Why is CRM Software Crucial for SMEs to Boost their Business?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a competent tool for businesses for customer management throughout their lifecycle. For Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs), CRM is a dilemma – to use or not to use. 

For large enterprises, it is a need, but SMEs are still figuring out if they need to adopt CRM. The slow penetration of CRM in SMEs can be attributed to a misconception about the product. The first misconception is that it is only for large companies, and the second is that it is an expensive tool for SMEs. These misconceptions and many more exist in the market. For these reasons, the CRM system is not used by SMEs. Today, we will discuss everything related to CRMs and how they boost business for SMEs.

Why is CRM Software Crucial for SMEs to Boost their Business?

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a tool or technology system that manages business relationships with their customers and with potential customers. The goal of CRM is to ensure that businesses improve relationships with customers. 

Once this is achieved, it helps increase the company’s revenue and the sales teams’ efficiency. Onboarding a new client has many steps, and if you don’t have a streamlined process in place and miss a process in between – it may not appear good later to get back to customers and tell them you missed something in between.

When you have a CRM system – it streamlines all the day-to-day processes within your company and allows you to implement a foolproof onboarding process for new clients. Also, it keeps customer satisfaction at its peak. Ensuring customers are happy has always been the top priority for organizations. It may make you believe that CRM has been for a long time. However, they are relatively new, and the best thing is CRMs are improving with every passing year.

Take a look at the below mentioned CRM industry trends for 2022:

  • The digital marketing software with the quickest growth rate is CRM.
  • By 2028, it is predicted that the CRM market would be worth $146 billion.
  • The value of the CRM market is anticipated to increase by 13% each year between 2022 and 2030.
  • Because their existing platform does not have the functionality they require, 66% of firms transfer to a new CRM.
  • CRM solutions are used by 91% of companies with 10 or more employees.
  • CRM solutions are used by 82% of businesses for process automation and sales reporting.

How does CRM work?

Before we discuss how CRM can help SMEs, it is crucial to understand how the tool works. To start with, it is essential to know that CRM can do many things. Therefore, once you plan to implement a CRM system within your company, you must find the features that would work best for your company and are specific to your sector (industry). Also, every company is different, when it comes to how it works with its customers. Therefore, you must consider that while selecting a CRM tool.

The first step is pretty generic – the CRM process starts by organizing customer information – such as their contact details, website, social media data, and everything else you can think of concerning your customer. 

The advantage of using CRM is that it can store more personal data. For example, how your client wants to communicate – via phone or email. If required, CRM can also work with applications such as virtual document signing or survey apps and make the whole process smooth and easy for your customers and your business.  

CRM tools can also generate insights that can help you understand your customer base comprehensively. Once you understand your customers better, you can better appeal to them and interact with them in your business transactions.

The latest CRM tools can even automate administrative tasks using artificial intelligence technology, which is a great feature to have for any company, including small and medium enterprises. An example of an administrative task that CRM can handle is data entry work. As an SME, if such tasks occupy your team for long hours, using CRM, employees can free up their time and focus on other crucial things that can help the business grow.

Why is CRM critical for SMEs?

As per the data available, only a small percentage of SMEs currently use CRM software. A recent study was conducted, and it was found that 34% of SMEs have no plan to use it in the future as well.

Most of these SMEs still rely on the old paper and pen method, and some have moved to MS Excel to track their customers. However, these methods impose some major issues which today’s businesses cannot afford:

  • It can lead to incorrect customer data
  • Tracking and follow-ups with customers can become difficult if the count is high
  • Marketing may sound too time-consuming as everything is manual

The beauty of using CRM is that they help SMEs in every area of business. The business areas in which CRM can help include:

  • Marketing: Every organization, including SMEs, needs to track their returns on marketing activities. CRM tools allow them to accurately measure the return on investment for each campaign. It eventually helps SMEs understand which activity should be continued.
  • Sales: SMEs need to understand the sales life cycle to improve sales. CRM ensures the processes in place maximize all new business opportunities.
  • Customer Service: CRM smooths the process for your company and leads to greater customer experience.
  • Finance: One integral part of any business is cash flow management. CRM gives visibility to financial transactions, which offers visibility on the accounting transactions.

