If you’re in the ecommerce game, you’ve heard about Magento. This enterprise-level shopping cart service used to require a large developer budget and a dedicated technical team to operate. It was even once owned by eBay, although briefly, and it almost shut down in the wake of a downturn and user exodus.
That’s all changed for the better now. From the throes of defeat to becoming a home run slugger in the big leagues, Magento 2 has come back swinging for the win. But if you’re not pairing it with the right ecommerce CRM software, you’re simply saying “no” to stronger relationships and better retention. We’re going to take a look under the hood today, so you can see why Magento 2 and the right CRM pair like fine wine and steak.
The Story Behind Magento 2
Magento 2 is the next manifestation of the popular ecommerce enterprise platform. Once its own standalone solution, Magento was acquired by Adobe for $1.68 billion in 2018. The move helped Adobe stake its claim in the growing ecommerce industry.
Since the time of the acquisition, Adobe has ramped things up. They’ve recently released Magento 2, which boasts faster speeds, more transactions per second, a dramatically improved UX and interface, an all-new Marketplace, with countless integrations being added each year, with new compatible gateways, and a slew of other features that have helped the platform quickly grab up 28% of the market share for shopping carts worlwide.
The Improved Magento Marketplace
The Magento Marketplace (their app store) has been completely revamped as well. It’s now more useful, has hundreds of new apps and extensions, and features some mainstay apps that have earned our top picks for most useful Magento 2 apps and extensions for enterprise users.
While the previous Magento Marketplace wasn’t bad, it also wasn’t that good, either, by comparison. But this new and improved version has a sleeker interface, is much easier to navigate and gives users a clear-cut view and impression of usability of the app or extension they’re considering. It also has an enterprise look and feel that sets it apart from other shopping cart providers.
Data Retention During Cart Migration
As thousands of Magento 1 users migrate over to Magento 2, or as users from competing shopping carts make the switch, data retention is a pain point.
For these users, CRMs like ReadyCloud let you migrate from your old cart to Magento and take your data with you.
When you connect ReadyCloud to your shopping cart, it will instantly import all your order and customer data, going back as far as seven years. This includes all your transactional data, invoices, shipping information, returns data, customer information, dates and more. This data is then converted into detailed and individual customer profiles that are carefully preserved in an illustrated and interactive timeline.
Solving the Cross-Channel Pinch
The customer journey doesn’t always start at a retailer’s website. With the most recent Amazon statistics showing that almost 50% of online ecommerce searches and purchases start at the Amazon marketplace, it’s safe to say that a nice portion of your sales come from across multiple channels. Let’s also not overlook eBay, which has managed to capture a multibillion market share of the ecommerce industry, too. The thing is, your Magento store doesn’t talk to Amazon or eBay. And why should it?
Instead of consolidating numbers via data extraction, clunky files or in between programs, you can instead use CRM as an umbrella for all your data and customer information, based on the actions and transactions of customers, updated in real-time. With the right Magento CRM software, you’ll know what customer placed the order, from which sales channel and when, and you’ll be able to update that customer’s profile, add notes and tags, assign tasks to your team, craft stronger marketing messages that resonate with your target audience and so much more.
Mapping the Customer Journey
Regardless of what sales channel the customer journey begins at, the destination and end objective are for it to result in a sale that feeds your bottom line and increases your active engagement. Proficiency and efficiency are the name of the game here. A CRM gives you a detailed map of the customer journey from start to finish, alongside key details that outline any bumps in the road that may have occurred along the way. Using this invaluable funnel data, you can improve your ecommerce customer retention strategies across the board to fuel better loyalty.
It’s critical to identify where and when the customer relationship begins and how you can maintain and preserve it along the way. The relationship actually starts during the research process by the customer. It’s further fueled when they’re intrigued by your brand and offering. The next step occurs during the purchasing cycle. After that, your shipping speed, return policy and customer service either seal the deal and win that customer over or send them scrambling for a competitor.
An ecommerce CRM for Magento gives you all the tools you need to nurture these relationships from the start and build them into long-term retention, allowing you the ability to tap into the customer journey before the purchase cycle commences, giving your store the upper hand from day one.
Identifying Multichannel Trendsetters
Certainly, your Magento store will be the pillar of your ecommerce hub. But it’s the power of all your sales channels combined, including how your brand performs on social commerce platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and others, that will help you identify multichannel trendsetters and give you the ability to market across all these channels to expand your reach.
Having the ability to consolidate your cross-channel order data into one hub and use that data to filter, procure business intelligence, make inventory decisions, update your shipping and returns policy, plan flash sales and marketing events, connect with key metrics of customers using segmented email lists, and so much more, is all made possible with the right Magento CRM powering your relationships.
The most recent cross-channel shopping statistics are telling:
- 66% of online shoppers rely on more than one channel for purchases. We reported this in our post, “2017 Cross-Channel Selling Statistics you Need to Know.” Today, about one-third of all customers rotate between channels to make purchases, which is something retailers must pay attention to.
- The average customer visits a site 9.5 times before they convert. These shoppers are busy comparing prices and checking on things like shipping prices and return policies.
- Customers who cross-shop are worth 30% more in lifetime value. Compared to single channel shoppers, these customers shop more and spend more.
- Only 5% of marketers are equipped to market across channels. This means that stepping into multichannel ecommerce now puts you in a good position to outpace your competition.
- Amazon owns more than 26% of the market share. This popularity owes largely to competitive prices, cheap shipping, and easy returns – all of which are offered by the platform.
- 90% of customers want a cross-channel shopping experience. If higher sales weren’t enough to convince you to jump into omnichannel ecommerce, customer preference should
- When retailers implement cross-channel marketing plans, customer retention increases by 91%. While there are many reasons for this, the largest is the fact that customers want cross-channel ecommerce, and they’re willing to stick with the brands that offer it.
- Companies that pursue a multichannel presence enjoy a 9.5% average growth rate. This is much higher than the average annual growth rate of companies that don’t pursue multi channel opportunities.
- Retail ecommerce sales are expected to reach $2.5 trillion by the end of 2018. This is compared to $1.1 trillion in 2013.
- 60% of shoppers begin product research on a mobile device. Right now, 2 billion people use their smartphones for at least an hour or two per day. This is a major market you don’t want to miss tapping into.
Like Fine Wine & Steak
So, there you have it. Much like the aficionado pairing of fine wine to gourmet steak, the right CRM pairs to your Magento platform too. Doing so not only delivers key insights about your customers while preserving data during migration, but also gives you a way to build, nurture and preserve relationships across all your sales channels.
The end result is happier customers, better retention, improved loyalty, more effective sales and a bottom line that makes you happy when you crunch your end of the quarter numbers and update your spreadsheets.
Need even more tips? Check out this infographic on Magento statistics we’ve created for you below.
