earlier, there were numerous systems that you had to switch through for marketing analytics, marketing automation, email & lead nurturing, SEO, Social media, and many more. But since the induction of HubSpot, enterprises have hit the right bells and whistles in this experiential economy.

Pros

• HubSpot CRM is easy to use and has a user-friendly interface.
• It offers drip campaigns for continuous personalized marketing.
• It allows for making quick snippets of data.
• Seamless integration with Zoom for Meetings.

Cons

• It lags and goes offline midway.
• Creating workflows is very confusing.
• The mobile app needs improvement.

Pricing

• HubSpot’s pricing ranges from $45 to $3600 per month.

Available Devices

• Android, iOS, Windows, Web-based

Pro Tip: HubSpot engages you with its partner agencies to grow your business.

2. Salesforce

Salesforce is the most popular eCommerce CRM software in the world right now. It was the #1 CRM provider in 2017 for the fifth year. More and more companies want to rely on Salesforce to provide better customer experience across every touchpoint. In addition, it offers an eCommerce CRM called Salesforce Essentials.

Salesforce Essentials integrates with many relevant tools like MailChimp, Hubspot and more. It offers a simple setup after which your team can follow up on leads and identify key contacts to make more effective sales.

Salesforce, one of the best CRM for eCommerce, connects multiple support channels your agents can access to resolve the issue ASAP. In addition, its multiple deployment modes, easy mobile access, and scalability make it the best in the category.

Pros

• It is very easy to handle & nurture campaigns.
• The user experience is very uncomplicated and friendly.
• The account management and troubleshooting support are great.
• Easily customizable to meet business and user requirements.

Cons

• Salesforce is extremely expensive.
• The reporting feature can be buggy.
• Navigating customer support can be challenging.

Pricing

• Starts at $1250 per month to $15,000 per month.

Available Devices

• Windows, Mac, iPhone/iPad, Android, Web-based

Pro Tip: Use the Einstein Activity Capture, the built-in AI, to automatically track emails, calls, and meetings.

3. Subivi eCommerce CRM

Subivi is the leading eCommerce CRM that provides value for sellers with any number of stores by providing them with one inbox from which they can manage their entire customer support cycle, including everything from customer queries to returns and cases.

In addition to saving sellers and their employees time, increasing productivity, and freeing up time to grow their business, Subivi also has concrete features to help sellers increase sales.

With its built-in translation tool, sellers can communicate in over 100 languages with buyers worldwide. Moreover, its product-specific automated feedback requests link automatically to a specific product’s SKU, decreasing customer friction and increasing the chance of being left with positive feedback.

Pros

• Subivi eCommerce CRM is extremely affordable.
• It has a lot of great features for such a budget-friendly rate.
• Its ready-to-use templates and smart tags are amazing.
• You can manage everything from one easy-to-use and accessible place.

Cons

• Customer service is extremely poor and slow to respond.
• Amazon integration is not available.
• It can be quite challenging to learn how Subivi operates at first.

Pricing

• Subivi’s pricing ranges from $9 to $250 per user per month.

Available Devices

• Android, iOS, Windows, Web-based, Mac, iPhone/iPad, Linux

Pro Tip: Use Subivi’s cross-selling feature to increase your sales and revenue stream.

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM, the best CRM for eCommerce, started as a tool meant to help SMBs. Today, it is used by businesses of all sizes and in diverse segments, including eCommerce. Like Salesforce, Zoho offers multiple useful integrations with popular eCommerce CRM tools like MailChimp and OneSaaS, not to mention Zoho’s extensive suite of apps.

You can monitor and manage customer accounts from a shared database and view them across products, locations, etc. You can use the Opportunity Tracker tool to see the contact, their history, and status, and use that info to figure out how best to craft messages that appeal to them.

Pros

• Data management is extremely easy with Zoho CRM.
• With Zoho CRM, you can easily create, run, and export reports.
• Zoho is effortless to deploy across different departments.
• It integrates well with other Google/ Zoho apps.

Cons

• The interface needs to be upgraded.
• Customer support requires improvement.
• Customizing and editing email templates is time-consuming.

Pricing

• Zoho CRM packages range from $14 to $48 per month.