CRM Software is crucial for SMEs to Boost their Business

Now that you have a fair understanding of CRM, we can move to the important part – how CRM software can help SMEs to boost their business. Small and medium businesses have smaller teams and hence there is a need to focus more on optimization from a digital source. CRM tools help SMEs stay organized, raise revenue, stay functional, and contrary to popular belief, help save money.

SMEs are more agile than large businesses and can move quicker in any process. Therefore, they can implement and get started with CRMs faster and actualize their benefits at a high level. 

Below are some ways CRM software can boost SMEs’ business:

Customer Relationship Management 

The core functionality of CRM is to act as a customer relationship management tool. CRM software is only as good as its customer retention and customer satisfaction. It gives SMEs the ability to enable a customer relationship and help move people along a sales pipeline that helps with the sales process and importantly, build a relationship.

Both marketing and sales teams are of utmost importance for the growth of any business. However, these teams need information and ideas at their fingertips for higher sales conversion (or success rate). The CRM helps your team with exactly that – all the required information is available at your fingertips.

Increase efficiency 

No one will argue that a computer works faster than an average human mind, and for this reason, you may want to have CRM software in your company. It allows you to automate certain tasks, and they can be done much faster. The available bandwidth from these tasks can be used to focus on something else. CRM can also provide you with information and insights with a few clicks – an employee may require an hour to access the same information without a CRM tool.

Automate Sales tasks 

If you are an SME with core operations around sales, CRM can help you boost your business significantly. It can automate crucial sales tasks such as lead follow-ups,  tracking sales appointments, and post-sales activities. You can track all the sales and marketing activities in one place. It also provides you with an alert when you are required to pay attention to a hot lead.

Integration with other software

CRM is not only about sales, but it can easily integrate with other business management solutions such as project management, data processing software, web services, and accounting. It gives you a more holistic and complete view as you can match your customer information with all other business processes. 

You can also do integration with email and social media, which makes it super easy for you to manage, prioritize and respond to customer email and social media notifications on a real-time basis. With this, you can convert more leads from email by turning your email into a conversion funnel. In short, it helps you better manage your email campaign.

Insights into sales performance 

To increase your sales, you need to understand where you are going wrong or can improve in the current process. CRM software analyzes your present sales performance and works as an opportunity management tool. CRM tools using technology like Artificial Intelligence can determine the scope of future revenue and scrutinize if the current sales process requires more focus. 

The insights can help you understand if your team needs further sales training to deliver better results. On top of all this, CRM software helps you diagnose potential service and support issues to make your business more proactive to customer problems.

Upselling opportunities 

Getting a new customer is a long and costly process. If you have an existing customer base, why not do most of it by upselling? A CRM can help you in this respect also and boost your business. Upselling is a technique where you can add additional services or products to the original purchase. 

Based on all the past interactions that a particular customer has had with the company and analyzing that information intelligently, a sales team can conclude what can be offered to the customer that he is more likely to buy. CRM helps you in this entire process.

Reports 

The CRM software can organize information into reports which lack human errors and biases. Sales reporting can be difficult when done manually. Analytics requires attention to detail which is a time-consuming process. With CRM, sales reports can be generated in no time and can be customized as per requirement. For example, a sales performance report tells you how well your sales team is doing in terms of closing target deal numbers and gives you an estimate of the actual and expected value of deals in the sales pipeline.

Team collaboration becomes easy 

CRM software keeps all the information centralized and helps your team members centrally track sales probabilities and pipelines. Users can easily access and edit the data shared with them about every customer touchpoint. You can better manage product supply by clearly analyzing the impact of marketing campaigns. Once you have CRM software in your company, it ensures every team member is on the same page – anyone can add notes, mark actions and act on problems.

Grievance Resolution 

As mentioned above, getting a new customer is not easy and also costly. Hence, you must do everything to ensure you don’t lose a customer. One of the main reasons you lose a customer is that there is an unresolved grievance that they have either due to bad quality products, poor service, later delivery, bad management, etc. Without a CRM system, it could be quite impossible for you to keep track of all the customers’ complaints. Since CRM generates a unique id for each customer, tracking everything related to them is easy.

