Sooner or later, any Shopify project faces the necessity to empower itself with advanced CRM capabilities. The contemporary software market offers numerous ways how to integrate Shopify with CRM. Your choice between the most popular CRM systems is a tough task since their features are various and specific.
Lots of time spent scrolling through the official websites of CRM systems can result in an information mess in your head. We are going to facilitate your choice with a brief but coherent review of the most promising CRM software systems that integrate with Shopify. The present post reveals the essential functionalities of the four CRM platforms that we consider worth your attention.
What is Shopify
Before getting to the Shopify CRM integration as such, recollecting some fundamentals about Shopify wouldn’t hurt. Shopify is known as a hosting platform for ecommerce. It offers merchants everything necessary to put an e-shop into operation. “Everything” in the present context means a great variety of adjustable options available in the platform for the successful operation of an e-store. The only thing required of a business owner to add is content.
Shopify was launched in 2004. Today, more than a million users of this multichannel service are available in 175 countries. The average annual growth of the platform is 74%. Shopify provides users with deep customization following the vision of their brands. That’s why such famous brands as Red Bull, Kylie Cosmetics, and MVMT Watches run their businesses through Shopify.
Everyone who runs a business on the internet knows how important efficient interaction with customers is. Who they are, what they need, and how they come across your business are all about the customers’ data. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems enable a business owner to track and process the customers’ data for meeting their expectations best.
CRM systems belong to what is known as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). About 80% of ecommerce entrepreneurs use at least one of the available SaaS applications in their business. The contemporary software market is abundant enough to offer dozens of useful solutions for any sort of ecommerce projects. CRM software that integrates with Shopify improves customer service via consolidation of all data collected from e-shop users. The following brief list of the CRM-inherent technologies show how Shopify can benefit from CRM integration:
Live chat. Both a large customer-support department and a single customer-care manager can significantly improve their efficiency with live chat extensions added to the ecommerce websites. The story is simple: live chats allow to cover a larger audience per unit of time. Besides, statistics prove that customers give more credence to those e-stores in which such an option as a live chat is available.
Password manager. The creation of group accounts is in the scope of many CRM systems. Password managers aggregate all sensitive data (passwords, credit cards) to keep it safe against hackers and share it with your team safely at the same time.
Lead capturing forms. Large traffic going through your ecommerce project does not necessarily mean that all visitors intend on buying from you. Lead capturing forms facilitate the selection of prospective leads from all the rest. CRMs that integrate with Shopify can make this process automated.
Email. Despite its digital maturity, email is remaining one of the most efficient marketing tools. According to marketing studies, email brings $38 per $1 spent. Almost all CRM systems offer email integration, fortunately.
Social selling. Friendly influencers facilitate social selling. Influencer marketing is an emerging trend in the present era of networks. Driving traffic to your website is just one of the many promotional activities provided by social influencers. Getting even one of them is a bit of luck for your brand, and CRMs can help find appropriate influencers.
Even those few features mentioned above hint at a great business potential hidden in CRM Shopify integration. The diversity of CRM systems available today on the market provides merchants with a wide choice. Let’s review some of them in the context of integrability with Shopify.
HubSpot
This is one of the most popular CRM Shopify apps. The analytical capabilities of HubSpot CRM facilitate sales automation to a certain extent. It means that optimized deal pipelines can be created within the Shopify environment. Since the final goal of any Shopify CRM integration comes to boosting ROI, the advanced marketing campaigns should act as the means of achieving that goal. And this is what HubSpot CRM offers to the Shopify users.
Being integrated with a Shopify e-store, HubSpot allows getting all available customers segmented in accordance with their shopping history. Their relevance to one or another segment relies on such criteria as purchase frequency, average order value, total turnover per customer, purchased products, etc. Thus, a personalized CRM profile of each customer aggregates all necessary data to forecast what to expect from the customer over the subsequent deals as well as how to meet the expectations best.
Automated email campaigns with coupon codes and “hot” offers can be created via the customer contacts imported directly to the system’s interface. Any CRM software that integrates with Shopify should have efficient email marketing tools. And HubSpot is no exclusion.
A combination of lead generation tools and customer support services enables HubSpot CRM to improve the sales process running via any Shopify e-store. Even though HubSpot is a free CRM system, the sales automation capabilities it provides outperform the ones available in many commercial rivals. For example, the app can collect and automatically save the contact particulars of new customers following their sales details.
Another advantage of HubSpot CRM is its pleasant usability. The system is remarkably intuitive: even novice Shopify merchants can adjust their contact management process with ease.
Many users consider HubSpot the best toll-free CRM that integrates with Shopify due to a wider range of features it offers in comparison with other free competitors. However, the lack of such a capability as, for instance, workflow management makes the system inferior to many less advanced rivals from a premium segment. The good news is that HubSpot offers premium functionalities as well with its paid Hubs. A monthly plan of $50 per hub seems to look reasonable for those Shopify entrepreneurs whose business cannot do without advanced marketing features.
Salesforce
Many Shopify merchants consider Salesforce CRM a standalone system that has numerous bridges with Shopify, nevertheless. The Shopify App Store contains a lot of applications integrable with Salesforce. That’s why ecommerce entrepreneurs can use Salesforce CRM separately from Shopify while benefiting from many Salesforce apps integrated with their e-shops.
