Contents What is an ecommerce customer lifecycle? Customer awareness – Bring in online shoppers to your store Customer engagement and retention – Keep your subscribers and customers engaged Customer advocacy – Get your customers to get you more customers Customer analytics – Optimize your growth strategy to scale faster Getting your Shopify growth toolkit together The Shopify Toolkit to Transform your Store into a Growth Machine Ecommerce platforms like Shopify are making it simpler to get started with an online business. But when it comes to running that business successfully, it’s easier said than done for most! From taking your online store live to building a brand, driving traffic to your site, acquiring customers, fulfilling orders and nudging customer loyalty, there’s a lot that goes into every stage of the ecommerce customer lifecycle. So a thought came – why not put together a Shopify toolkit to help you implement the best of strategies at each stage of the lifecycle to grow your business without breaking a sweat. And, here we go. Table of Contents1. What is an ecommerce customer lifecycle?2. Customer awareness – Bring in online shoppers to your store 3. Customer engagement and retention – Keep your subscribers and customers engaged4. Customer advocacy – Get your customers to get you more customers5.Customer analytics – Optimize your growth strategy to scale faster6.Getting your Shopify growth toolkit together What is an ecommerce customer lifecycle? An ecommerce customer lifecycle – also known as an online shopping journey or customer journey, refers to the stages that a consumer goes through to find your brand, learn about your products/ services , decide to make a purchase and become a repeat customer. Simply put, it consists of 5 key stages in a consumer’s journey with your business: Awareness: When you introduce new consumers to your brand and what it has to offer Acquisition: When you get consumers interested in what you offer on the website Conversion: When an interested consumer makes a purchase from your store Fulfillment: When you fulfill the order placed by the consumer to deliver the offer made Loyalty and Advocacy: When the new customer chooses to buy from you again and even send referrals Now that you know what goes into a comprehensive customer lifecycle of an online shopper, let’s look into each stage and the tools you will need to execute powerful strategies. The only Shopify store growth plan and toolkit you need Customer awareness – Bring in online shoppers to your store The following tactics will help you capture consumer attention through popularly used channels and platforms, driving traffic to the website. Google ads As per Statista More than 41% of online shopping journeys start from the search engine, but ranking for specific keywords can be time-consuming. That’s where Google ads come in handy to promote your products at the top of search results for a targeted audience. For example, here’s how brands like Food Strong, Man Matters and others target consumers searching for health supplements powder on search: Recommended app: Clever – Google ads and shopping The Shopify app helps you get started with search ads – Google Shopping, Smart Shopping, Search, Display & Remarketing campaigns – in no time. It also automatically implements the conversion tag on your website, helping you track conversions and sales from day one, to optimize for better return on ad spend. Social media ads Statistics have found that about 98% of consumers find products of interest on social media. But owing to the increasing amount of competition, it is becoming tougher to get discovered organically despite consistent efforts. Social media ads, similar to search ads, can get you on top of their feeds. For example, HeadPhoneZone has been running social media ads on Facebook and Instagram to announce new launches and offers consistently: Recommended app(s): AdRoll If you’re new to advertising on social media platforms, we recommend using the AdRoll Shopify app. It connects to your Shopify store to create dynamic ads for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and 500+ networks, keeping them optimized with the help of AI. You can also use the app to set up retargeting campaigns to reduce customer acquisition costs. Snapchat ads If your target audience is active on Snapchat, we also recommend this Shopify app to easily sync products to your Snapchat catalog. This helps you run ads and track performance, while keeping order details streamlined. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing is one strategy that has proven to drive more than 16% of ecommerce sales in Canada and the US alone. The numbers are much higher when you take into account a global audience and shopping behavior. But it requires finding the right affiliates, creating affiliate collaterals and being able to track performance continually to optimize efforts. Here’s an example of the same from Daniel Wellington: Recommended app: AiTrillion The Shopify app for affiliate marketing lets you create and launch affiliate programs based on cart pierce rules, set a specific commission type for each program, configure discounts and paymout requirements, manage affiliate accounts and transactions – all from one dashboard. It also enables you to use a variety of promo materials