Does your business need CRM?

You now know how CRM can help you boost your business. However, if you are still in doubt about whether it is useful for your business or not, let us try and help you. To get the answer to this question, you need to answer the below question for yourself:

  • Do you find it difficult to track customer-related documents?
  • Do you track leads from different sources in one place?
  • Do you miss giving enough priority to hot leads?
  • Do you feel you are unable to track campaign results effectively?
  • Are your customers from diverse backgrounds?

If the answer to the above problems is YES, then you need CRM software for your business, whether you are a small or medium business.

Conclusion

There are endless benefits that CRM software can bring to SMEs. If you want to expand your business or improve the existing process in your company, you need to consider investing in CRM soon. As mentioned at the start, CRM is a flexible tool and has a lot to offer – therefore customize the tools as per your requirement. If required, you can hire dedicated developer to develop a CRM for your business. 

CRM Vs CDP: Differences, Similarities, Applications & Use Cases

You probably know about CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools quite well. After all, it originated as a concept in the 80s, and as a product in the 90s. You may know some things about CDPs – even though you’d be surprised to know that they’ve been around for more than a decade.

And while you might think that CDP is just one of the (multiple) acronyms in your life, there are a few firms who’ve no doubts about CDPs whatsoever. Among them is the world’s No.1 CRM, Salesforce, which is developing its own CDP – earlier Customer 360 Audiences, now simply Salesforce CDP – by leaps and bounds.

Then, there are the good folks at Adobe and Oracle, who are on the bandwagon too.

Why?

In this article, we’ll answer that. As well as give you a detailed analysis of their differences, similarities, and areas of overlap. After reading through, you’ll know which tasks they’re best suited to, and which one (or two!) will help you increase conversions and drive ROI. Plus, we’ve got some illustrative use cases to explain it all perfectly.

So read on! And yes, it’s a long read. So get comfortable. Or,  skip to the TLDR part at the end of each section. And get your hands on the pdf version for future reference.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

  1. How Customer Experience is Driving the Unstoppable Growth of CDPs & CRMs
  • What is Customer Experience (CX)
  • Why is CX the Gamechanger Today?
  • CX from a ‘Personal’ Perspective 

How Customer Experience is Driving the Unstoppable Growth of CDPs & CRMs

What is Customer Experience (CX)

Customer experience is defined as how a customer feels about your brand across the sum total of interactions with you. It’s about how welcome, cared for and catered to they feel with your product, your people, as well as all your digital interfaces & touchpoints.

Why CX is a Gamechanger Today?

According to a Gartner survey, 75% of companies can prove that higher customer satisfaction increase revenues. This growth is driven by higher retention rates or a greater lifetime value. As Raj Gautam, CEO, QL Tech, says, ‘Simply creating a better product is not enough. You need to constantly deliver more value to your customers.’

Delivering value means providing the right content to your audience for their stage in the buyer’s cycle. Give them timely assistance right where and when they need it. Keep your ear to the ground, and get the right feedback to continuously improve your product. Keep up with their changing behaviour and buying habits. And make them feel that they’re well cared for in general.

Giving CX that ‘Personal’ Touch 

In short, game-changing CX is all about providing that personal touch. Every interaction, message, ad, and solution that you deliver must seem like it was made just for them. And the rewards of doing so are immense.  

86% of shoppers will pay extra for an extra nice CX. And a more personalised experience has triggered 49% to make impulse purchases. Understanding your customer better and delivering just the right trigger will pay rich dividends.

 

CDP –  What it Does, and How

  1.  collect, understand and act on data to influence customer decisions whenever the customer is ready to act. Some customers may be looking for real-time interactions, and some may want to take things slow. Based on data
  2. Breaks down silos – presents a unified view of the customer and deliver a uniform CX across channels
  3. a wide variety of integrations that can unify data from disparate channels as seamlessly as possible. Every data channel should be connected
  4. The CDP should be data source-neutral unifies all customer touchpoints and makes data useful to every team and every technology within the enterprise. Rich customer data within the supply chain, call centres and other places outside the shopping cart should be utilised.

