The history of CRM: why Klaviyo built the only CRM for B2C

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The concept of customer relationship management has been around since the earliest days of commerce. 

Shopkeepers remembered the favourite bread of their regulars and set some aside. Salespeople kept handwritten notes about each person’s preferences, creating more meaningful connections. Later, early digital customer relationship management systems (CRMs) transformed the way businesses interacted with their customers. 

These digital CRMs were originally built for B2B companies, offering features like lead pipelines and account management. But that left B2C businesses struggling to use tools that were essentially designed for a different world.

There have been material changes in how businesses sell to consumers, and that requires a change in how CRMs work.

“During the history of customer relationship management, there have been material changes in how businesses sell to consumers, and that requires a change in how CRMs work,” says Jake Cohen, vice president at Klaviyo. 

That disconnect wasn’t just inconvenient for B2C businesses—it was costing them in terms of customer trust and revenue.

That is, until Klaviyo transformed how B2C brands manage customer relationships by launching the first—and only—CRM built specifically for B2C brands.

Early history of CRM

1950s–1960s: the Rolodex era 

“There have always been people who sold things,” Cohen says. “And those people needed a way to keep track of what they were doing. Essentially, the first CRM consisted of a pen-and-paper list of customers, with notes.”

When Rolodex, a small, desk-based storage system for paper index cards, launched in 1956, it gave salespeople a way to organise their lists and keep all that data in the same place. 

While this system worked for small-scale operations—and is still in use today—it lacked the scalability, consistency, and accuracy necessary for businesses with a large number of customers to manage and track.

That meant by the 1970s, businesses were looking for an alternative. Enter: the digital database.  

The 1970s: the digital database revolution

By the 1970s, large corporations started using mainframe computers to store customer data. 

The benefit of this, Cohen says, was that salespeople could create a digital version of all their manual notes. This meant they could keep track of even more records and benefit from new tools, like searching across their contact list. Early digital databases paved the way for database marketing, where customer data was analysed to create more targeted campaigns. 

These computer programs could be considered the first digital CRMs. 

“Instead of just writing notes in a text file, salespeople could use programs that prompted them to add specific information, like a customer’s first name, last name, and company,” Cohen explains. 

It was a huge innovation that created a standardised set of data.   

The one drawback of the digital database was that it could only be accessed from specific offices and computers, those connected to a local area network (LAN). As with any new technology, improvements were soon on the way. 

The birth of CRM software

The 1980s: contact management systems

The 1980s introduced the rise of specialised software designed to track interactions with customers. Contact management systems like TeleMagic, created by Michael McCafferty, digitised customer contact information and improved efficiency.

But they were primarily standalone tools and lacked integration with wider business processes.    

The early 1990s: sales force automation and the rise of Siebel

In the early 1990s, the first sales force automation tools—designed to streamline sales tasks like lead tracking and pipeline management—combined contact management and database marketing into one product. 

Siebel Systems, founded in 1993, became a pioneer in this space, offering integrated CRM software that laid the foundation for modern CRMs. These tools had a heavy focus on B2B, prioritising long sales cycles and account-based strategies.

Soon, they evolved to offer more functionality.   

Evolution into comprehensive CRM systems

The late 1990s: the expansion of enterprise CRMs 

As the demand for CRMs continued to grow, companies including Oracle and SAP entered the market. These systems added functionalities for marketing and customer service, making them comprehensive enterprise tools.

But they still remained firmly tailored to B2B workflows and required download and implementation in an office, connected to a LAN. 

The early 2000s: the cloud-based CRM movement

In 1999, Salesforce introduced the first cloud-based CRM. 

“Salesforce did things differently,” Cohen explains. Unlike previous CRMs, which required a $25,000+ license and could only be accessed from on-site computers connected to a LAN, Salesforce hosted data in the cloud, making it accessible from anywhere.

“Now, it started at $99/month and wasn’t accessible from just one office—it was accessible from anywhere there was internet,” Cohen says. 

That might be status quo now, but at the time it was a huge innovation. And this shift to software as a service (SaaS) not only dramatically reduced implementation costs, but also made CRMs more widely adoptable.

Eventually, data could also be accessed and edited from phones, not just computers.

While this empowered more people to use the data, Cohen notes that the data model itself didn’t change: “Eventually, we came into an era where people started to realise we need more data than can be stored in this format.”

And that meant CRMs still had limitations, especially for B2C.   