Available Devices

• Windows, Mac, Linux, Web-based, Android, iPhone/iPad

Pro Tip: Access relevant customer info in a single window with the Business Card view.

5. SAP

SAP has robust CRM credentials; its market share is second only to Salesforce. It acquired the eCommerce firm Hybris in 2013. SAP’s eCommerce solution, SAP Hybris, has launched shortly after, and it has continued to win businesses since then. It provides Omni-channel B2B and B2C connections, which is today’s need of the hour for eCommerce firms.

The SAP Hybris algorithms gather customer data and feed it to frontline sales associates, who can use it to generate the best leads.

It will help in segmentation and planning out various marketing channels and also help your eCommerce business to have a clearer view of your customers – their interests and tastes. In addition, SAP Hybris will recommend how best to increase conversions with these customers.

Pros

• Excellent lead, opportunity and quote management.
• A 360-degree view of each customer is provided.
• Lead integration with external systems is fairly easy.
• It has great standard capabilities that don’t require any custom development.

Cons

• It has too many unnecessary steps for different processes.
• SAP Marketing Cloud integration needs improvement.
• There is no mobile app.

Pricing

• Custom pricing

Available Devices

• Windows, Mac, Linux, Web-based, Android, iPhone/iPad

Pro Tip: The ASM (Assisted Service Module) is a great tool for your customer service representatives. It allows them to see what the customer sees on the website, assisting the entire buying process.

6. Freshsales

Freshsales has made a name for itself in the CRM user experience department with its simple and easy-to-use interface. But that’s not all Freshsales CRM does. For example, it does away with the need for bulky setup procedures and integrations that take hours to run.

It collates all the functions of a legacy CRM system and gives eCommerce firms a dynamic solution to manage leads from multiple sources – Google Ads, blogs, websites and more. It captures leads, scores, verifies and nurtures them to boost revenue conversion.

View the prospect’s history on your eCommerce website, from cart abandonment rates to clicked recommendations; you get a comprehensive portrait of your customers’ behavior. It will enable you to improve your marketing strategies further and successfully target customers with the right marketing campaigns. It is an affordable CRM for eCommerce firms of all sizes, but especially for small or mid-market eCommerce companies.

Pros

• Freshsales keeps track of new leads and deals.
• Reporting and dashboard sharing.
• It helps you automate the onboarding process for new leads.
• Maintaining and developing sales pipelines.

Cons

• Some aspects of Freshsales are not user friendly.
• Freshsales could update graphics.
• Integration with other applications needs improvement.

Pricing

• 30-day free trial available and packages ranging from $0 to $62 per month.

Available Devices

• Android, iPhone/iPad, Mac, Windows

Pro Tip: Freshsales Phone Activity Reports help monitor your sales reps’ performance.

7. Act CRM

Act! CRM is a simple eCommerce CRM solution built with small businesses in mind. This CRM for eCommerce businesses scales all the relevant features of legacy CRM systems and makes it applicable to smaller eCommerce firms.

The Act! Contact Record gives you a complete view of all your customer relationships; view contact details, history, activities and more in one convenient place. In addition, reporting and monitoring KPIs is a breeze as the Act!

Insight dashboards allow you to visualize real-time metrics and analyze individual and team performance. Review your pipeline health at a glance, track every metric related to your sales pipeline, including project revenue and the probability of sales closure, and adjust your strategies.

Pros

• The search feature within the database / CRM is amazing.
• Reminders about appointments and actions.
• You can easily gather a broad portion of data about each contact.
• Alert feature to keep track of critical actions for each day.

Cons

• Running reports is confusing.
• Integration with other email applications.
• Act CRM is not intuitive to use.

Pricing

• Act CRM pricing ranges between $37.50 to $40 per user per month.

Available Devices

• Windows, Web-based, Android, iPhone/iPad

Pro Tip: Act also has offline sync, allowing you to work from anywhere and update the data as soon as you connect to the internet.

8. Microsoft Dynamics

Another industry leader on the list, although relatively pricier than the others, its users do swear by it. It is better suited to medium and large enterprises. With Microsoft Dynamics, you have a uniform view across your CRM if your business is already using the Microsoft Office apps like Outlook, SharePoint, OneNote and more.

