Untangling between customer, prospect and follower has never been so easy: here is a path to integration.

Have you ever wondered what it means   do business ? One definition, among the most convincing, could be declined as follows: the art of acquiring and developing the number and value of customers . In fact – and this is quite evident – no customers are given no business . Yet, in the digital culture of recent years, and with rare exceptions, a real vision customer-centric   it can still be said to be very rare. Inspired by these issues, we thought to talk about the importance of an integration between   eCommerce and CRM systems . Precisely from a paradoxical reading that, in some ways, poses the same digital world not in step with the times, or rather, not entirely in line with the current situation that some companies live offline.
But let us proceed step by step. Let’s start with a specific question.

Is eCommerce a showcase?

As you know, an eCommerce is a system for visualizing the offer of a company’s products, order acquisition (shopping cart) and payment.

There are eCommerce that also manage the billing and shipping of products, but these are exceptions. On other levels, some of these businesses are also able to facilitate communications with prospects, often through   online chat and order supervision and assistance systems .
Starting from this context, it is undeniable that often we are faced with some   excellent windows   which however lacks much of the management of a “traditional shop”. A system of this type risks to flatten the offer , the quality of the product and its price , and still on promotions , those, in fact, from exposure .
We can thus say that in these years the display model of the showcase has been strongly developed or the offer , that is, that activity that falls within the field of marketing and online communication (extreme simplification, for educational purposes).

Focus on the models

Models of Search Engine Marketing (SEO and SEA) and, again, models of Social Marketing and Mail Marketing have seen the development of “cartellonistic visualizations” and promotions in a very efficient way.
But – you will notice – these activities have focused their attention only on the outermost part of the business and its internal development, only partially to its management . Of course, the fields of marketing and communication have proven to be very effective, so much so that they can reach volumes that are very comparable – if not superior – to those of traditional marketing. And the advantage went to the business of businesses and eCommerce .
They are all lead generation or online sales activities   increasingly expensive. Over the years they have created new business issues related to the analysis of the   cost / benefit . Moreover, the budgets used on the traditional methods – detached from the effective capacity to produce direct sales results that are difficult to measure (and hardly accessible to SMEs) – have created a system in which some large companies dominate . With all due respect to the digital revolution.

The path to integration

In summary,   we lived in a front-wheel drive world,   a world in which the visualization of the offer and the ability to transform it into an order through a digital showcase outperformed a realistic vision of long-term value.
Not to mention the eCommerce developments based on brand awareness , so important, as developed by more off-line media than online (television in the first place).
The eCommerce of those great brands – whose brand awareness is now remarkable – have easily reaped the benefits of years of investment , turning the concept of eCommerce into a mere tool of corporate service . In addition, they have generated an obvious price competition and a risk of loss of value in traditional distribution (which, perhaps, in the past has also contributed to the creation of the brand awareness of many others).

What is still missing? The integration between eCommerce and CRM

Let’s start from here: what is a CRM ? A   Customer Relationship Management is a “contact and customer archive” and an “activity archive” for them.  
born   from the need to automate the work of sellers and sales forces   in general: every important company has one.
Often a CRM allows a planning of the commercial activities and a control of the progress of the same.
One of its weaknesses, highlighted in recent years, is to require a large one   “Bureaucratization” of the sales force . Limit that has discouraged and made almost no use in some small and medium enterprises, less structured than the multinationals. So CRMs are more used in large companies with telephone contact with the customer.
Following this excursus, we could say that a CRM works far downstream from the customer acquisition process.   We talk about the transformation of prospects into customers, but above all in the “resale” and in the management of the customer’s life cycle .

From the window to the e-business

If we want to move from a window display of our online business with an integrated vision of e-business it is absolutely necessary to add to your Marketing and eCommerce activities at least one CRM able to enhance the acquired customers .
To use a metaphor, only in this way is it possible to move from a “front-wheel drive” to an “integrated traction” of the business.
On the one hand, an acquisition system and, on the other hand, a system to valorise the acquired product.
Integrating into a single eCommerce and CRM system can bring a number of benefits that allow

• accumulate information on prospects and customers throughout their life cycle;
• manage repurchase by end customers in order to increase their value and recover acquisition costs;
• analyze the causes of “interruption” of the purchase or repurchase process ( Customer Journey ). So as to maximize the knowledge of customers and their needs and increase the long-term value of the same;
• have a better Customer Satisfaction , preliminary to the improvement of long-term value, thanks to the management of interactions and “incidents” or problems thanks to the management of ticketing and support;
• above all, customize the offer depending on the needs of the customer, his purchased products, his life cycle and his behavior ( Behavioral Marketing );
• manage the customer before he “exits” from the life cycle, that is, performing retention activities that significantly increase the value of the acquiree.
• reward the most loyal customers in a different way from the customers of different clusters, then make the policies of Differentiated Marketing   on the different business clusters;
• and so on.

In other words, by owning customer data during their life cycle, we can make our eBusiness truly complete. All in order to create a truly customer-centric company; able to recover customer value thanks to increased satisfaction.

Our Suite

 

There White Rabbit suite has reached a very high degree of automation , acquires the majority of customer data thanks to the possibility of direct connection with eCommerce.
The internal flow between the email marketing systems , landing page e   social marketing helps to multiply the benefits of integrating eCommerce and CRM.
Would you like to turn your eCommerce into a real eBusiness system?

Try doing Happy Business

with White Rabbit!