Many tools make up the typical ecommerce tech stack—from an email marketing platform sending promotions to subscribers to accounting software tracking every penny spent and earned. Two popular applications worth considering for your arsenal are customer relationship management (CRM) software and content management systems (CMS). Although both are software platforms with acronyms that start with C, the similarities mostly end there.
Each platform does something entirely different. Your CMS manages website content while your CRM tracks customer relationships. It’s not about choosing a CRM vs. CMS; having both and using them together can help you run your business more effectively. Learn about the different functions of these tools and how they fit into your online store’s digital toolkit.
What is a CRM?
A customer relationship management (CRM) tool is a software system that lets businesses track and nurture their relationships with customers in a centralized database. Through automation, a CRM can handle everyday tasks like sending purchase confirmations and abandoned cart emails without manual input. CRM analytics, meanwhile, transforms customer data into actionable insights about buying patterns and preferences.
While they were once simple contact information databases, CRMs are now sophisticated software as a service (SaaS) tools. They use data mining and machine learning to analyze large sets of data. CRMs can predict customer behavior, personalize marketing efforts, and automate sales processes for your business.
Popular CRM platforms include HubSpot, as well as more specialized options like Zoho CRM and Monday Sales CRM for small to midsize businesses.
Core features of CRM software
Here are some of the key features of CRM software to help you manage your online store:
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Contact management. Use data about purchase history and communication preferences to reach out to your customers at the right times, in the right formats.
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Sales pipeline tracking. Follow potential customers from their first visit through purchase, helping you see where shoppers abandon the shopping process.
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Email marketing integration. Send targeted product promotions, cart abandonment reminders, and personalized recommendations.
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Customer service management. Track customer support tickets, returns, and feedback in one place, ensuring consistent communication across all customer touchpoints.
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Reporting and analytics. Understand which products appeal to specific customer segments, measure customer lifetime value, and identify your most effective marketing channels.
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Social media integration. Monitor and respond to customer interactions across social media platforms like X, turning social engagement into sales opportunities by tracking which products generate the most interest.
What is a CMS?
A content management system (CMS) is a platform that lets you create and manage the content on your website without needing to write code. With content management software, you can easily build and update product pages, landing pages, and blog posts through a user-friendly interface.
With a CMS, your team can reuse templates and design elements to make changes to your site’s content whenever needed, while keeping a consistent look and feel across all your pages. For content management, many businesses use popular CMS platforms like WordPress and Contentful, while ecommerce stores can take advantage of Shopify’s built-in CMS that comes with its online store platform.
Core features of a CMS
These core features come with both standalone CMS software and ecommerce platforms with built-in CMS functionalities:
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Content creation. Build product pages, category pages, landing pages, and blog posts using drag-and-drop editors and templates that match your branding.
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Media management. Store and organize product images, videos, and marketing assets in one central location for easy access and reuse.
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Template system. Create a consistent look across your store by using customizable templates for product pages, blog posts, and promotional content.
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User permissions. Control who can edit different parts of your site.
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SEO tools. Add meta descriptions, customize URLs, and manage other search engine optimization (SEO) elements to help your content rank higher in internet search results. CMS platforms often support SEO plug-ins, adding more optimization features like content readability scores, AI-powered recommendations, and internal backlinking suggestions.
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Version control. Evaluate changes to your site’s content, rolling back to older versions if needed, and manage updates across your product catalog.
CRM vs. CMS: What’s the difference?
CRM and CMS platforms are two different tools built for two different business objectives. Knowing the difference will help you get the most out of each tool:
Primary purpose
A CRM captures and organizes every detail about your customers, from basic contact information to their complete history with your business. Sales teams rely on a CRM for managing customer relationships—including context like a customer’s past purchases, recent support tickets, email preferences, and conversation history—all in one place. The interface presents detailed customer records and activity timelines, with dashboards letting your team quickly find any customer detail they need while identifying potential sales opportunities.
A CMS is where you build and maintain your store’s web pages and content—like a blog post on your company’s mission. Store owners use a CMS to publish product descriptions, organize category pages, or create FAQs to answer routine customer questions.
The interface uses a rich text editor where you draft content on one side, while the other side may show a real-time preview of how your pages will look once they’re live. The system also includes a media library where you store and organize product photos, brand assets, and promotional images for easy access.