 

CRM Vs CDP Vs DMP

CRM is an operational system for sales and customer service agents; it has detailed data but isn’t designed to let other systems work with that data.

DMP holds summarized data used primarily to support ad campaigns. 

In short: big data and data warehouse overlap with CDP while CRM and DMP are pretty distinct and you’ll probably need both.

 

CRM Vs CDP in Detail

Rating CRMs and CDPs on the Most Critical Components of CX:

  1. Enabling elegant, painless interactions (66%)
  2. Providing speedy service (66%)
  3. Ensuring that customers feel understood (65%)
  4. Making relevant information easy to find (63%)
  5. Being consistent and connected across channels (63%)

 

Applications/Advantages of CRMs

Applications/Advantages of CDPs

True CDP can align with data compliance goals In the wake of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act

The best CDPs bring all customer data and preferences into a central repository, meaning opt-in/opt-outs are easy to manage, customer data is easy to eliminate completely and locating all of a customer’s data is a fast process — all critical elements to complying with modern privacy regulations.

CDP buyers should look for organizations that already prioritize data privacy best practices

AI-driven personalization is the wave of the future. Right now, the building blocks of this are being laid by CDPs that can collect and normalize data in real time. In the future, this means chatbots that can have tailored conversations with customers, but also soak up their behaviour through the buyer journey and make decisions based on that data in the future.

machine learning-enabled CDPs powering real-time, tailored decisions, marketers will also approach testing in a whole new way. Through automation, marketers will be able to more quickly and strategically test the next steps and communication methods and gather smarter data around the results. 

 

Top CDPs

It has been interpreted in different ways by different vendors and even users. So, choosing a CDP software is never about the ‘best CDP’ in the literal sense of the word but it’s about the ‘the best CDP solution for you.’

AM I READY FOR A CDP?

Your Martech stack was built organically over time, without a clear PoA, maybe even before CDPs existed.

Victim of cloud vendors who’ve overpromised and underdelivered.

In house, the IT department has delayed or built inefficient, poorly integrated software systems.

Your data is in silos, and different tools are unable to access all of your customer data.

You have constant sources of data that will not dry up

You have all the data definitions/business rules required to make sense of the data

You need to make decisions in real-time.. You handle large volumes of data, your customer’s value personlaised one-on-one communication,  

 

You’re having trouble building a consistent, relevant, cohesive and personalized ‘multi-touchpoint customer experience’

You are unable to track and measure conversion effectively across the complex marketing mix

You are finding it hard to manage dynamic customer databases- from data privacy and unsubscribes to moving conversions from the prospect to the customer workflow in real time

Omer Artun, CEO and Founder of AgilOne adds: you are probably ready for a CDP if:

You have a significant number of customers who frequently interact with your brand across channels (the greater the number of customers, interactions, and transactions, the more value a CDP will provide)

Your company gets a lot of value from 1:1 interactions (e.g., increased LTV, response rate, ROAS, etc.)

There are multiple customer profiles across multiple systems, but you could benefit from a master customer record

You need a single customer view in real-time, so all operating systems can have access to real-time customer data across different interaction points, devices, and applications

Beyond the pure customer insights, the right CDP can offer, marketers must also realize that a CDP solution can help future-proof their operations and keep pace with the evolution of technology like AI for years to come.

% of companies that are going to be competing solely on customer experience.. Gartner!

CX -> marketing + sales + service

Not good to outsource CX initiatives

 

The success of digital transformation will not be measured by how much companies invest in innovative technologies, but by how well they use those technologies to elevate and maintain the customer experience. 

In the experience economy, transactions that used to occur face-to-face are being rapidly replaced by digitally-enabled interactions, person-to-machine engagements or, even, machine-to-machine experiences across a diverse and dynamic spectrum of digital gateways or digitally-aided, in-person situations.  

Customers knowingly or inadvertently give you their data – the behavioural, financial, relationship, location, and personal identity information that gets exchanged – knowingly or not – in return for an ever-improving, loyalty-building customer experience. 

