What Does CRM Mean in Retail? CRM Platforms vs. Retail CRM Partners

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a versatile term used extensively in the business world. However, it doesn’t always mean the same thing from industry to industry.

Retail customer relationship management platforms—or retail CRMs—allow businesses to collect, store, and learn from customer data. As a result, retail businesses can tailor marketing campaigns, personalize customer communications, and deploy new products based on what their customers want. 

Let’s establish what your retail CRM can do for you (and how you can glean the most helpful insights from your customer data). 

What is the General Definition of CRM? 

“CRM” can appear in several different contexts. Here are the three most helpful: 

• CRM, or customer relationship management, can refer to a strategy used to strengthen customer relationships. 
• More often, CRM refers to a tech platform businesses use to enact their CRM strategy. 
• A CRM partner is a third party who specializes in helping businesses forge all-important personal relationships with their customers. 

In a nutshell, the difference between a CRM platform and a retail CRM partner is the difference between your tech and your team. 

Your CRM partner will help you use your CRM platform to gain individual customer insights and support you as you turn those insights into action. 

How Do B2B Companies Use CRM?

Retail CRMs generally provide customer insights in a business-to-consumer (B2C) context. Many people may associate CRM platforms less with B2C use and more with the business-to-business (B2B) world.

In a B2B context, a CRM platform tracks leads and current customers through their position in the sales funnel. 

For example, a business software developer might use a CRM platform to track what actions a potential enterprise client has taken (and, therefore, what stage of the customer journey that lead is in). The CRM can keep the developer informed whenever the lead downloads a resource, schedules a demo, engages with or pauses a subscription, or decides to stop using the developer’s software. 

This takes a lot of manual tracking and customer data collection off the developer’s plate. It also empowers the developer to meet customers where they are so all their customer interactions can be as useful and relationship-building as possible. 

How Do Retail Brands Use CRM?

B2C brands use retail CRMs to get personal with their customers. Your retail CRM strategy may be similar to B2B use cases but on a far more granular level. 

One big difference? Retail brands often have far more data to track than our hypothetical B2B software developer. Retail brands often collect data from myriad individuals, each of whom may make frequent purchases instead of one-time commitments.

Retailers can use the data collected from customer touchpoints to gain insight into the customer journey, learn from customer buying habits and behaviors, and tweak their offerings as needed.

What does this mean for you? 

Through a retail CRM, you can obtain a treasure trove of customer behavioral information. This can include: 

• Customer demographics, such as age, location, and gender.
• The way your customers interact with your various communication channels.
• How your customers use your customer loyalty platform.
• Which pages your customers browse through as they make purchasing decisions.
• What those purchasing decisions ultimately are.
• Which of your promos are redeemed most often.
• … and a wealth of other customer datapoints! 

Then, with the help of your CRM software and your retail CRM partner’s expertise, you can turn that data into practical strategies, such as: 

• Responding to customer behavioral patterns.
• Personalizing your customer service. 
• Offering increasingly targeted promotions.
• Engaging individual customers with personalized communications.
• Tailoring future product launches.
• Identifying any existing customer pain points or bottlenecks.
• Measuring how effective your marketing initiatives are.
• Learning where your business has an opportunity for growth.

Here’s the bottom line: CRM allows retailers to get individual customer data and turn that into significant, exciting, strategic business action. You’ll be better poised to build personalized experiences for your customers. In turn, your customers will feel that personalized connection and be more likely to be loyal for life. 

Ready to Find the Right Retail CRM Partner to Help You Do More?

Having the right CRM tech at your fingertips is critical in understanding your customers. Partnering with the right retail CRM partner can help you take your data-backed customer insights and use them to bolster your customer relationships.

At Baesman Group, we’re here to help you achieve your customer data goals. If you want to drive growth for your brand, our team can help you capture information and turn it into powerful, actionable insights. Click here to learn more about our CRM and analytics services. If you want even more information, check out this resource: Customer Analytics 101: How to Derive Data-Backed Insights.