It has to be adapted to your business’s needs and requires greater training for the staff using it. It might seem more expensive, but it has a more straightforward pricing plan and no hidden costs.

Reduce double entry with these Office app integrations. Team members/ external agents can collaborate on projects on the system in real-time. Improve lead tracking and field service automation while driving sales and boosting operational efficiency with Microsoft Dynamics.

Pros

• Integration with other Microsoft Products is seamless.
• Microsoft Dynamics is user-friendly and safe.
• Automated workflow abilities with AI service.
• Lead generation is easy with emails, phones, and campaigns.

Cons

• Microsoft could use an automated system to enter contact information.
• Account and contact synchronization could be made easier.
• The mobile app is confusing and needs improvement.

Pricing

• Commerce plans start at $180/user per month.
• Sales plans range from $65 per user/month to $162 per user/month.

Available Devices

• Windows, Android, Mac, Web-based

Pro Tip: The Skype/Skype Business integration allows you to make calls simply by clicking a contact’s name.

9. Pipedrive

You’ve probably heard of it. It needs no introduction as it is a market leader in the CRM category. It is extremely customizable and well-suited to developing businesses. It’s a great fit for most eCommerce vendors, especially those still figuring out the market. It is fully optimized and highly intuitive, with workflows that can be tweaked to your liking, no matter how complicated it might seem.

The system’s intuitiveness comes through in its ability to distinguish various leads so that you can develop an individual approach to priority leads. It helps you track sales and report seamlessly, stay on top of all your deals and forecast effectively.

The pricing is flexible, and you can use the modules you need without paying a cent more. Furthermore, its open API configuration ensures that you can use it in diverse systems and with multiple tools per your business needs.

Pros

• Pipedrive comes with an excellent dashboard that prioritizes duties and deals.
• Send reminders when follow-up is required.
• It tracks the activities of sales representatives and customers.
• Pipedrive manages leads to increased conversions.

Cons

• Pipedrive lacks custom content area creation.
• There is a need for more automation and reporting.
• Configuring reports can be hard sometimes.

Pricing

• Pipedrive pricing ranges from $17 per month to $92 per month.

Available Devices

• Android, iPhone/iPad, Windows, Mac

Pro Tip: You can edit, filter, sort, and segment your leads in bulk using the List view in Pipedrive.

10. Bitrix24

With Bitrix24, you can customize your eCommerce CRM and integrate it with many popular business apps. Bitrix24 also includes a free tier option. You can use it to construct landing pages and websites that integrate seamlessly with your eCommerce online store and CRM. It’s the perfect solution if you want everything in one place.

Pros

• Prospect traceability and source identification.
• Facilitates interdepartmental communication by simplifying the communication process.
• Automating recurring processes and tasks.
• Bitrix24 can be integrated with different business administration services.

Cons

• Customer service is extremely slow to respond.
• It isn’t easy to conduct audio conferences.
• Unfortunately, some of its features don’t work as expected.

Pricing

• Basic: $49 per month 5 users
• Standard: $99 per month for 50 users
• Professional: $199 per month for 100 users

Pro Tip: With Bitrix24, you can manage projects, set tasks, and receive work reports online.

Tips for Choosing an eCommerce CRM Solution

Choosing the right eCommerce CRM software for your business requires consideration of the following factors:

1. Integration with Different Systems

   Ensure that your eCommerce CRM system integrates well with your retail-based ecommerce platform since it will be exchanging data constantly. If you plan on using any other important software you rely on, such as independent sales or marketing software, you should check with your vendor to see if/how the system will integrate with your other software.

2. Business Size

   You must decide what kind of ecommerce platform is best for your business based on various factors. For a small online store where most orders are fulfilled personally, but you still want to track the data of your customers, you can either use an independent ecommerce system or a basic CRM suite.

3. Compare Cloud-Based/On-Premise Software

   Cloud-based ecommerce CRM systems are generally hosted by the vendor and accessed over the Internet. Thus, you’ll have lower startup costs and won’t require IT resources to implement them. Contrary to on-premise software, which requires a company to host the hardware on which it runs, these solutions are hosted by a company.

