Why CRM is an Important Tool for Your Retail Store

The better you are able to communicate and understand your customers the better you will be able to ultimately service them. Using the Customer Relations Management (CRM) functions in Cafe Cartel’s point of sale software can help you to accomplish this. CRM is a customer database tool that allows you to track and gather all aspects of customer interaction such as spending behavior, contact info, demographics, peak hours and overall effectiveness. Collecting this information gives you a clearer picture on who your customers are and how you can better cater your service.

CRM features that can help your business:

• Marketing
• Loyalty Programs
• Email Campaign
• Customer Profiles
• Gift Cards
• Discount and Gratuities
• Invoice Reporting
• Calendar Management


Integration your POS with CRM Marketing Features

One popular feature of the CRM software is using the marketing tool to track coupons. Our frozen yogurt clients have easily linked their advertisers to their coupons and discounts coming in.

• One client used this to measure their marketing campaigns effectiveness:
  • Their coupon campaign was doing well but using the CRM function helped them to see from where; the coupons were bringing in the most business. “We put a couple of our coupons in a local family gymnastics club. We now do a lot of coupon posting in similar establishments and have increased our sales and foot traffic dramatically.”

  Loyalty Programs Rewards Systems

  Loyalty Programs: Creating a loyalty program is easy for your retail store with the CRM loyalty tool while making it easy to monitor your customer loyalty program engagement.

  • The CRM feature on Cafe Cartel’s POS makes it easy on the shop owners side to structure the program.
    • One dispensary client shared how the CRM tool helps them set special promos on certain days of the week or hours in the day. Our client has Heavy Weight Wednesdays which gives the customer a little heavier than an eighth of product for a happy hour special. “We set it up beforehand and it automatically changes the pricing for the time slot. It’s easy because we don’t have to re-teach how to enter in the special pricing to each employee, it just takes care of itself.”
    • Take your loyalty programs a step further with a social media component with Plum Loyalty.

    Understand Email Campaigns

    Email Campaign: Manage your customer email list easily which makes your email management a breeze. This comes in handy when mailing out promo schedules and figuring out who are your regular customers.

    • Create multiple lists for your thrift or consignment shop for your different customer interests. One client who sells different re-purposed items such as clothing, records, furniture and antiques creates email lists based on their preferences, gathers their email through the customer profile feature and sends out offers based on their preferences.
    • You can even import your contact lists through your external email management app or site you already use such as Constant Contact or Mail Chimp.

    Profiling your Customers and their Behaviors

    Customer Profiles: This tool allows you to build a database of your customers and track their spending habits to give you a better understanding of how to appeal to them. You can track their loyalty purchases, purchase history, demographics etc.

    • Create email lists and text messaging campaigns based on customer profile information. You can even use sites such as mobo mix that help manage your mass text messaging to export and import contacts.
    • Create new contacts easily by scanning your customer’s driver’s license. Many of our liquor store clients have LOVED the easy addition because they have to scan drivers licenses anyways.
    • One liquor store client wrote in stating; “Once I started checking each customer’s purchase history in their customer profiles it made it easier to recommend new items. We turned a couple of them into regulars this way”

    Processing Gift Cards

    Gift Cards: The CRM center is also where you can view and manage a customer’s gift card purchases/ uses and values. Condensing all this information gives you more insight into the purchase habits of customers and how effective your gift card program is.

    Invoicing Customers Print out invoice summaries for customers, while using the database to keep track of your sales and services.

    Calendar and Scheduling in the POS

    Schedule, Manage appointments and check patterns to better service your clientele. You can also import and export your calendar management program.

    • This comes in handy when managing seasonal promos and specials and comparing to sales reports.
    • Our brewery clients have used this feature to see how well certain seasonal brews sell compared to their other recipes. “Last year's Oktoberfest recipe was a huge success but we re-released it this year and found we had lower sales. We went back in the calendar and realized we had another promotion going on at the same time of last year’s release. We reinstated the promotion and have seen sales steadily grow each year around Oktoberfest”