 

capture and analyze interaction data in real-time

brands face the problem of stitching together fragmented data from interactions that stretch across email, web, mobile apps, call centres, chatbots, in-store transactions and more. To meet customer expectations for contextually appropriate responses, companies need unified, actionable data for which legacy technologies like data warehouses, data lakes, and customer relationship management systems (CRMs) are just not up to the task. 

In the ever-expanding digital ecosystem, customers engage across multiple channels at any time of day or night from virtually any location or device and expect a brand to respond with an immediate personalized response.      

delivers the most current intel about a unique customer from – structured and unstructured; real-time and historical; anonymous and identifiable – data that is collected from multiple sources. 

 

A CDP is an evolution of something all modern marketers (should be) familiar with – a marketing database. In this case, a CDP is a marketing database, purpose-built for the API-driven world and ‘pick and mix’ marketing technology stacks in mind, while also allowing for the integration of offline sources and legacy database and infrastructure”. This gives you some idea of who could use a CDP

 

WHAT BASICS NEED TO BE IN PLACE BEFORE INVESTING IN A CDP?

We identified the symptoms, diagnosed the problem and prescribed a good strong CDP as the possible cure. But –  have you checked for allergic reactions?

It appears that true, data-driven personalization across all touchpoints and throughout the customer’s journey would be difficult- if not impossible – without a CDP.  So, if that is your goal, and you have clarity on exactly where you are stuck with using your customer data more effectively, you should be ready for a serious investment decision. But it’s not all about what you don’t have. You also need to think about what you do have in place today for a CDP to deliver tomorrow.

 

Consider these:

  1. A plan: document your journey and plan: what are the realistic expectations and outcomes along with milestones for the CDP investment? Who are the people accountable and who are the decision-makers?  What will your KPIs and metrics be? What will you prioritize in case there is too much data?
  2. Data: you need some amount of ongoing customer data from multiple sources with a reasonable level or capability for integration to be in place before CDP can work to move you forward. In essence, you should be at least at the bottom of the pyramid in the Graphic above. Even if it’s unconnected, siloed and inaccessible, you still need the inflow of high-quality data from multiple sources.
  3. Data skills: you don’t need the tech chops of a data warehousing expert but some analytic and application experience is required within the marketing team to manage and own the CDP project, right from the evaluation and requirement mapping stage to regular use post-deployment, and of course the turbulent deployment stage in the middle. Get the right people on the team before moving to the next stage.
  4. Management and user buy-in: it’s unlikely you will get a budget without management buy-in, but don’t forget adoption- will the users- the people that make up your marketing team – be able to accept this level of integration, transparency and measurability?
  5. Marketing Automation: you need a fairly mature marketing automation solution or stack in place for optimal CDP outcomes. Having connected and real-time data in place won’t be much good if you don’t have a robust outbound/ inbound marketing automation system in place to use the data and execute personalized campaigns.
  6. Integration capability: for CDP to deliver, data needs to flow. Ensure you have checked with internal experts on the integration capabilities of existing solutions and what it would take to get the data flowing both ways, as well as plug in the analytics solution.
  7. Compliance: with GDPR and other data protection data privacy laws in effect or due to come into effect soon, a unified customer view will go a long way in ensuring compliance. It is useful to understand the compliance requirements for your industry and geography and figure out whether and how a CDP Course Changes Build Customer Loyalty

 

According to Gartner, a course-changing digital experience leads customers to shift their perspective or approach and begin to take confident steps toward their goal. A positive course change can impact brand preference by 37% and behavioural advocacy by 54%.

“When customers do something different with confidence after a digital experience, that creates a lasting brand impression and inspires customers to share their memorable experience with others,” said Ms LaRocca-Cerrone.

 

Self-Reflective Learning Drives Course Changes

Customers’ self-reflective learning during a digital experience has 2x the impact on driving customers’ course changes, compared to user experience functionalities. This is because customers change course when they feel empowered and ready to do something different, not because of a slick or intuitive user interface. “To trigger these valuable customer course changes, CMOs must invest in building a new class of digital experiences that slows customers down at key junctures and rewards their self-reflection,” added Ms LaRocca-Cerrone.  

Why CRM is the perfect choice for Marketing Automation?