to make your affiliate promotions more impactful. Content marketing Another way to capture consumer interest and nudge them to make a purchase from you is using content marketing. By creating content around consumer interests and challenges, 72% of ecommerce marketers have been able to see an increase in traffic and consumer engagement. For example, GymShark, an apparel brand for fitness, has an active blog to share tips on health related aspects their audience is searching for: Recommended app(s): GemPages and PageFly Both the above Shopify apps are great options for those who want to get started with content marketing to drive traffic to the site. They come with a plethora of customizable templates and a drag and drop editor that lets you set up a blog in no time, with custom categories, layouts and visual elements. Influencer marketing Another effective way to reach your target audience and build brand awareness is to collaborate with influencers – people who have a niche audience on their blogs or social media, and can create authentic content to introduce you to their followers. About 89% of marketers say that the ROI from influencer marketing is comparable or more than other channels. Here’s an example of influencer marketing from Kylie Cosmetics: Recommended app: Linkr This Shopify app for influencer marketing lets you tap into an exclusive, invite-only network of quality influencers and content creators to find people to work with. It additionally lets you set up professional campaigns and create different deal types to manage influencer campaigns and monitor performance with ease. Sales channels Multichannel buyers account for 73% of all online consumers today. This only goes to suggest that being on channels that your target audience is making use of actively, is a great way to capture consumer attention and drive sales. Luckily, Shopify has integrations with a number of sales channels and online marketplaces across the world. From social channels like Facebook shops to popular marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, Walmart and others, you can use a Shopify app to sync the channels with your store in one click to get started. Recommended app(s): Explore all Shopify sales channels Each of the sales channels apps are built to make it easier for businesses to list products on online selling sites and marketplaces. They also offer in-depth analytics to help optimize sales strategy for each channel. Customer acquisition – Turn visitors into subscribers and customers Once you have started to drive traffic to your website, it’s important to get a few strategies and tactics in place to capture the intent of these buyers. Popups While some experts say that popups are intrusive, studies have shown that they can drive anywhere between 3-10% conversion rate when used strategically. This could be to display ongoing deals and discounts, offering a one-time coupon code in lieu of a phone number or an email address, or simply recommending products. Here’s an example of a strategic popup on Kind Life, an online store that sells health products from multiple brands: Recommended app: AiTrillion The app comes with pre-built and customizable popup templates along with a powerful popup builder. It lets you create different types of popups to capture consumer attention, based on the content shown, offers included and input fields. You can also set custom triggers like time-based and exit intent to trigger popups for a non-intrusive experience. Live chat Over 41% of customers prefer live chat to get shopping assistance from businesses they intend to buy from. At the same time, they also expect real-time communication with fast resolution times to their queries, making it imperative that businesses use a mix of live agents and chatbots to offer support. Here’s how Kate Spade has implemented a live chat; although there are many ways in which you can tailor the live chat experience: Recommended app: AiTrillion The Shopify app for live chat helps you automate upto 70% of your consumer queries with the help of chatbots. It also helps you gather consumer information like email addresses and phone numbers to address complex queries, notifying you of the same through real-time emails. It helps shorten the sales cycle with a seamless integration to your Shopify store backend. Announcement bar Similar to popups, but less aggressive in nature, announcement bars are a great way to bring something to your visitor’s attention. It displays at the top of your website at all times to ensure the message remains visible, even as the visitor navigates through different pages. Here’s an example of the same on Kate Spade; they use a rotating announcement bar to bring attention to multiple offers: Recommended app: AiTrillion A powerful Shopify app for announcement bars, AiTrillion comes with ready-to-use and customizable templates. It also lets you style the announcement bars with background images, custom fonts, buttons and animation effects for higher engagement rates. Form builder If you have an online business that sells custom products or requires specific consumer inputs to deliver products, you will need a form on the website. A good form builder will make it easier for consumers to share the desired information with your brand, helping you understand their needs