CRM Setup Checklist

Pull contact exports from Shopify, Amazon Seller Central, eBay, the helpdesk (Gorgias / Zendesk), and any reviews platform (Yotpo / Okendo). Note record counts per source — large variance between Shopify customers and helpdesk tickets is normal but should be reconcilable to the same email or phone.

Merge duplicates by email (lowercased) and phone (E.164 format). A single shopper often has Shopify + Amazon + Etsy records under variant emails — pick a primary identifier and store the others as aliases. Watch for guest-checkout orders that share an email but have different shipping names.

Capture opt-in source, timestamp, IP, and channel (email vs. SMS) for every subscriber. Klaviyo and Postscript track this natively; Shopify checkout opt-ins need to be exported with order metadata. This is your audit trail for CAN-SPAM, TCPA, and GDPR — losing it means re-collecting consent from the entire list.

Two scoping questions drive downstream compliance work. EU or UK customers in the file means GDPR / UK GDPR obligations — DSAR process, subprocessor disclosure, 72-hour breach notification. SMS marketing means TCPA — express written consent, STOP/HELP keyword handling, quiet-hours rules. Answer based on what you actually plan to do, not what's theoretically possible.

Klaviyo for DTC-heavy email/SMS, HubSpot when sales reps are involved, Gorgias for support-led CRM. Confirm seat count vs. team size and which seats need API access for the data team. Lock the billing email to a shared inbox, not an individual.

Typical roles: admin (ops lead), campaign creator (marketing), reviewer-only (founder), CX agent (support), API/dev. Limit who can send to the master list — accidental sends to the full file are a top-three deliverability disaster.

Create properties for last order date, total orders, lifetime revenue, AOV, predicted CLV, and an RFM score. These power VIP segments, win-back triggers, and post-purchase flows. Verify the property updates within minutes of an order, not on a daily batch — abandoned-cart logic depends on freshness.

Native Shopify connector for orders, products, and checkout events. Amazon, eBay, and Etsy customer data does not flow natively — use a connector (Shopify's marketplace apps, A2X for accounting parity, or a custom ETL). Verify event coverage: placed order, started checkout, viewed product, fulfilled order.

Push segments to Meta Custom Audiences, Google Customer Match, and TikTok Audiences for suppression and lookalikes. Pull helpdesk ticket history (Gorgias / Zendesk) and review history (Yotpo / Okendo) onto the contact profile so support and email teams see the same picture. Confirm hashing for ad-platform PII matches each platform's spec.

Single source of truth for what each property means, how it's calculated, and which segments use it. Include VIP tier thresholds, lapsed-customer definitions, and the difference between subscribed vs. consented vs. engaged. Without this, marketing and CX argue about who counts as a VIP for a year.

Spell out the workflow for handling DSAR (access), erasure, and portability requests within the 30-day GDPR / UK GDPR window. List every subprocessor that holds EU customer data — Klaviyo, Yotpo, Postscript, Gorgias, the ad platforms — and how data is purged from each. Assign a single owner; ad-hoc DSAR handling is how brands miss the deadline.

Separate sessions for marketing (segments, flows, deliverability), CX (contact lookup, ticket sync, GDPR requests), and ops (imports, integrations, troubleshooting). Hands-on with sandbox data, not slides — let people break things in a safe environment.

Internal Slack channel for CRM questions, with the ops lead and a marketing power-user as defaults. Pre-build CX macros for common requests — unsubscribe me, delete my data, change my email — so support agents don't write fresh prose under pressure.

Three to five emails over 7-10 days. Confirm the welcome offer, set sender expectations, share the brand story, and surface best-sellers. Include the physical mailing address and unsubscribe link in every email — CAN-SPAM is non-negotiable.

Before each abandoned-cart email sends, check whether the customer has placed an order since the cart event — race conditions where the customer checks out at minute 28 and gets a 'you forgot something' at minute 30 are common and look amateur. Klaviyo's 'placed order since' filter handles this; verify it's wired in.

Trigger 7-14 days after delivered status, not after order placed — asking for a review while the customer is still waiting on the package backfires. Do not incentivize reviews on Amazon orders; use Amazon's Request a Review button or Vine. For Shopify orders, route to your reviews platform (Yotpo / Okendo / Judge.me).

First message must include the brand name, message frequency, 'Msg & data rates may apply,' and STOP/HELP keyword instructions. Honor quiet hours (typically 8am-9pm in the recipient's timezone) and ensure STOP-keyword unsubscribes propagate within seconds. Postscript and Attentive enforce most of this; verify your sender ID and short code are registered.

Use real seed accounts (gmail, yahoo, outlook, plus one EU domain if applicable) to walk every flow end-to-end. Trigger an abandoned cart, place an order partway through, confirm the cart flow stops. Subscribe via SMS, send STOP, confirm suppression. Render-test on iOS Mail, Apple Mail dark mode, and Gmail mobile.

Standard CRM KPIs: deliverability (target ≥98%), open rate by send type, click rate, unsubscribe rate (alert if >0.5%), spam complaint rate (alert if >0.1%), attributed revenue, and contribution to MER. Distinguish flow revenue from campaign revenue — flows should grow as a share over the first 90 days.

Weekly view: campaign sends, flow performance, list growth, suppression growth, and revenue attribution. Triple Whale, Northbeam, or a Looker Studio pull from the CRM API all work. Pin it where the marketing team actually looks — Slack-scheduled report works better than a dashboard nobody opens.

Spot-check 10 random Shopify orders against CRM contact records — order count, last order date, lifetime revenue should match. Pull deliverability by domain (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook); a sudden Yahoo drop usually means a spam-trap hit on the recent campaign. Review unsubscribe and complaint trends; rising complaints mean cadence is too aggressive or content is off.