Who says retail is dying? The global Retail Analytics Market is projected to be worth over $4.5 billion by 2027. According to this report, savvy shoppers today have a wealth of technology at their fingertips to compare prices and find value. Because of this, retailers who are winning over these shoppers are looking to retail analytics to give them an edge:

As a result of these considerations, merchants are utilizing a wealth of psychographic data and analytics technologies to collect granular data and delve deeper into consumer needs and preferences. Retailers make smart marketing decisions based on data obtained through various social media technologies, such as offers and messaging, that directly appeal to customers.

And the foundational element behind all of this is great Retail Customer Relationship Management software, or Retail CRM software. In short, a retail CRM helps your business optimize sales by providing the tools, insights, and analytics to turn visitors into lifelong customers.

Let’s examine the 4 ways your retail CRM software should boost your business.

How much better could your retail locations sell if you knew more about each of your clients? Are there trends to what Emily has purchased over the last 3 months? How much do Millennials spend in-store versus Gen-Z? What product bundles garner the best response? A good retail CRM software solution can provide these types of insights.

But wait! There’s more. Analytics don’t stop at your store’s exit because your customers’ lives don’t either. They can browse through your products on their mobile devices or on their home computers, and interact with your marketing pushes and ads on their lunch breaks. Today’s retail CRM software can track your Omnichannel retail processes in order to give you the complete picture on your clients’ habits.

For example, men’s fashion retailer Todd Snyder used their retail CRM to identify who their most engaged audience was, helping them ramp up engagement to a targeted group of motivated buyers. This led to higher open rates in their messaging (31%) , and ultimately higher conversion rates (13%).

The retail CRM software you choose should provide your business with this type of actionable analytics that can immediately lead to sales wins.

Better analytics should directly lead to better customer engagement. Remember, the big advantage that retail locations have over ecommerce are the connections your business can cultivate with your clients. Analytics is the cornerstone of what your retail CRM is based on, but the R in CRM – relationships – is the true purpose of the software.

While many retail CRMs will provide you basic messaging options (email, text), it’s important to consider how your sales associates can leverage technology to foster relationships. Can your CRM be used on a mobile device so your sales associate can quickly bring up a client’s purchase history during a face-to-face? Can you segment your clients finely enough to send targeted, personalized messages?

A specific example of boosting engagement through your CRM are Lookbooks, a curated and clickable group of products.

Rhone, an athletic apparel brand, wanted to keep the relationship with their clients strong during the pandemic when many were unwilling to come into their retail locations. So Rhone leveraged Lookbooks to create a type of virtual concierge program, allowing clients to browse through curated items from their phones. This led to a message conversion rate 95X higher than their usual email marketing.

This unique and personalized type of engagement shows the power of great retail CRM software.

While cultivating customer relationships is great, it doesn’t mean much if your business can’t scale. There are only so many sales associates that can fit inside of your store, after all! A good retail CRM solves this bottleneck as well, helping small teams be more productive when selling to their clients.

One way to boost productivity is to identify what truly moves the sales needle. 

Your retail CRM should help you identify your team’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the metrics that ultimately lead to sales. For example, your CRM might reveal that the biggest boost to sales is the amount of messaging touchpoints – say, 4 to 5 messages is your best metric to lead to a sale. Then, your team knows exactly what to focus on, instead of wasting time on other tasks.

Another is to use your retail CRM’s messaging template feature to craft personalized emails and texts to segmented groups of your customers.

These templates not only help to connect with many clients in less time, they also help keep the brand’s voice unified across all your sales associates and your retail locations. It’s a great way to leverage your retail CRM to do more with less. That’s how Gorjana, a jewelry brand, did it to exceed their sales goals.

Ultimately, all these boosts from your retail CRM simply combine to provide your business with the key service that drives success: clienteling. If you’ve read any of our blogs before, you know how absolutely wild we are about clienteling and why it’s so important for winning at retail. It’s the modern evolution of what retail stores can offer to their customers, to keep them coming back again and again.

Your retail CRM is the key to providing this type of luxurious, personalized experience in your stores. Knowing your client’s purchase history and favorite items, messaging them with personalized Lookbooks and offers, and understanding their out-of-store online behavior as well; all adds up to a special clienteling service.

At the end of the day, choosing a retail CRM that can provide the type of clienteling your business wants to offer should be the ultimate decider. Nothing else really matters if your customer relationship management software can’t improve your actual customer relationships.

That’s the idea behind Endear. We’re a retail CRM that keeps clienteling in mind at every step. And that’s why our clients have seen 32X ROI with our high-touch clienteling solution.