Team usage
Sales and customer service teams rely on CRMs to contact potential buyers and access customer records as they respond to inquiries. Support agents pull up customer histories to handle product questions and returns, while sales reps check past interactions before following up with prospects. Account managers review customer satisfaction scores and purchase activity to identify which customers need additional support or present new sales opportunities.
Marketing and content teams work within the CMS to create and update the customer-facing parts of your store. Content writers draft and revise product descriptions, articles, and landing pages, while designers upload and arrange images across your site’s layout. Marketers review page performance and can schedule content updates to coincide with marketing campaigns and planned promotions.
Data management
A CRM collects customer data from a slew of sources, combining manually entered notes from sales calls with interactions on social media, website activity, and purchase records. Each customer record grows as the system logs interactions. The system tracks customer information like names, email addresses, home addresses, and credit card details, which means it needs to comply with privacy regulations.
For instance, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which many businesses treat as the US national standard, protects how customer data is collected, stored, and used. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides similar comprehensive privacy protections for European customers.
A CMS primarily manages content files and assets your team uploads manually—everything from product descriptions and white papers to high-resolution images and promotional videos. The system organizes these files with metadata (e.g., publishing dates, author names, and version histories). It enables you to handle technical details like resizing and compressing images and file naming conventions. Media files are stored in libraries with folders for different content types, requiring little effort to find and reuse assets across your online store.
Automation capabilities
A CRM automates parts of your lead management process and customer communication workflows. When someone makes a purchase or fills out a form, the system updates their customer information and moves them through the appropriate stage of your sales funnel. A CRM can also connect with other marketing tools to automate actions like sending follow-up emails after checkouts or alerting sales reps when a lead revisits your pricing page.
While marketing teams primarily input content manually into a CMS, the system can automate some publishing and scheduling tasks. Most CMS platforms can pull sales data from your ecommerce platform to dynamically update product availability. The system can also handle automated activities like resizing images for various devices, updating XML sitemaps when new content is published, and pushing content updates to your brand’s social media profiles.
Analytics focus
A CRM’s analytics unearth every aspect of your sales performance and customer interactions. The system breaks down figures like email open rates, conversion rates of sales leads, average deal size, support ticket resolution times, and customer lifetime value (CLV), and it even predicts which deals are most likely to close. These reports help teams understand the entire customer journey—from first contact through repeat purchases—to show which marketing channels and sales tactics generate the most high-value (or long-lasting) customers.
One of the key differences in CMS analytics is they focus more on content performance and visitor engagement rather than direct sales metrics. Most ecommerce businesses connect their CMS to Google Analytics or Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) for more granular data. You can also use tools like Hotjar, which generates heat maps, to understand how visitors interact with content before making a purchase.
Using CRM and CMS together
Most growing ecommerce businesses need both CRM and CMS platforms working together to effectively run their online stores. While a CRM monitors and records how customers shop, a CMS helps turn those insights into targeted content and appealing product pages.
CRM and CMS platforms can work together through integrations sharing data between systems, enabling teams to maintain a broader view of customer interactions. For instance, Shopify offers direct integrations with major CRM platforms through its App Store, allowing merchants to automatically sync their customer data, orders, and sales information between their online store and their CRM system.
Sales and marketing teams work more effectively when they can use customer analytics to guide content strategy and when customer interactions are enriched by well-crafted content.
Here are four ways CRM and CMS platforms can work together to improve your ecommerce operations:
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Lead-nurturing content. Use CRM data about common customer questions and objections to create and publish targeted FAQ pages and buying guides in your CMS.
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Personalized landing pages. Create custom landing pages in your CMS for different customer segments identified by your CRM, tweaking the messaging to specific needs.
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Content success monitoring. Combine CMS content metrics with CRM sales data to make sense of which digital assets and product pages are most effective at converting customers.
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Automated email campaigns. Use CRM customer behavior triggers to automatically send relevant content created in your CMS, like product guides or tutorial videos based on purchase history.
CRM vs. CMS FAQ
What is the difference between a CMS and a CRM?
A CMS manages your website content like product pages and blog posts, while a CRM records customer data and interactions throughout their buying journey.
What are examples of CRM systems?
Popular CRM systems include HubSpot, Zoho CRM, and Monday Sales CRM, each offering different features for different business sizes and needs.
How do you integrate a CRM into your Shopify CMS?
Go to the Shopify App Store, install your preferred CRM integration app (like HubSpot or Zoho), and follow the setup process to connect your CRM account with your store and its CMS. Once configured, the app automatically syncs your customer and orders data between the two systems.