better and capture the data in an organized way. Recommended app: AiTrillion The form builder Shopify app lets you create custom forms for your website and other marketing channels with 30+ field types. It also comes with a feature to split long forms into two pages to create a more seamless experience for buyers, and add verification elements like CAPTCHA code to reduce fraudulent submissions. Live sales notifications Another way of creating FOMO and urgency to take a desired action on your online store, is to display live sales notifications. This is a notification that displays on the website as a visitor browses through it, showing them the sales made on a specific product at that very moment. Here’s an example of live sales notification on Shop Mango People: Recommended app: Nextsale Nextsale is one of the most popular live sales notification Shopify apps. It syncs with your online store to display live sales as well as product reviews to a visitor as they browse through the product pages. It comes with pre-built templates that can be customized to match the look and feel of your site, as well as their display placement. Countdown timer Consumer surveys have found that 69% of millennials experience FOMO, and 60% of people make purchases because of FOMO – mostly within 24 hours. That’s exactly why we recommend having a countdown timer on key pages such as sales page, discount pages or limited edition product pages, to nudge a visitor into taking action. Recommended app: Web Push Notifications & Sales The Web Push Notifications & Sales app by AAAecommerce is a Shopify App which is in one of its category. With this app you not only can do web push notifications but can have count down timers included in it as well. It comes with multiple timer types like one-time, auto-recurring, daily and weekly timers. You can also customize the look and feel of your countdown timers to match your website’s branding. Product recommendations 54% of online retailers have reported product recommendations as a key element to driving more conversions, and helping them increase the average order value per visit. But displaying the right recommendations at the right time requires understanding consumer intent, preferences and displaying items that match the same in a dynamic manner as they progress across the website. Here’s how Gymshark displays product recommendations on their product pages: Recommended app: AiTrillion A powerful Shopify app for product recommendations, AiTrillion comes with a data-driven recommendation engine. It lets you display product recommendations across all pages, based on a customer’s search queries, previous interactions, purchase history, items in cart, social behavior and geographic location, helping you create an extremely tailored shopping journey for them. Customer engagement and retention – Keep your subscribers and customers engaged While most online stores are focused on staying on top of their acquisition strategies, only 18% of them focus on retaining these customers. But statistics have found that businesses that focus on customer engagement and retention are able to boost their profits by 25% to 95% with just a 5% improvement. Email marketing Email still continues to be one of the most effective channels when it comes to communicating with customers. It has time and again proven to deliver $44 ROI on every $1 spent, and that’s why we include it in our customer engagement and retention campaigns. From sending newsletters to updates on new products, deals and discounts, you can use emails in a number of ways. Here’s an example of a customer engagement email from Explore cuisine: Recommended app: AiTrillion AiTrillion is one of the best Shopify apps for email marketing as it comes with ready-to-use templates for practically all ecommerce use cases – promotions, cart recovery, flash sales, and more. But more importantly, it includes a number of workflows for automations across the buyer’s journey to keep them thoroughly engaged; that can be customized as per your business goals. It lets you not just personalize emails with 20+ tags, but also run segmented campaigns to double your channel ROI. Web push notifications Web push notifications continue to be an all-time favorite amongst those consumers who choose not to share their contact details with businesses. Owing to their interface and format of message delivery, web push notifications see a 98% open rate on campaigns as well. With the help of the right tool, you can actually automate your web push campaigns across a customer lifecycle, to add value to their journey and keep them engaged with what you have to offer. Here’s an example of a web push campaign: Recommended app: AiTrillion AiTrillion lets you enable a one-click opt-in bar to web push notifications on your site, and set up custom automations thereafter to keep customers engaged. You can also create a separate list of subscribers to run personalized campaigns based on clear segmentation, and leverage rich media like images to make the messages more engaging. The web push notifications app comes with a number of ready to use templates that can be customized as per your needs. SMS marketing Surveys have uncovered that 64% of consumers want businesses to send important updates and notifications through text messages. In fact, SMS