There are so many tools for e-tailers to consider when looking to attract and retain customers.
Not only can some systems do the same thing, but the costs add up quickly when you decide to grow your ecommerce tech stack. But how do you know what to choose? For example, how do you know if you need a product information management (PIM) tool when it sounds like the features are similar to customer relationship management software? We'll tell you how.
A product information management system's sole purpose is to help manage product content in a centralized location. Old storage methods like Google or Excel spreadsheets are bad for product data. Not because they can’t store your product information but because they can’t provide you with accurate, consolidated, and rich data. They make room for human error, scattered and siloed data, and these factors hinder your business from being productive.
According to this report, employees who work with data spend 90% of their working week only on data-related activities. Of that, 15% of this time is spent searching and preparing data.
With a content management tool like Plytix, businesses can consolidate all their product data associated with a product, such as; essential product data, digital assets, product taxonomy and relationships, sales information, localized content, channel-specific content, and more.
According to marketers, we’ve entered the age of the customer. In layman's terms, that means that today's customers have the information they need to make informed decisions at their fingertips. They have access to more online and offline shopping opportunities than ever before, and they are more focused on impeccable customer experience than anything else.
This explains why customer-centric businesses are 60% more profitable than others.
CRM software can help improve your customer relationships—it was designed to assist businesses in easily tracking all communication and nurturing relationships with customers. It helps record, track, and analyze all contact and interactions with prospects and existing customers. This includes their contact details, business information, payment methods, etc.
Just like a PIM tool for ecommerce, a CRM software helps businesses avoid poor data management in multiple spreadsheets, databases, and apps. Instead, this one tool allows you to store all this data in one centralized place, ensuring better organization of this data, improved time management, and efficiency while keeping a good relationship with customers.
As you can see, the only similarity between these two systems is the streamlined ability to provide the best customer experience possible and make the behind-the-scenes more bearable for your employees. But here’s how a PIM and CRM integration can truly benefit your business.
With a PIM tool and CRM, you can enhance your customer experience and improve your digital shelf life. (Your digital shelf is what customers see when they interact with your brand.)
Your CRM helps focus on the customer journey's service and support elements, while a PIM database helps you deliver accurate product content across multiple sales channels.
According to this, 87% of online customers believe that product content is extremely or very important during the purchasing journey, and 50% have returned an item they purchased online because of the inaccurate product description. This can be avoided with the help of a PIM as you’re able to update, tweak, and ensure you’re producing accurate product content for your customers in real-time. But, even with the best product information, there are bound to be issues that need to be solved for a customer, and that’s when a dedicated CRM takes over.
Data is the only way to know whether something is working or not.
And fortunately, with a PIM and CRM system integration, there will be no shortage of data. You can better analyze customer data and shopping behavior to improve experiences and give customers what they want. With customer relationship management software, specifically, you’re able to see customer data that can be helpful when doing demographic marketing or email marketing. According to this report, “90% of U.S. consumers find marketing personalization very or somewhat appealing, and 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging”. These insights can be used when enriching your product information.
On the other hand, a PIM tool allows you to improve your marketing efforts as you can store keywords, persona information, and product listing optimization (or SEO) elements in a central location. Some advanced PIM solutions like Plytix also have an analytics tool that integrates with Google Analytics. Now, you have your analytics and your content in the same place.
Working smarter will ensure your employees are more productive in areas that aid your bottom line. In an always-on environment, this is the key to success. We’ve mentioned before how much time data management takes from employees, and it doesn’t have to be that way.
With a PIM tool, your team can work on data faster (together) as it’s also a collaborative tool. No one person has to handle the data alone; it becomes a team effort across departments.
Marketing and sales departments need to have a comprehensive picture of customer and product data to perform better. A combination of these tools will ensure that your sales and marketing departments can maximize leads, and improve customer service and retention.
It’s that simple. With customer relationship management software to help you manage your relationships with your customers regardless of their stage, and a product information system to give them the information they need, you're well on your way to driving more sales.
Plytix is not only the best-priced PIM for ecommerce, but it gives you everything you need to flourish in multichannel commerce. It’s a place to manage content and an effortless way to syndicate product information to various sales platforms. Next, it takes your ecommerce efforts to the next level. In the same place that you manage, share and analyze content, you can also create product catalogs, pdfs, sell sheets, and more, all in one platform. It doesn’t get better.
Read more about the benefits of a product information management system, download our free ebook on everything PIM, or request a demo, and we’ll tell you ourselves.