   Even though some software still operates this way, it is mostly done by enterprise companies, and you should only consider this if you are a large organization with a complete CRM suite.

5 Ecommerce CRM Sales Growth Strategies

Benefits of integrating CRM data with analytics platforms is essential and advocated judiciously, it is time to understand why exactly it’s the case. So, here are the five strategies that your ecommerce CRM can perform to help skyrocket the sales of your business:

1. Smart Marketing

   The Key features of CRM software helps you understand where most of your business is coming from and the product that is your bestseller. Marketing is imperative for any business, and for an online business, it becomes crucial.

   Using ecommerce CRM for business, the sales and marketing teams can figure out what kind of customer profile your business attracts. Furthermore, this gives room to create custom targeting campaigns that can hook the customer and retain them.

   You can retain customers via the ecommerce CRM by observing customer behavior, past patterns, browsing history. And then, give the customers benefits for repurchasing from you or for being loyal to you. Such a way of marketing will make your customer feel valued and give your business some room to trigger word-of-mouth marketing.

2. Outsmart Your Competition

   It is often said, don’t just beat your competition; blow them out of the water. Most of the time, businesses lose themselves in copying each other. In their rivalry of one-upping each other, they forget to chart new ways to garner more customers.

   This is precisely where outsmarting works because if the customer is not coming to you, they are going to your competitors. The chances are that the first business is casting out a similar marketing message to a demographic based on its research and user behavior.

   On the other hand, your business can actually do a better job with a minor tweak in your CRM approach. And that tweak is personalization. Instead of putting forth a similar standard message, offer your customers a well-drafted update or marketing campaign with a lucrative deal that caters to them specifically. Automatically, you will start driving business towards yourself.

3. Make the CRM Software Easy to Use

   One of the biggest problems why businesses lose customers is complications in the process. In today’s fast-paced world, no one wants to spend time going through tons of menus and options to get what they want. So, it gets frustrating and cumbersome.

   Design your CRM with the end-user in mind. Whether you are offering it as a product or as a service, you should figure out what the customer wants from it. Keep the UI simple and easy to use, with integrations from relevant APIs, third-party vendors, and internal queries for ease of access.

   Understand the difference for each customer, and make the experience cater to their particular interest area. This will automatically grasp their interest and keep them retained towards your business. In simple words, take it easy while designing your ecommerce CRM.

4. Don’t Use CRM Just as a Sales Automation Tool

   The most significant function of CRM is the automation of mundane tasks and sales-based insights. Hence, it is easy to consider it as a simple sales automation tool. However, modern-day CRM is a bridge across various facets of the business.

   Integrating it with client-side services, sales services, marketing services, and even managerial tasks will make things a lot smoother and more manageable. Not only does it allow for seamless information sharing, but it also makes room for increased productivity of the staff.

   Such integration also helps in clearing redundancies in the system that are otherwise caused due to verification and re-verification of specific tasks at hand. Integrating CRM will automatically enable all concerned departments to be aware of the priority tasks, the process to do them, and what can be put off until later.

5. Keep Data up to Date and Add Mobility

   With the rise of the digital era, the most valuable resource is Data. The primary purpose of having a CRM is to process data faster and more efficiently for the business. Hence, it is imperative to keep that data in your database updated and squeaky clean (so to speak).

   Keeping your data up to date has two significant advantages. First, the customer-facing or sales team does not need to enter new data repeatedly for an old customer. The second benefit is that it becomes easy to track down a customer and ask for feedback or send them a marketing offer when needed.

   Furthermore, not all teams operate from the office. Some are actual ground workers that include processes like logistics. For teams like these, mobility is vital since they are always on the move. Hence, adding the mobile CRM Strategy will add that extra layer of benefit into the whole picture.

Bottom Line

Implementing a custom CRM solution is imperative in modern business. Therefore, it is good that you have different options. Do you want a solution that somewhat improves your business, or do you need something that helps you boost efforts on all fronts? Choose carefully.

As the importance of personalization increases in the virtual marketplace, there is no better tool than a customer relationship management tool to help your online business deliver the same to your existing and potential customers.

Invest in a CRM to guide your sales and marketing strategies by better understanding what your customer wants and why they want it.