Marketing is more than attracting people, it’s about creating value within your brand so they can relate to your offerings and approach you themselves. This way you can create long-lasting relationships with your customer and get returning business from them.

Needless it used to require a lot of effort from cross-functional teams to implement optimum marketing strategies. However, with recent technological advancements, it’s possible to automate the majority of your marketing campaigns, and one of the bests tools for marketing automation is a customer relationship platform (CRM).

In this article, we are going to discuss how the CRM platform help in streamlining your business’s automated marketing endeavours, so without further ado let’s get started.

What is customer relationship management software?

CRM is a marketing automation software, designed to take care of all your major customer relations needs, and automate crucial elements within your business. It plays the role of an ideal secretary. It is constantly working for the betterment of your marketing strategies, marketing designs, customer feedback loops, and more.

Some of its major functions include historically tracking historical customer data, including dates and notes of phone conversations, past purchase records, and email interactions as they proceed through the buyer’s journey. Using tagging logic the CRM applies tags on the users when they take certain actions such as adding items to their wishlist or filling out a form and launches email campaigns to direct the leads back into your sales funnel.

Why CRM is the best choice for marketing automation?

The CRM has a wide range of benefits that elevate your automated marketing capabilities such as:

Reduces chances of Human Error

When businesses have an outdated system or process in place for lead tracking, the probability of human error that comes with managing the shortcomings increases which might lead to prospects slipping through the cracks. CRMs marketing automation enables your sales team to have the right tools to close a deal.

Unify Your Database Management

The CRM provides all the user’s information in one place, Marketing teams don’t have to go out of their way to forage customer profile information and instead are able to prepare to approach leads and prospects based on unified data management.

Provide Consistent Messaging

The marketing communication that affects the customer’s experience can be aligned when engaging with the client. It’s not as much of a challenge to provide consistent messaging when you have all the contextual information available in CRM.

Lastly…

The CRM is truly a wonderful platform fully capable of automating all your marketing endeavours. However, to unlock its full potential, you need support from professional digital marketers like QL Tech having over a decade of experience in CRM implementation and customisation.

In case you need help in CRM customisation or have any questions regarding CRMs, please feel free to book a free 30 minutes session with us and we’ll try our best to help you out

Cheers!!

Converting Traffic into Leads Might be Harder Than you Think

Having a beautiful website with great content isn’t enough your website’s design should be in such a way that your leads get registered efficiently. The first step would be to start off with high-demand generation campaigns that generate leads.

The aim of the marketing team for the business is to procure as many leads as that successfully convert to loyal customers who bring repeated business. Any professional digital marketer knows that they need to set up effective lead nurturing campaigns to gather more and more leads for your brand, However, its easier said than done,

This is why in this article we’re to be discussing some of the most powerful lead nurturing campaigns that will capture your audience’s attention, increase their lead scores, and boost the selling potential of your website and your sales team. 

So let’s get cracking, shall we!

1) Segment leads for targetted messages

Your brand might be offering multiple products or services but not all your leads may be interested in everything you’ve got. This is why engaging with your leads through personalised messaging is necessary. When you communicate with your audience with contextual messaging, the success rates of conversion increase exponentially.

Your business should implement a system for grouping your leads into targeted segments. This would allow you to focus on specific challenges and solutions, which will enable you to form a relationship with your prospects on a more personal level.

You can segment your leads either based on their behaviour or demographics and some organisations use multiple buyer’s personas. Now the good news is you don’t have to do all this manually, There are tools like Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to automate your contextual messaging and make sure the right messages reach the right people at the right time.

2) Educate more, promote less

Most marketers are so eager to get business from their leads that they get overly promotional. What the need to be focused on empowering the audience with educational content so that the audience truly understands the challenge your brand can help them with.

People don’t want a sales pitch they need to feel enabled so that they can make a purchase decision on their own, If we keep ignoring what the leads really want there is a very high chance that we might lose them.

The main objective should be to provide meaningful and actionable information throughout your email campaign that follows a clear path through the marketing funnel.

3) The first impression has a massive impact

The first email that you sent to your audience becomes a deciding factor that whether your brand would be judged spammy or whether the recipient would look forward to further communications from your side.