Modern CRM: integration and intelligence

The 2010s: social CRMs and mobile accessibility

As social media platforms became more popular, they redefined how customers and businesses interact. As a result, CRMs started to integrate with social channels to help businesses engage with their customers and build relationships in real-time. 

The way salespeople and service teams interacted with their CRMs also evolved, with mobile CRM apps becoming an essential way to access customer data on the go.

Tools like marketing automation, customer segmentation, and lead scoring also became more common, to help businesses streamline their workflows and personalise communications. 

The 2020s: AI and machine learning

By the 2020s, artificial intelligence became a key component of modern CRMs. 

By offering everything from predictive insights to automated workflows and enhanced personalisation, AI helped businesses gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ buying habits. 

The technology also rapidly analysed customer data, providing real-time insights and recommendations. Salesforce’s Einstein, Oracle’s Adaptive Intelligence, and Zoho’s Zia are notable examples of B2B CRMs with integrated AI. 

By this point, B2B businesses have hundreds of these CRMs to choose from. But despite this impressive growth, CRMs still have limitations—especially for B2C.

As a result, B2C brands have long been left out, forced to cobble together tools to solve business problems for which their B2B counterparts have sophisticated, tailored systems. 

The limitations of traditional CRMs for B2C

Traditional CRMs were never built to address the needs of B2C businesses. 

“Now, you have millions of businesses around the world that sell online,” Cohen says. “And when selling to consumers, the information you need to make the right decisions and communicate is very different to the information you need when you’re selling to a company.” 

When selling to consumers, the information you need to make the right decisions and communicate is very different to the information you need when you’re selling to a company.

CRM features like lead scoring and account management suit the structured sales cycles of B2B. But they’re largely irrelevant in the fast-paced, transactional world of B2C.

To fill the gaps, B2C businesses have relied on separate platforms for email marketing, customer analytics, and support. 

Unfortunately, this fragmentation led to a range of issues, including data silos, inefficiencies, frustrations, and missed opportunities for personalisation. 

“B2C businesses have to plan and anticipate the future in a consumer world, but they’re working with antiquated platforms, making custom changes to data models, paying for third-party expertise, and writing their own integrations,” Cohen says. “Marketing teams can’t do what they’ve been hired to do and brands can’t move as fast as their customers expect them to.”

Plus, there’s the sheer amount of data B2C businesses have to deal with. “The amount of interactions you have to track in the B2C world is orders of magnitude larger than in a B2B context,” Cohen explains.  “Brands have to store all of the information, but they also need the technology to read it and make it usable. Otherwise, it’s all for nothing.”

The amount of interactions you have to track in the B2C world is orders of magnitude larger than in a B2B context.

It’s a long list of limitations. But still, there’s never been a CRM tailor-made for B2C.

Until now. 

Klaviyo: the only CRM built for B2C

Enter: Klaviyo B2C CRM. 

By bringing together marketing, customer service, and analytics into a single, data-first solution, Klaviyo B2C CRM is breaking the mold. This isn’t just another tool in your tech stack, but rather the culmination of our original vision and a fundamental reimagining of how B2C brands manage customer relationships. 

Recognising that B2C brands need deep personalisation and trust combined with speed and scalability, Klaviyo B2C CRM integrates these features into a unified platform designed to power smarter digital relationships.

AI capabilities are also embedded at every stage, helping brands gain the kinds of insights needed to move fast and personalise at scale.

“Your customers expect that you use all of the data you have on them to provide a better experience,” Cohen says. “You want to be able to access all this information so you can communicate with customers in the ways you dream about.”

That means you need “a schema-free design that has the applications and the data model built into the same platform, that integrates with all the different solutions you use so you can go from idea to action in the same day,” Cohen says. In other words, “you need Klaviyo B2C CRM.”

Here are the key features of Klaviyo B2C CRM that reimagine the B2C approach to customer journey, experience, and management: 

Boost your business with the only CRM built for B2C 

Klaviyo’s tools for building better personalisation, automation, and measurement have already transformed marketing for B2B brands. Now it’s time for B2C brands to reimagine what’s possible, by building better relationships with their customers. 

This new B2C CRM gives brands the opportunity to spend less and stay ahead of the competition.

“If you can’t stand out, you’re going to miss out,” Cohen says. “This new B2C CRM gives brands the opportunity to spend less and stay ahead of the competition.” 

As CRM technology continues to evolve in an age where personalisation is everything, one thing is clear: it’s the businesses that adapt and embrace innovations like Klaviyo B2C CRM that will thrive.