Picking the right Magento CRM platform

Most people choose Magento for its ability to handle large shops – many products, lots of events being generated. It also means lots of customer data.

Actually, your customer information is what you should be working with every day. To do next-level marketing. To grow your ecommerce business.

Magento’s great for supporting large stores, but it’s not exactly marketing-oriented. For best results, we recommend you use a Magento CRM platform to help you organize client data and use it to drive sales.

Do I need a Magento CRM software?

We believe so.

The Magento admin panel is not the friendliest place on earth and customer info is somewhat scattered. How do you use that customer data then?

Segmentation options are really limited, you have to input stuff manually…and still you don’t see everything that’s going on your own site.

Yes, it shows basic metrics like AOV, LTV, and orders, but not order/ session count or last activity, for example.

You don’t see where people come from (acquisition source) – the first time and every time after.

You don’t see what they do on every visit? How they go about the site, what products they look at, how long it takes them to add something to cart, what info they need to finish the order (like shipping or returns)….

And you don’t see how a visitor becomes a customer – what they’ve done on your site as an anonymous guest.

Without a special CRM tool using ecommerce analytics, you only see things after they happen, transactional data.

A Magento CRM platform will give you insights into customer behavior to take your marketing to the next level and make extra sales.

What’s in a good Magento CRM platform?

Here’s what to look for to choose the best CRM for Magento.

Full customer profiles

You know how GA gives you collective info with percentages but no individuals? And in Magento, you see the result of people’s actions – orders, returns, reviews.

Well, an ecommerce CRM will show you the whole process on an individual level.

What person X looks at on your site, when they decide to put it in the cart when they abandon it there only to return on the next day to complete the order…all of that. With the products, values, names and all.

On top of what you have in the admin panel, you’ll get:

• what products they viewed, added to cart and/or purchased
• full order history with values and products
• complete session log with source and actions taken

Visitor to customer log

To make people convert more on your site, you need to understand how they decide to buy. To do that, you need to see what they do before ordering.

That’s hard for some CRMs because they cannot put together visitor data with customer profile once the person identifies themselves. A good CRM merges the data into a full profile, tracking the person from the first touch to latest purchase and everything in-between.

Filters for segmentation

What to do with all that customer behavior data, though?

A good Magento CRM tool gives you multiple filtering options to play around with and create specific customer segments based on behavior.

This allows you to reach customer(s) in accordance with their shopping habits, engage them in a relevant way and sell them more.

A few examples of customer filtering that will open up so many marketing opportunities:

• customers who have bought product X, been on your site in the past week and viewed product XY
• customers with more than 5 orders and over $500 spent, who haven’t visited your site in the last 3 months
• people from Australia who have bought from your swimwear category before
• frequent users who haven’t placed an order yet
• people who used the Valentine’s Day coupon last year and shopped for Christmas again

And that’s just some of them!

Custom tagging

After filtering, tagging people will make segmentation and personalization faster and easier.

Some great examples are tags that mark a significant characteristic of the customers or something important about their shopping behavior so you can use it for marketing: bulk buyer, big spender, coupon lover, email reader, frequent browser, new collection lover, returns – beware, bad review, etc.

Plus, if you work in a team, everybody will be on the same page with client info.

Customer feedback log

It’s really useful if you’re able to track what people think of the shopping experience on your site. It gives you ideas for improvement and highlights the value they see in your products (to use in your messaging).

One easy way is to gather the feedback in the CRM via automated emails. Then, you can reach out to the unhappy customers to resolve the issues and thank the happy ones.

Integration with an email marketing tool

When you start seeing so much of people’s buying behavior on your site, you’ll probably start sending emails to different customer segments with offers relevant to what they like.

But how? Exporting emails from the CRM and importing them into the email tool?

Isn’t it way better to have those two integrated so no data is lost and everything’s smoother?

A CRM platform with its own email functionality will save you time and effort because you’ll fire marketing messages away directly.

Also, such an integration usually tracks email performance, shows you who engaged with a campaign, attributes sales to email campaigns and keeps you from sending too many emails too often to the same person.

Do CRM marketing

Now that you have this goldmine of information, it’s time to turn it into sales with data-driven marketing.

Seeing the actual people behind your orders and how the magic happens is eye-opening and your marketing will not be shooting in the dark anymore.

Hyper-relevant email marketing

You can personalize the customer experience with your store using the behavior insights you get:

• time emails right when people are ready to buy again
• tailor offers to taste
• replicate promotions they reasoned well to in the past, e.g. coupons, games, holiday sales, etc.
• react to certain actions without sending bulk emails
• provide the information they need to buy more, e.g. returns, use tips, etc.

When you show that you care what your customers like, your marketing becomes something they actually like and don’t perceive as intrusive.

Customer retention

Unless you can afford to acquire new customers all the time, you probably worry about retention and repeat orders.

With a CRM for your Magento store, you’ll be able to:

• reactivate idle customers
• do meaningful cross-sells and up-sells
• push buying cycles to go faster
• push the right products that make people return to your store
• optimize your marketing efforts and budget for the channels that bring loyal customers
• understand how seasonality affects your business and turn it to your advantage

This way, you build meaningful engagement and customer relationships over time.

Available Magento CRM tools on the market

First, a friendly advice: the best CRM for Magento will have an official Magento CRM extension to save you the trouble of CRM integration.

With all the other work on your store, a simple CRM integration that syncs right away and starts feeding data will both make you feel very good and serve you marketing ideas instantly.

Second,  look for an ecommerce-oriented CRM system that will give you the specific metrics you need at an affordable price. Big name solutions try to cover any possible business type and will likely make you pay for features you don’t use.

Lastly, when choosing your Magento CRM, think about how actionable it is, how it allows you to drive sales using the data gathered.