marketing has shown to deliver a 98% open rate on most campaigns when strategized to stay consistent and deliver personalized messages. But one-off bulk message send services have now retired owing to consumer data compliances across the world, leading to the need of automation platforms. Here’s an example of an SMS campaign from a home decor and lifestyle brand: Recommended app: SMSBump SMSBump is a leading text marketing app for Shopify stores that comes with the ability to capture phone numbers through custom popups for mobile devices. It also comes with pre-built automation workflows across a consumer’s lifecycle to help you plan campaigns that are personalized with names, discounts, offers and messages to keep them engaged. WhatsApp marketing Similar to text messages, WhatsApp for Business and the WhatsApp Business API, has opened new doors for businesses to communicate with consumers. Delivering a similar open rate, WhatsApp messages are able to drive a higher click through rate of 45-60% owing to the ability to add media files and interactive call-to-action buttons. But to get a campaign up and running, you require a solution provider that syncs with your store as well as complies with the WhatsApp commerce policies for setting up automations. Here’s an example of a WhatsApp marketing campaign: Recommended app: QuickReply.ai QuickReply.ai is a fast-growing Shopify app for WhatsApp marketing. It comes with pre-built campaign workflows and 40+ ecommerce chatbots that can be leveraged on the messaging app. It lets you set up cart recovery campaigns, order alerts, broadcasts, surveys and other engagement campaigns to keep consumers active. Facebook Messenger Marketing About 85% of smartphone users make use of Facebook Messenger on a daily basis for personal communication. But it was also found that about 39% of them also use the platform to communicate with businesses they’re interested in buying from. To make conversations more seamless and timely, to keep consumers engaged, businesses need to leverage smart automations and chatbots on Facebook Messenger. Recommended app: Recart Recart is one of the leading Shopify apps for Facebook Messenger Marketing. It connects with your Shopify store and Facebook page, letting you create custom automations and workflows with the help of templates from one dashboard. It also lets you track the performance of your engagement campaigns, letting you optimize for higher conversions. Customer loyalty program and rewards Consumer surveys have found that 75% of buyers favor companies that offer rewards. Now considering how about 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, having a loyalty program is no longer a good-to-have. It is a must-have strategy for customer engagement and retention, to drive recurring revenue. Here’s an example of a loyalty program from Bath & Body works: AiTrillion One of the best Shopify apps for customer loyalty programs is AiTrillion. It lets you set up a highly interactive loyalty program based on 18+ activity rules like follow on social media, product review submissions, create an account and more, to keep customers engaged with it. The app also lets you set up different types of rewards to entice different customer segments – like discounts, percentage/ money off, free shipping, etc. You can also integrate it with your referral program to reward customers for recommending your brand. Download the FREE guide to reinventing customer loyalty programs here (framework and examples included). Ecommerce subscriptions About 54% of online shoppers have subscribed to an ecommerce subscription service or box in the last one year. The ease of shopping and meeting recurring demands is what makes ecommerce subscriptions a win-win for both the business and the consumer. But it does require an online store to set up an infrastructure to accept subscriptions and fulfill them in a timely manner based on parameters such as recurring period, validity and type of subscriptions. Here’s an example of what a subscription model looks like from Goli, a health and wellness supplements brand: Recommended app: AiTrillion The AiTrillion subscription module lets you decide which products and collections to offer subscriptions on. It also helps you send renewal reminders with the help of automated emails and push notifications to reduce churn from subscriptions. The auto-tagging feature helps you keep your subscription customers well segmented for personalized marketing. Customer advocacy – Get your customers to get you more customers Studies across various industries have found that 64% of marketers find word-of-mouth the most effective form of marketing. In fact, 70% of marketers have also stated that they intend to increase their online word-of-mouth spending to reach a qualified audience through their existing customers. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can tap into customer advocacy. Product reviews Almost 93% of online shoppers read customer reviews before making a purchase. The trick to making product reviews work for your online store, is to display them on the site itself. Letting consumers use the search engine to discover reviews can result in them stumbling upon competing sites as well. Here’s how Wellbeing Nutrition displays product reviews: Recommended app: AiTrillion AiTrillion is the best customer review platform for Shopify stores. From collecting reviews and feedback at different stages of a buyer’s journey – on purchase completion, order fulfillment and other milestones, to displaying them on the site in the form of text, photo and video reviews in a carousel or a dedicated page, the app lets you do it all. It also optimizes the reviews for Google rich snippets to drive more traffic to your site through the search engine. Referral marketing Studies have found that customers acquired through referrals are 5x more likely to convert and have a 37% higher retention rate. The same study also highlights how you can generate almost 16% of your revenue through referred customers. But getting your existing customers to promote your brand in their network, requires setting up a referral program that incentivises their action or gives them a reason to proactively participate. Recommended app: ReferralCandy A go-to solution for setting up referral programs on a Shopify store is ReferralCandy. It lets you create a custom referral program that is a win-win for both the referrer and the referred customers. You can integrate the program with loyalty program apps like AiTrillion as well to make rewards more diversified and trackable. User generated content About 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people other than the brand itself. User generated content like product photos and videos have proven to increase online conversions by almost 10%, leading to more sales. But to be able to collate user generated content and display it on the site, you will require an app that can sift information from social media, product reviews and other channels. Here’s how Vajor displays their user generated content on the website: Recommended app(s): Instagram Shop + Feed Gallery Display your Instagram feed or tagged pictures on your Shopify store to showcase how existing customers feel about your brand. Twitter feed apps Display what your customers and followers have to say about your brand on Twitter through a feed on your home page or a custom page. Customer advocacy – Get your customers to get you more customers Studies across various industries have found that 64% of marketers find word-of-mouth the most effective form of marketing. In fact, 70% of marketers have also stated that they intend to increase their online word-of-mouth spending to reach a qualified audience through their existing customers. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can tap into customer advocacy. Product reviews Almost 93% of online shoppers read customer reviews before making a purchase. The trick to making product reviews work for your online store, is to display them on the site itself. Letting consumers use the search engine to discover reviews can result in them stumbling upon competing sites as well. Here’s how Wellbeing Nutrition displays product reviews: Recommended app: AiTrillion AiTrillion is the best customer review platform for Shopify stores. From collecting reviews and feedback at different stages of a buyer’s journey – on purchase completion, order fulfillment and other milestones, to displaying them on the site in the form of text, photo and video reviews in a carousel or a dedicated page, the app lets you do it all. It also optimizes the reviews for Google rich snippets to drive more traffic to your site through the search engine. Referral marketing Studies have found that customers acquired through referrals are 5x more likely to convert and have a 37% higher retention rate. The same study also highlights how you can generate almost 16% of your revenue through referred customers. But getting your existing customers to promote your brand in their network, requires setting up a referral program that incentivises their action or gives them a reason to proactively participate. Recommended app: ReferralCandy A go-to solution for setting up referral programs on a Shopify store is ReferralCandy. It lets you create a custom referral program that is a win-win for both the referrer and the referred customers. You can integrate the program with loyalty program apps like AiTrillion as well to make rewards more diversified and trackable. User generated content About 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people other than the brand itself. User generated content like product photos and videos have proven to increase online conversions by almost 10%, leading to more sales. But to be able to collate user generated content and display it on the site, you will require an app that can sift information from social media, product reviews and other channels. Here’s how Vajor displays their user generated content on the website: Recommended app(s): Instagram Shop + Feed Gallery Display your Instagram feed or tagged pictures on your Shopify store to showcase how existing customers feel about your brand. Twitter feed apps Display what your customers and followers have to say about your brand on Twitter through a feed on your home page or a custom page. Customer analytics – Optimize your growth strategy to scale faster Once you have your growth strategy up and running, it is important to keep a close watch on what’s working for your business and what is a drain of resources. This is where ecommerce customer analytics come into play, so you can