It is crucial we always remember the value of a lead, don’t spoil the relationship before you give it a chance to blossom by failing to follow up on an engagement or spamming with too many messages in a short timespan.

In this regard a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP) can help your business out greatly, they track the open rate of emails and follow what was the email about. Based on this your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP) can send relevant information to your leads and gently guide them through the funnel.

Final words…

Lead nurturing is one of the most crucial activities of digital marketing and if done correctly it can do wonders for your business’s growth. However, it is not as easy as it seems, it is advised you consider consulting with a professional digital marketer if you wish to implement a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Customer Data Platform (CDP) for your business.

In case you have any questions or need more advice on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) & Customer Data Platform (CDP) implementation feel free to contact us and we would be happy to help you out.

Cheers!!

How Zoho Commerce Plus is the future of eCommerce?

Ecommerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba have transformed the way we shop today. Not only that, but they have also provided extraordinary opportunities for small businesses to sell their products through their platforms as well.

However, these privileges come with the cost of their own. To avail their infrastructure and client base, small businesses have to shell out a sizeable chunk of revenue from sales on the platform as commission. Furthermore, this arrangement does not give much space for branding and marketing of their own.

Now the question is how can you overcome these challenges? Either you can continue utilising the big guns portal to selling your product or you can try to build your client base with the help of Ecommerce shop builder.

If you wish to explore option no. 2 then you are at a great place, as today we are going to be discussing Zoho commerce plus one of the leading eCommerce operating systems.

Let’s talk about some of its key features and how Zoho Commerce Plus can help you out in your eCommerce venture.

Personalised Branded Store

Zoho Commerce Plus is an addition to Zoho One, the operating system, It is a fully integrated, end-to-end platform for the eCommerce industry. 

From marketing to sales to promoting customer loyalty. It is a fully scalable platform to run your eCommerce business like well-oiled machinery.

zoho crm services

You can build your professional online store without the need for writing a single code line. Personalise your branded customer experience using the drag-and-drop store builder, which also comes equipped with a variety of customizable templates.

Timely Order Management

Delivery and order management is the lifeline of and eCommerce business. A customer just wants their orders to get delivered as soon as possible. Which is why it is utmost important to deliver the right order within the stipulated time limit.

Zoho Commerce Plus ensures that you are always equipped with the information needed to optimize order fulfilment. Zoho boasts about its unified interface for every individual order made across every channel, throughout numerous warehouses as well as shipping carriers.

Data from any third-party systems can be imported into the platform’s Analytics and analyzed to empower you with provided blended insights.

Multichannel Marketing

Marketing to customers is all about communication, only by understanding the thought process and actions can you find all the ways and medium at every step of their buyer’s journey.

Now different customers choose different paths to interact with your brand, which is why eCommerce Plus enables you to construct customized customers journeys to communicate based on their stage in the buying process.

The more the better, with Zohos Omni-channel customer communication platform you can enable context-aware dialogue with prospects and customers. 

Multichannel-marketing

Since customer information is flowing across multiple communication channels such as emails, chat, social media, etc. Your marketing, sales, and support representatives have a singular view and context of each customer which empowers them in delivering a consistent, cohesive experience.

In-Depth Analytics

Zoho commerce plus has one of the most comprehensive analytics platforms in the market. It offers multiple inbuilt dashboards and reports for businesses. These reports and dashboards cover e-commerce, operations, etc. that offer a multitude of insights.

Most of these invaluable insights are regarding the visitor’s behaviour on your eCommerce store, which also includes heat maps, scroll maps, and conversion of products sold on the eCommerce store. This helps you optimise your eCommerce platform for better customer experience.

Conclusion

Zoho commerce plus provides a multitude of easy website building tools that you would need to create a sustainable brand, along with a robust back-end infrastructure that can help with content management as well as security.

The system leverages upon Zoho’s customer experience on analytics, and intelligence software providing businesses with an interconnected, first-of-its-kind eCommerce platform.

However, all the above points discussed are only the tip of the iceberg which is Zoho. If you need more info about Zoho commerce plus capabilities or wish to apply it in your business please feel free to contact us for Zoho implementation or drop us a line in the comment section and our experts will reach out to you in no time.