HubSpot. Shopify. There are so many useful tools out there to help your business succeed online. These tools help you understand your customers, know their journey, and create an easy ecommerce experience for them. If you're using HubSpot, Shopify, or both, should you integrate them? What are the advantages of merging these two powerful tools?
The Power of HubSpot
HubSpot isn't just a database. It's a powerful tool to facilitate customer engagement and to understand your customers more deeply. With HubSpot, you can:
- Track customer information.
- Collate information and look for trends.
- Better understand the buyer's journey.
- Reach out to customers as they move through the buyer's journey.
- Better target your marketing materials.
- Connect with existing customers and encourage them to become repeat customers.
- Encourage referrals.
HubSpot is able to act as your marketing co-facilitator, data analyst, and customer insight coordinator.
The Power of Shopify
Shopify is a tool that's used to make online commerce simpler. With Shopify, you can:
- Create a custom online store without being a web designer.
- Sell across many different platforms, from in-person sales to web, social media, marketplace, and mobile sales.
- Track your inventory, payments, and shipping, keeping a firm grasp on the sales flow and what you have in stock.
With Shopify, you're able to scale up as your business scales up, choosing the right plan for your online business needs.
What are the advantages of bringing these two tools together?
1. Understand Your Niche
One of the advantages of online business is that you can run a small, niche business without the added expense of a storefront. You don't need to pay rent; you just need to pay for your web hosting and the tools that you use online. Merging HubSpot and Spotify allows you to gain insight into the buyer's journey within your niche, refine personas, and then ensure that you have the right products to meet their needs. Segment your users based on the products they have ordered and the promotions to which they have responded so that you can better respond to their behaviors, target emails, and create marketing campaigns.
2. Build Up Your Business
According to HubSpot, "over the past five years, we’ve seen the growth of small online merchants that occupy a specific niche. These companies quickly build an initial audience, but it’s hard for them to scale up." Shopify allows businesses to choose a plan that's appropriate to their needs so that businesses don't need to go big before they can afford it. HubSpot provides the sales insights that your team needs to understand when to scale.
3. Connect Your Sales and Customer Insights More Closely
Bring your sales data from Shopify over to Hubspot instead of having to do any manual movement of data. With an integration like this, your online store customers will automatically become HubSpot contacts. According to HubSpot, "after the initial import of your Shopify data is complete, you'll be able to see your Shopify Products, Customers, and Orders in your HubSpot Ecommerce Settings." If the contact already exists in your database, Shopify will update HubSpot with the latest information.
4. Bring More Value to Your Customers
With a sync between Shopify and HubSpot, you'll be able to see important points about your customers such as abandoned shopping carts and their order value. You can focus on how to engage your customers over time, nurturing customers who have abandoned their cart or sending them marketing materials that better fit the items that have interested them in the past.
5. Automate Your Workflows
What if there was a program that could do some of the tedious work for you so that you could focus on higher-level strategy and marketing? You don't need to note every new customer's email address and send them a personalized email. When you integrate Shopify and Hubspot, you can set up workflows so that your automated systems do this for you, freeing your time to ensure that you can focus on the next steps in your business.
6. Understand Your Higher-Value Customers
When you're looking at your customer base, one specific that you don't want to lose is the higher-value customer. Who are these individuals, and what do they need? With a Shopify and Hubspot integration, you will be able to see the average order value and lifetime order value by source. This allows you to both analyze and reach out to those customers who are most engaged with your products, who might purchase more over time or make large purchases. It also helps you pinpoint leads who may be in the same demographic.
7. Examine and Analyze Business Trends
Without a CRM to back up your Shopify data, you rely on stock numbers, sales reports, and gut feelings to understand your monthly sales. With Shopify and Hubspot integration, you can see your net new customers and compare those to time periods in the past to see how your business is changing. Note upward and downward movements in your stock and customer habits to effectively address trends.
8. Work On Both Sides of Your Ecommerce Strategy
Developing a smooth online shopping experience is only one side of the ecommerce experience. The other side is analysis and communication. Customers today expect that their purchase experience will be individualized from the beginning, with marketing and a shopping experience that are targeted to their specific needs.
You want to be able to reach out, inform, and draw in customers with emails, blogs, and social media posts that connect your company and your audience. When they get to your website, if you've integrated HubSpot and Shopify, your customers will have a much smoother online experience from the first contact to wrapping up the purchase.
Connection Model helps your business develop the strategies you need to succeed in ecommerce. Talk with us about how we can support your move to digital marketing and flexible ecommerce today.
Written By: David Carpenter
