CRM systems for Shopify: strengthening customer relationships in the long term

For online retailers, a strong customer relationship is at the heart of their business. But managing these relationships can be a challenge - especially as the business grows and the customer base expands. So how do you manage to maintain and develop customer relationships sustainably? This is where efficient customer relationship management (CRM) comes into play.

In this blog post, we'll give you an overview of the key benefits of CRM systems and introduce you to the best CRM solutions for your Shopify store.

What does CRM mean?

A CRM (customer relationship management) system is software for the centralized management, analysis, and optimization of all customer relationships and interactions.

This includes all interactions between a company and its customers as well as its leads, i.e. potential new customers. However, CRM can mean different things to different companies, depending on their specific needs and goals.

For some companies, CRM focuses on the area of customer support. This includes functions such as customer inquiries, ticket systems, FAQs and general customer support. A well-functioning CRM system helps to process inquiries efficiently, resolve customer concerns quickly and thus increase customer satisfaction. By centralizing all interactions and making them accessible, support teams can respond to customer requests faster and more accurately. This leads to an improved service experience and strengthens customer loyalty.

For other companies, CRM is more associated with marketing strategies and the management of customer data. This is where the term "Customer Data Platform" (CDP) plays a central role. With a CDP, such as Klaviyo for Shopify, companies can collect, analyze and use extensive customer data to carry out targeted marketing campaigns. However, a CDP system does not have the same tasks as CRM systems. Although both systems store customer data and may also make it available to other tools, CDP systems are designed to collect usage data on all products and services from various sources in one place and make it available to other marketing systems in real time. These solutions are designed to provide a holistic view of the customer journey.

A Shopify CDP makes it possible to integrate data from different sources and create a comprehensive customer profile. This allows marketing teams to create personalized emails, targeted offers and tailored content that improve customer engagement and increase sales.

With the right tools and strategies, Shopify merchants can leverage the full potential of their CRM system to achieve their business goals and deliver an exceptional customer experience. Whether you want to improve your customer service or intensify your marketing efforts, a well-integrated CRM system and CRM database can help you do just that.

How do CRM systems work?

To understand the benefits that CRM software offers you, it helps to first better understand how it works.

A CRM supports you at the entire customer relationship level. To do this, a CRM system first collects and organizes comprehensive information about your customer contacts, such as emails, phone calls, profiles on social networks and much more. This data comes from various sources within your company, such as live chats, online forms, subscriptions and customer reviews on your website. In addition, CRM software can also automatically add further information, such as customers' personal preferences regarding communication.

All this collected data is analyzed and structured by your CRM system to give you a comprehensive overview of your customers and their interaction with your company. This gives you a complete overview of each customer, covering all touchpoints and communication histories. With this detailed perspective, you can gain deeper insights into the behavior and preferences of your buyers and potential leads and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.

Overall, a CRM system significantly improves customer relationship management by helping you to nurture and deepen your customer relationships. By having a structured overview of all customer interactions and continuously updating information, you can ensure that you are always up to date and provide your customers with the best possible service. Not only can you increase customer satisfaction, but you can also build long-term, trusting relationships.

Advantages of CRM systems

According to a study by the ZHAW digitalcollection, 65% of companies already use CRM systems to manage and organize customer data. The advantages are numerous. The most important include:

Improved analysis of customer data

In most cases, the enormous amounts of data that companies collect about their potential and existing customers are too large to manage and process manually. CRM software stores this information, sorts it and prepares it for you and your employees to understand. In this way, customer information that is distributed across various channels is collected and analyzed. This allows you to gain comprehensive and detailed insights into the preferences and behaviors of your customers.

Better understanding of your customers

CRM systems bring together all information about customers and leads in one place and provide a holistic overview in real time. This allows you to develop targeted marketing strategies that are precisely tailored to your customers' needs.

High data quality and fewer errors

In many companies, customer data is spread across different systems and is not always consistent. Duplicate records, outdated information, or manual maintenance often lead to errors and inefficient processes. A CRM system ensures that all customer data is centrally recorded, structured, and continuously updated. Automatic duplicate checks and clear data structures ensure that teams always work with a clean and reliable database. This reduces errors in customer service and marketing and enables decisions to be made based on accurate information.

Expansion of customer service

CRM tools improve the quality of customer communication and strengthen customer relationships, which ultimately leads to increased sales. As all customer interactions and histories are stored in the CRM software, customers do not have to explain their concerns repeatedly. Your employees are always informed about the current status and purchase history of customers, which enables customer inquiries to be processed quickly and accurately. This increases customer satisfaction and promotes customer loyalty.

Increase in sales

In addition, a CRM not only organizes customer data, but also synchronizes this information with digital tools such as emails, chats and social media. As a result, marketing and sales teams are better coordinated and can respond to customers' needs in a targeted manner. This optimizes the sales process and increases the conversion rate, as customers are targeted and more easily persuaded to make a purchase.

Increasing customer loyalty

In addition to customer acquisition, customer loyalty is crucial to the success of a company. By improving customer communication and service conditions, you can respond more quickly and effectively to your customers' needs and build a loyal customer base. A CRM system helps you to maintain and expand existing customer relationships, which leads to more revenue in the long term.

Personalization throughout the entire customer journey

Another advantage of CRM systems is the ability to address customers individually and across multiple channels. Based on the data collected, personalized content, offers, and communication measures can be created—from email marketing to customer service. This ensures consistent and relevant communication across all touchpoints and helps to improve the customer experience in the long term.

Optimization of workflows

CRM tools automate certain workflows, such as sending emails in the event of shopping cart abandonment or managing online forms. All customer data is collected in one central location, avoiding duplication of work. This gives sales and marketing teams more time to focus on strategic tasks and increase the company's efficiency.