Like many other CRM software that integrates with Shopify, Salesforce enables users to arrange efficient contact management. It implies detailed analytics on how much regular customers are available and what they usually buy from your e-store. Besides, such an important financial metric as an average income per customer can help merchants understand how profitable their Shopify projects are.
But what makes Salesforce one of the most innovative ecommerce platforms is the above-mentioned integrability through about 400 bridging solutions that provide seamless interconnection between Shopify and Salesforce. It means you do not need jumping between the platforms when keeping track of your Shopify customers you can find their data automatically synchronized with Salesforce.
Live chats, inventory management tools, as well as many other Shopify CRM apps can organically enter the Salesforce ecosystem. Of course, such fusion requires quite specific “How-to” knowledge from the users. And Salesforce offers a special online training platform at which various trial deals can be simulated. Besides, the ever-growing community of Salesforce users can help newcomers with everything related to the platform’s usability.
In contrast to HubSpot CRM, no free-of-charge functionality is available in Salesforce. But such a lack is compensated by a flexible approach to the platform’s paid plans. Salesforce essentials as a starting package for max 5 users cost only $25 per month while the unlimited access to all available CRM options is valued at $300.
Metrilo
Unlike any other CRM that integrates with Shopify, Metrilo is the solution that resides right inside your Shopify store. This plugin can be installed into your store in a couple of clicks. Many users consider Metrilo the most organic solution for Shopify ever. Besides, the wide range of Metrilo’s options makes the system one of the most universal solutions in terms of functionality.
Email marketing, ecommerce analytics, and a complete set of CRM features all are available with Metrilo despite the payment plan you select. This is another distinctive feature of Metrilo on the market. It means that neither a set of available options nor the size of your customers’ database but the number of unique visitors per month determines the payment plan to be selected. The subscription price starts from $119 that allows having up to 10K unique visitors.
Another highlight of Metrilo is the way it works with contact profiles. It can distinguish between the customers who bring a real profit to your Shopify store and random visitors who browse your website sporadically. In doing so Metrilo demonstrates advanced tracking capabilities. Unlikely any other Shopify CRM system can offer you 30 CRM filters to prepare well-customized marketing campaigns for different customer segments including qualified leads, deal hunters, idle shoppers, and potential prospects.
Moreover, you can delegate automatic segmentation to the system as well as add some arbitrary tags to organize your customer database manually. But the most impressive feature of Metrilo’s contact management is the ability to sync the customers’ data available before Metrilo is installed.
This amazing Shopify CRM app offers Retention Analytics that helps you determine which revenue channel brings you the largest profit. Alerts, notifications, and deadlines belong to the teamwork domain available with Metrilo’s task manager.
It may seem Metrilo is the ideal CRM system for Shopify. However, Metrilo is not without shortcomings. Since the system is focused on contact management it lacks such useful options as, for example, lead generation forms. Besides, no mobile versions of Metrilo are available. Free subscription plans for beginners wouldn’t hurt as well.
Zoho
Similar to Metrilo, Zoho offers an entire CRM ecosystem with 40+ apps for Shopify users. Such Shopify integrations as Zoho Inventory, Zoho Flow, and even the live chat Zoho SalesIQ are available among the other useful apps. Team collaboration tools, email automation, invoicing and accounting, that says, everything necessary for the efficient operation of an ecommerce business makes Zoho one of the best all-in-one CRMs that integrate with Shopify.
The advanced mobile app is another advantage of Zoho. It helps working even with brick-and-mortar stores and offline events. Besides, it facilitates social marketing since interaction with leads on social media is a primary feature of the mobile version of Zoho.
A free plan for small projects is available in Zoho CRM. However, you can hardly find it reasonable to use a free version if a fully-fledged integration with Shopify is your goal. The thing is that no direct integration with Shopify is available in the free version. If you are looking for a fully integrable Shopify CRM system then premium Zoho subscriptions can meet your expectations.
Attractive pricing is what makes you not think twice when you select a paid plan from Zoho. Only 20 Euro per month for the Professional subscription sound reasonable even for novice ecommerce merchants. Although the list of options of this plan is not unlimited, many small and middle-sized Shopify projects can benefit from such a type of Zoho integration. A 30-day trial period is available for more expensive corporate versions.
When your Shopify project reaches a certain business milestone its integration with some CRM system seems no longer optional. To detect the best CRM integrations with Shopify you have to check various software whose features appeal to your own objectives best. After a while, you find out that none of the available CRM platforms is a silver bullet having only advantages without any drawbacks.
In search of a universal CRM that integrates with Shopify, you can consider such a functionally abundant system as Zoho. At the same time, Metrilo offers a more organic integration into your Shopify store with not much fewer useful features. The diversity of about 400 Shopify-friendly solutions can encourage you to opt for the Salesforce ecosystem with its training platform for newcomers. HubSpot in its turn can grab your attention with equal success due to its rich but toll-free functionality.
Your specific goals and preferences influence your choice between different CRM systems at the end of the day. But figuring out what your project needs the most from one or another Shopify CRM app might appear the hardest task. Contact us today to mitigate your hesitations with our professional expertise in different CRM platforms.
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