CRM on Faire: Free tools and tips for better customer relationships

Customer relationship management (CRM) is critical to your success as a brand, and email marketing is perhaps the most essential component of a successful CRM strategy. In fact, a survey from Litmus found that for every $1 a brand puts into email marketing, it sees an average return of $36. 

However, poor email marketing can have an adverse effect. When customers and leads feel inundated with emails, or the messaging doesn’t feel personalized, they may stop opening them or unsubscribe altogether. 

Faire’s free CRM tools are designed to help you strengthen customers’ trust in your brand and avoid these pitfalls. Read on to learn about the handy features at your disposal and how best to use them.

Send timely, targeted messages with Faire CRM

Segmenting your contacts and frequently updating your contact list on Faire can ultimately help you convert more leads, maximize the potential of your customer relationships, and build trust with your subscribers. While some brands turn to third-party services to manage their CRM, Faire’s rich customer data relates specifically to your performance on the platform and makes it easier to target specific customer segments.  

With Faire’s CRM you can:

• Add your existing customer contacts and invite them to join Faire
• View data about your customers and leads, and create segmented customer contact lists for more targeted email campaigns
• Build one-off campaigns for announcements, such as new arrivals or promotions
• Automate reminders to your customers, e.g., a nudge to take advantage of unused Faire Direct credit
• Send personalized, 1:1 messages directly to your customers using Faire Messenger

Faire’s CRM is accessible through your brand portal. There you’ll find default lists to easily segment your customers into different categories. 

You can also create custom lists, such as Customers who have items in their cart but have not checked out. Use these to send triggered, recurring, and one-off email campaigns. 

Plug-and-play email templates for common themes, like sharing a promo code or spotlighting a particular product, make designing these messages simple. Each message is sent directly from your business email address (via Postmark integration), and our data dashboards allow you to view opens, clicks, revenue, and orders placed as a result of your email campaigns.  

For managing all of your 1:1 customer relationships, you’ll want to get familiar with your customer details page and our messaging tools. Use these to create an order, view items in a customer’s cart, start a conversation with Faire-provided templates, send document attachments, suggest products to a retailer, or star conversations for follow-up. 

4 best practices for email marketing

Now that you know what CRM tools are available on Faire and where to find them, it’s time to implement our best practices for email marketing. 

1. Never use purchased lists or email scrapes

Smart email marketing starts with deliverability—specifically, increasing the likelihood that the emails you’re sending are actually reaching your customers’ inboxes. All customers in your contact list should have explicitly opted in to receiving email communication from you. The following methods are most common for sourcing quality email subscribers:

• Inbound requests from your website and/or social media channels
• Connecting with prospects at trade shows
• Using existing customer data to prospect individual stores with personalized info and relevant messages

2. Segment your customers into smaller, more specific groups

Experts agree that the most effective strategies for email marketing include subscriber segmentation and message personalization. We recommend sending most of your emails to segmented lists of customers based on buying behavior, readiness to purchase, store type, location, and other specific factors. For example, you could use Faire to create:

• A “Ready to buy” list, using the filters Cart modified within the past 7 days and Amount in cart is greater than $25
• A “Need to reorder” list, using the filters Order volume is greater than $2,500 and Last ordered more than 60 days ago

Lists like these are ideal for automated or triggered emails because they’re tied to customers’ actions (or inactions). By automating this kind of communication, you’ll have more time for the bespoke, 1:1 messages that are best reserved for new or high-value customers.

Segmentation also makes it easier to communicate authentically. Broad-reaching emails to all customers can be sent much less frequently, as these tend to have lower engagement and don’t convert as many sales. There are, however, a few scenarios where a larger recipient list is warranted, such as messages tied to seasons, promotions, or events.

3. Keep your email lists up to date 

It’s important to frequently return to your email lists to ensure they’re current and contain only legitimate wholesale contacts who regularly engage with your emails. Watch out for unengaged subscribers, unknown users, contacts who didn’t give you permission to email them, and spam traps (these are fake email addresses used by ISPs and blocklist operators to identify senders who aren’t following email best practices). 

Bounced emails are another sign of trouble. A “hard bounce” typically means the recipient’s email no longer exists or their email server has blocked the email from reaching their inbox, while a “soft bounce” typically indicates a temporary issue such as a full inbox or problems with the email server. However, if an email address continues to soft bounce after several attempts, we will then categorize it as a hard bounce.

4. Track your progress

Faire’s CRM tools enable you to track the progress of your email campaigns to see what’s working—and what’s not working—so you can adjust accordingly in the future. Rather than just looking at revenue and orders placed, strive for strong open and click rates with your email campaigns. Try experimenting with different subject lines and clear, clickable calls to action. This will help prevent customers from unsubscribing, improve your reputation as an email sender, and build more trust in your brand. 

Looking for more tips on how to get the most from Faire’s free CRM tools? Hop into your brand portal today, where you’ll find email templates, CRM filters, marketing tips, and more.