Improved internal communication

CRM systems promote collaboration between team members and reduce misunderstandings and redundant tasks. This enables effective time management, increases productivity and ensures smooth project management. With the right roles and authorizations, different teams can access specific data and work together on projects.

The benefits of a CRM system are many and varied, ranging from enhanced contact management and cross-team collaboration to increased productivity and better sales management, accurate sales forecasting and reliable reporting functions. By recording and structuring customer interactions, customer satisfaction and loyalty is increased, marketing ROI is improved and the development of optimal products and services is supported.

CRM systems for Shopify: You should know these tools

Choosing the right CRM system for your Shopify store can make all the difference when it comes to maintaining and optimizing customer relationships.

Here are some of the best tools you should know about:

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a comprehensive tool for managing customer data and email marketing. As a Customer Data Platform (CDP), Klaviyo collects and analyzes data from your Shopify store and other sources to create detailed customer profiles. Using this data, you can develop personalized email campaigns and targeted marketing strategies that increase customer loyalty and ultimately sales. With built-in AI tools and proven email automation templates, Klaviyo allows you to send tailored messages based on your customers' behavior and preferences. Not only via email and text message, but also via WhatsApp. Again, Latori customers such as Charme du Cheval (CdC Reitsport), Melvin & Hamilton and ooia rely on automated marketing from Klaviyo.

Pricing:

• Free: send emails to up to 250 contacts; SMS free for up to 150 SMS/MMS credits, including templates, A/B testing and more

• SMS: $15/month, up to 1,250 SMS/MMS credits, including customizable reports and attribution, and more

• Email: $20/month, 501-1,000 contacts included, all free features included; plus 24/7 email and 24/5 chat support

As an official Klaviyo partner agency, we are happy to assist you with connecting and setting up your Klaviyo account.

Gorgias

The Shopify Gorgias app is a powerful CRM tool specifically designed for handling customer inquiries and customer support. The tool integrates seamlessly with Shopify and allows you to manage all customer inquiries from different channels (e.g. email, live chat or social media) in one central location. Latori customer ooia is already successfully using the benefits of the customer service tool in their stores to improve the customer experience and respond more specifically to inquiries.

Pricing:

• Starter package: 10 $/month, creation of 50 tickets per month included

• Basic package: 60 $/month, creation of 300 tickets per month included

• Pro package: 360 $/month, creation of 2,000 tickets per month included

• Advanced package: 900 $/month, creation of 5,000 tickets per month included

Zendesk

The Shopify app Zendesk is another CRM solution that helps you with customer service and support. Zendesk offers comprehensive functions for managing customer inquiries and support tickets. With Zendesk, you can optimize your support processes by automating workflows and personalizing your customer interactions. Integration with Shopify allows you to view customer histories and order information directly in the support dashboard, resulting in faster and more effective issue resolution.

Pricing:

• Suite Team: $55/month and agent, summarizing customer concerns in one place with call history and ready-to-use reports

• Suite Growth: $89/month and agent, enhanced self-service and automation features

• Suite Professional: $115/month and agent, powerful collaboration tools, skills-based ticket routing and analytics

• Suite Enterprise: $150/month and agent, personalized experiences at scale with AI-powered content alerts and custom roles and permissions

HubSpot

HubSpot for Shopify allows you to integrate your online store data with HubSpot Smart CRM, marketing automation and customer service software. The tool supports you with lead generation, sales management and marketing automation. You can also automatically synchronize customers, products and orders into HubSpot to create new audience segments, pre-built reports and automated marketing campaigns. With its robust analytics tools, you can track the entire customer lifecycle and make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing and sales strategies.

Pricing:

• Free: Basic tools included to get started

• Starter: $30/month, including essential software for marketing, sales, service, content and operations

• Professional: $1,781/month, comprehensive software for marketing, sales, customer service, content and operations

• Enterprise: $5,000/month, powerful software for marketing, sales, customer service, content and operations

At a glance:

How to optimally integrate your CRM into Shopify

For a CRM system to deliver its full added value, it is not only the technical connection to Shopify that is crucial, but also the responsible handling of customer data. Data protection plays a particularly important role for Shopify merchants—above all, compliance with the GDPR. Modern CRM solutions offer integrated compliance functions for this purpose, such as consent management, data storage in accordance with clear guidelines, and easy provision of information to customers. This allows legal requirements to be implemented efficiently while strengthening customer trust.

Clean technical integration is equally important. A well-connected CRM automatically synchronizes customer, order, and interaction data with your Shopify store, preventing data silos or duplicate data maintenance. Automated data synchronization, clear segmentation, and intelligent workflows can make marketing and support processes significantly more efficient. For example, customer groups can be segmented according to purchasing behavior or interests, and automated campaigns or service processes can be triggered. A well-designed integration not only ensures greater clarity and data quality, but also noticeable time savings and a better basis for decision-making. Most tools can be conveniently connected via the Shopify app. We would be happy to help you connect your CRM system! Simply get in touch and we will discuss a solution.

These Latori customers rely on CRM tools for Shopify

Our customers have also recognized the advantages that CRM tools offer for optimizing their Shopify stores.

Neuland, for example, relies on Zendesk to optimize its customer support. Customers can easily get support via the Neuland support page. Zendesk enables these companies to efficiently manage customer inquiries and respond quickly to concerns, resulting in an improved customer experience.

By relying on proven CRM tools, our customers can strengthen their customer relationships, increase the efficiency of their support teams and ultimately increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Conclusion

With CRM software, you can manage your customer relationships from one place and benefit from efficient tools and features for your customer relationship management. Tools such as Gorgias and Zendesk help you to improve customer support, while Klaviyo, for example, helps you to carry out targeted marketing campaigns. Our customers such as Asphaltgold, LFDY and Neuland show how successful the use of such systems can be.