Connecting a CRM to your Shopify store: Klaviyo, HubSpot, Brevo… the guide

Shopify records your orders and customers, but it doesn’t really help you bring them back. That’s the role of a CRM: centralising each customer’s history, segmenting them and sending them the right message at the right time. For a store that already has a few hundred customers, it’s often the most profitable lever, well before increasing your advertising budget.

What a CRM brings to a Shopify store

• A complete customer record: orders, products viewed, abandoned carts, emails opened, exchanges with customer service.
• Fine segmentation: loyal customers, customers inactive for six months, buyers of a specific category, resellers.
• Automations: cart reminders, welcome email, review request, replenishment, birthday.
• Reliable figures: how much a customer brings in over a year, which campaign actually generates sales.

Which CRM should you choose?

Klaviyo: the e-commerce benchmark

Designed for online stores, Klaviyo connects to Shopify in a few clicks and retrieves all order and browsing data. Its ready-made flows are very effective. Its price rises with the number of contacts, making it an ideal choice for brands that sell mainly online.

Brevo: the versatile French solution

Formerly Sendinblue, Brevo offers email, SMS, WhatsApp and a lightweight CRM. It’s hosted in Europe and often more affordable, notably because it charges by sending volume. It’s a good choice for a business that sells both in-store and online.

HubSpot: when there’s a sales team

If you also sell to businesses, with quotes, meetings and sales follow-up, HubSpot manages both marketing and the sales pipeline. More complete, but more expensive once you go beyond the free version.

The five automations to set up first

1. Abandoned cart: two or three reminders within 48 hours. It’s often the most profitable flow.
2. Welcome: a series of two or three emails introducing your brand after newsletter sign-up.
3. Post-purchase: a thank-you, usage tips, then a review request a few days after delivery.
4. Win-back: a message to customers who haven’t ordered in a long time.
5. Replenishment: for consumable products, a reminder when the customer is about to run out.

The pitfalls to avoid

Consent

In France, you can only send marketing emails to an individual with their consent, except for products similar to ones they’ve already bought from you. The sign-up form and the checkbox at checkout must be configured correctly, and the tracking tools placed on your website must comply with the rules on cookies.

Duplicates and incomplete data

If you also sell in a physical shop, your till sales must feed into the same place. Shopify POS does this natively; with another till system, you’ll need a custom integration to avoid having two customer files that don’t talk to each other.

Too many apps

Every app added to Shopify can load extra scripts and slow down your store. One well-configured tool is better than five overlapping apps.

What about resellers?

If you also sell to shops or distributors, the CRM can be paired with a trade ordering area: dedicated prices, minimum orders, 30-day payment. That’s what we set up for the brand Hélas, with a reseller portal connected to its Shopify store. We go through the options in our article selling to businesses with Shopify.

Where to start?

Start with abandoned cart and post-purchase, measure the results for two months, then build on them. If you’re launching your store, first read our guide to creating a Shopify store. And if you’d like support, our Shopify agency in Marseille installs and configures your CRM, flows included.