optimize each of your efforts for specific performance metrics. Reports and analytics To start with, it’s important for you to get an overview on the performance of your strategies across the customer lifecycle to optimize efforts. From understanding customer behavior to how they choose to interact with your business and where they make purchases from, your reports and analytics is the go-to for quick actionables. Recommended app: AiTrillion AiTrillion offers what is commonly known as a CEO dashboard that unifies data from all your marketing, advertising and sales channels in one place. It lets you get a clear picture of your market performance, consumer behavior and attribute touch points in a more definitive way. The app helps you make data-driven decisions across the board. Customer timeline In order to drive more conversions on your website and through your campaigns, you need to learn how consumers interact with the touchpoints you have set up. That’s where a customer timeline comes in to give you an overview of a consumer’s journey. This helps you optimize efforts and experiences to lead consumers to a desired action and close sales faster. Recommended app: AiTrillion AiTrillion’s powerful analytics suite comes with a detailed customer timeline feature. It lets you clearly track a customer’s history with your business, past interactions across multiple channels and attribute ROI to each accordingly. This helps you scale up/ down the efforts on sales channels and platforms to improve customer experience. Customer segmentation Every online shopper is driven by different purchase motivations and that’s why it is important to segment them based on data more than the basic demographics. Segmentation is also key to personalizing marketing and advertising campaigns for higher context, engagement and conversions. Recommended app: AiTrillion The customer segmentation module on AiTrillion lets you build segmented audiences in real-time through ongoing campaigns. It is able to combine customer journeys between multiple user sessions and patterns to understand behavior at an individual level. The customer analytics and segmentation Shopify app is able to identify consumer intent based on previous interactions and engagement, to create micro-segments for higher degrees of personalization. Predictions A big part of succeeding online is being able to understand the changing consumer needs and purchase behavior to be able to predict and prepare for the time ahead. This is where predictive analytics comes in, making use of your past and current data to identify consumer patterns and provide you actionables for better business decisions. Recommended app: AiTrillion AiTrillion helps you predict a customer’s next move by leveraging a combination of data based on behavior and past actions performed by them. This helps you forecast future outcomes from different customer segments to pre-plan marketing and engagement campaigns to reduce churn, and meet consumer demands. Custom audience Custom audience refers to identifying your current customers and parameters that define them, segregating them based on attributes such as behavior and purchase data, and then using the set for marketing campaigns on emails, web push, etc or advertising campaigns that fall under retargeting, remarketing and brand awareness. Using custom audiences has helped businesses lower the cost of acquisition through paid campaigns. Recommended app: AiTrillion The customer analytics available on AiTrillion help keep your segments and audiences automatically in sync. This helps you identify potential target audience segments based on distinctive attributes like purchase power, activity, purchase history and more, allowing you to create effective marketing and advertising campaigns across all channels. Getting your Shopify growth toolkit together There are a number of touchpoints that come into play in an online shopper’s buying journey. This typically requires an online business to ensure they have a defined framework, required automations and optimizations in place across them all. But it is important to note here that as you scale your online business, keeping your store site speed in mind is important for every tactic to be effective. The more solutions and apps you implement on the site, the greater are the number of integrations and optimizations you need to keep things working seamlessly. This is why we recommend using all-in-one ecommerce customer lifecycle tools like AiTrillion. The app is built to cater to the different touchpoints an ecommerce business needs to enable to succeed and keep customers moving across the funnel, reducing the overheads on subscribing to different tools as well! Ready to grow your ecommerce business? Explore AiTrillion today. Article by Ayush Verma Ayush is the Head of Marketing at AiTrillion, that aims to simplify ecommerce marketing for online stores. He has a special inclination towards loyalty marketing and customer advocacy. With a strong belief that great marketing always has content at its center. You can reach out to him at mailto:ayush@aitrillion.com Like what we do? Come work with us Do you want more revenue from your Shopify store? We at AiTrillion cater to every aspect of the customer journey; from engagement, and conversion to retention at 55% less cost.
