If you have a regular customer, you may know, that work becomes easier if you know the client personally. You can predict his wishes and preferences, that makes the process of buying faster and easier. We wish the work with every new lead was that easy. Rather than just hoping, let’s take a look at how real it can be!
Marketing surveys are merely helping to understand specifics, because answers are not sincere, emotional, or even intentionally hidden. That is why you have to figure out it by yourself on your own auditory.
The web page is a guarantee, that you would present your service and products masses. Qualitative customer service and experienced customer service team ensure close acquaintance consumers and their needs. Once both elements are working, all that is left is to unite them into a single machinery. And everything you need for it is CRM.
Collect, store, analyse, communicate
Having a group of people to focus on, your team would need a set of tools to coordinate their actions. Times of paper and pencil have passed. Saving information about every single call on the phones and laptops is a total chaos. Personal data can get lost sometimes, then a call will be missed. Staff may be situated in different Earth corners, and it is important to have an information shared and available for an access. And CRM makes it possible to achieve.
So, any kind of client data that you can possibly get — is stored in CRM. The importance of customer relations management system can be substantiated by the variety of functions it performs. The most notable for today are still Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho, SugarCRM, HubSpot and some others. That is just a few, from CRM market major applications.
CRM is considered to be a pretty expensive software/service. Obviously, the price varies from the package you choose, full or limited functionality and so on. For example, Zoho CRM proposes a free version, available for 3 persons. That makes sense for a small company, but what if you need much more? Paid applications propose full functionality and access for a fixed or unlimited number of users.
There is always a choice
What was always a calling card of WordPress, is its affordable simplicity and open source. Okay, not only that. But, people choose WordPress, because, sometimes it is relatively cheap, easy to use and expandable.
Everything depends on your needs. Choosing the existing services like Salesforce, you may integrate them with your WordPress. If you prefer to keep everything centralised in your administration panel, it would be easier to install WordPress CRM plugins. So, simply you just add some new features to your WordPress administration panel.
On that basis, you may find lots of CRM solutions. Here is a short list of honourable mentions for WordPress:
WP-CRM system — fully featured application, functions of which you may widen with numerous extensions. Some of them propose auto-filling of the client data, some add chat-windows and chatbots, some subscribe your visitors on mailing. The number of persons working with the base and stored information is unlimited. You may try out the demo version.
Ukuupeople — famous, useful, original. Easily connected with WordPress, Mailchimp, Google Calendar. Can be extended. Has different kinds of packages for different prices. Has a variation feature of grouping that is called “building tribes”.
UpiCRM — easily imports your existing data, works with Contact Form7, Gravity Form, Ninja Forms. Very simple at installation. Having all the necessary functions, it is still free, which comes as a nice solution for any kind of needs.
You would be able to overview all the possible interactions with every single client, search for his or her data, plan automatic reminders, callbacks and so on. If you know, that the person has searched for an exact category of goods, or stopped filling in the shipping form, you will know when and how to make a final push. As a result, you would be able to observe your conversion and sales rate growing.
Treat your customers properly
Offering the product to the customer, you have to take into account one thing: the life of your customer doesn’t consist of only shopping. They love to be treated in a careful and respectful way.
So, to get known better your audience, keep in touch with them. There are several ways to perform it. Developing your e-commerce website and making its interface user-friendly is not enough while you don’t have a good customer service. And not only one channel of it. Keep in mind, different people prefer different types of communication. Whether it is in the written form (live chat, emails), or oral (phone call). If you apply only callback, you will lose some percent of your clients, because they are not willing to talk with strangers by phone. Some part of clients, vice averse, don’t have any time for a chat, and would rather expect a callback from you. Anyway, always propose some alternative, make your customers feel free. When they have an option, they can choose a more convenient variant for them.
By the way, 84% of the customers, are more likely to work with the company, if they receive an answer back less than in a minute. Be sure your customer service is fast enough. Nearly 82% of consumers conduct online research of marketplaces, prices and products variety before buying. That is why be hurry to answer back your customer since they know where to find another marketplace.
Mailing
Just imagine, according to the 2017 statistics by the Radicati Group, there will be more than 3.7 billion email users. More than a half use email regularly enough. The number of people using email is a ready-made platform to act on. So to say, you wouldn’t have to search for any other channels, to promote your product.
Okay, before conquering customers, get their addresses. Each time you write a person, you interrupt his personal space. That is why you can’t just ask for an email. Give them a vivid reason to share it. For example, propose discounts for subscribing, or exclusive discounts sent only by email.
Of course, things are not that easy. Since nearly every web recourse proposes their users to subscribe to newsletters — mailboxes start to crash. Be remarkable to pierce through the wall of informational pollution. Don’t be too boring and conservative. Use humour and even sarcasm, be creative. Bright subject lines and preview text will only help you.
Advantages of mailing are countable, but they prevail. First of all, it can be automated. That means the information you want to present to your leads will be running in a flow. Services like MailChimp, are extremely helpful in automation. While emails are kept sending to the customers, you may concentrate on creating a wider base of clients. It will definitely help you to keep in touch with everyone, who left without purchasing.
Secondary, mailing, is a channel huge channel. You may use it as a loudhailer to inform your customers about discounts, introduce the new product or remind about the abandoned cart.
Mailing strategy
You may build up a completely new strategy for mailing your customers with different purposes. But, actually, there are a lot of schemes, like the following one by Marketingsherpa.
This mailing scheme was introduced in 2013 for Envelopes.com. They were trying to solve the abandoned cart problem — the situation, when the customer leaves the site, after adding several products to his cart. The scheme was divided into three types of mail:
1.Product category abandonment.
The issue Envelopes.com wanted to solve, was in the variate of each item they sell. There was no result mailing their customers about a big amount of their products. Instead, they have focused on categories. The category email included a simple call to action and notification about the category the customer was viewing. They also presented various images of products in different stylistics and options.
2.Shopping cart abandonment.
Marketers on Envelope.com did not consider placing the product into the cart as a final point. Really often customers place items into the cart like filling in their wish list. That is why they used another type of email after 48 hours. It contains another type of a call to action button, more humorous context, reminding about the cart filled with products. It also lists the number of items left in the cart.
3.Checkout abandonment.
The checkout emails list the products left in the cart, contain a call to action. The difference from the previous type is a more creative character. It has a call to action button, proposing to “view your cart”.
The Envelopes.com team tried to hold the balance. Sending too many emails is annoying, that is why they sent additional reminders selectively.
For more details, you may look the full report about that type of mailing here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/cart-abandonment-checkout-conversions-ecommerce
There are lots of types of mailing, they can consist of three or seven steps. It depends on the specifics of goods or services you are offering. That is why you may divide your mailing and target it depending on your audience. Also, there is a bunch of strategies used by other companies in a free access on the internet, which you can check.
As the conclusion
Customer service works to help the clients, and receive the information in return. A simple chat window may tell you enough to plan your actions considering all the peculiarities. CRM will allow you to work quickly with the information stored, perform fast response, predict actions of the clients and support your business to grow. And if you are running your marketplace via WordPress platform, then you have a cheaper alternative, not losing any quality.
Eventually, every kind of business grows to the point of gathering a big auditory. When you realise you have joined enough, you need to manage the entire lifecycle of your clients. CRM is just a part of a mechanism, but it is relatively indispensable. Customer service is interdependent with the data you receive and use. If you know your public, you know what and how to offer.
Which CRM do you prefer to use? Have you noticed conversion improvement? Do you consider customer service a beneficial part of your investments? We would be pleased to hear your thoughts.