Shopify is a beast of an ecommerce platform, overflowing with innovative apps, one-and-done integrations, and easy-to-use features. The best part? The company regularly releases updates to ensure all users can take advantage of the latest marketing trends and tactics.
That said, here are eight new Shopify features worth getting excited about. (Trust us, they’ll majorly help level up your marketing and ecommerce efforts.)
Segmentation is key in marketing: By segmenting shoppers into groups based on their behaviors, interests, and demographics, you’ll deliver more relevant offers and marketing messages.
That’s why Shopify’s new predicted spend tier has us pumped. With it, Shopify will analyze customers’ past interactions with your store, such as how often they made purchases, how many orders they’ve placed overall, what their average order value (AOV) was compared to overall AOVs for your store, and when they last placed an order.
Then, armed with this information, Shopify will group your customers into “high,” “medium,” and “low” predicted spending tiers, allowing you to filter based on tier via the platform’s customer segmentation tool.
With this insight, you can make strategic decisions to boost sales:
Deliver a valued-customer marketing campaign to high-value customers
Create targeted messages to move customers to the next tier
Offer exclusive discounts or promotional codes for specific tiers (e.g., free shipping for low-tier customers vs. 15% off for medium-tier customers)
Determine which products or product categories are most relevant to customers in specific tiers, then create a campaign around them
By knowing the value of each customer, you can better calculate how much budget you should devote to customer acquisition and the general return on investment (ROI) from all your marketing efforts.
Note: Predicted spend tier is only unlocked when your store has made at least 100 sales.
We love marketing automation — who wants to manually handle pesky tasks when you can delegate it to software? Here’s some good news: Shopify has introduced a host of new email campaign automations to make your life easier (previously, a third-party app was required to accomplish these tasks):
Welcome a new subscriber: Say hello to new subscribers with a friendly welcome email. Consider including a small discount to thank them for subscribing, plus copy describing what content they can expect. (However, note this automation will only work when users subscribe using an email sign-up form in your Shopify store’s footer.)
First purchase upsell: A customer may have just checked out, but that doesn’t mean their shopping experience should end there. With a first purchase upsell email, you can drive repeat purchases with a targeted product offer.
Customer win-back: If you have existing customers who haven’t shopped with you in a while, a customer win-back email (with a one-time discount) is a great way to reconnect and remind them of what you have to offer.
Custom: With Shopify, you can easily design custom email automations that address your unique customer needs. All you have to do is set the trigger (e.g., location, customer accounts, order value) and pair it with an email design.
Pro tip: While these Shopify-led email marketing automations are a fantastic starting point, you’ll need a more comprehensive email tool as you scale your brand. Here’s where a marketing platform like AdRoll comes in handy — check out how our email solutions can help tackle your marketing needs here.
Are your emails feeling a little stale? There’s no need to hire a graphic designer — AdRoll offers email marketing templates you can easily customize (using drag-and-drop!) for your brand.
As you design your automated emails, here are a few tips to keep in mind:
The subject line is king. With tons of promotional emails landing in our inboxes every hour, it takes some serious creativity to stand out. Use an emoji or a compelling offer to grab attention and inspire clicks. (Want some tips and tricks on crafting A+ subject lines? Check out the guide here.)
Don’t forget your call to action (CTA). We highly recommend testing different CTAs to determine what works best in driving conversions. Beyond the text itself, make sure the CTA — which needs to clearly resemble a button — is prominently displayed and accurately sized for mobile.
Use images and videos. You’ve likely heard it before: Images and videos are the most effective means of marketing your business. Try user-generated content wherever possible to boost your social proof. Even better, pair it with a review or two that speaks to the value of purchasing.
Find the sweet spot when it comes to timing and frequency. Nobody wants to be bombarded with emails and offers — it’s actually a main reason users hit the dreaded “unsubscribe” button. Remember: The goal is to deliver value-added emails (i.e., promotional offers or genuinely useful or entertaining content) to increase your ROI rather than sending emails just for the sake of doing so.
Uploading inventory can be a massive headache, especially when you have an extensive product catalog with every item coming in various sizes, colors, and styles.
Shopify is here to make the pain go away — it recently revamped its inventory bulk editor so you can more easily manage inventory in one place. Without getting too complicated, you can select which columns you want to view (e.g., price, weight, or location) and then update all relevant products at once.
Shopify Inbox is an integrated mailbox that hosts all customer interactions and conversations, so you can easily create automatic responses or add a chat feature to your store that users can use to message you as they shop. It can also integrate with other messaging channels, such as Facebook Messenger, so you don’t have to toggle between different tabs.
Plus, Shopify Inbox lets you communicate with other team members with Shopify staff logins via text and images. Whew, that’s a lot.
Shopify Inbox is one of the best ways to streamline and level up your customer service efforts.
The new feature, however, focuses on personalized, interactive product recommendations for Shopify Inbox product cards. Essentially, via Shopify Inbox, you can create rich product cards to give customers the option to view product details, select variants, add the item to their cart, and even check out — all without having to leave the conversation!
Considering how every friction point is an opportunity for shoppers to abandon the shopping process, these personalized product recommendations via Shopify Inbox are a game-changer.
Fulfillment is one of the most time-consuming parts of running a business — and luckily, Shopify is here to save you some time with its new collated printing feature.
How it works is simple: Rather than individually printing a shipping label, packing slip, and custom form for every order, you can print all of them in a single print job.
With Shopify’s new shipping presets, you’ll also save time and resources when creating and managing shipping labels. All you have to do is create different shipping presets based on package type, shipping service, and insurance — once saved, you can simultaneously apply the attributes to multiple selected orders.
Managing inventory is a critical part of running a successful business. But without the right technology and expertise, it can feel impossible to accurately predict what inventory you need to purchase more of, especially when it comes to seasonal items.
Shopify recently introduced in-context product analytics: a tool that lets you see the performance of key inventory metrics, such as sell-through rate and days of inventory remaining. Long story short, it allows you to see and keep track of your fastest selling products to manage the risks from both overstocking and understocking.
Shopify Flow is one of the biggest perks Shopify Plus merchants get to enjoy — after all, who doesn’t want ecommerce automations to streamline every part of their business, from customer management to loyalty and retention?
Here’s the great news: This feature is no longer limited to six-figure enterprise-level brands. If you’re on the Shopify Advanced Plan, you can now download and install the Flow app and start building your custom workflows.
Shopify Flow may look complicated, but trust us: Once you’ve set it up, you’ll significantly reduce the time you spend on the painstakingly repetitive tasks involved with running a successful store.
For those unfamiliar with how Shopify Flow works, it's an app that lets you design custom ecommerce automations without writing any code. Drag and drop simple trigger, condition, and action blocks to put together a workflow or use one of Shopify’s existing plug-and-play templates.
Here are some popular automations you can expect with Shopify Flow:
Design a nurture campaign for users who’ve placed a pre-order
Track all negative product reviews in a spreadsheet (and create a support ticket for every user who leaves a negative review)
Segment customers based on their purchasing behavior
Get team-wide notifications when stock for products falls below a certain threshold
Automatically hide and show products based on inventory level
Cancel and restock orders flagged as high-risk
Tag orders that have specific shipping or fulfillment requirements
Reward users with loyalty points if they add items to a wishlist
Add free gifts or samples to orders that meet a certain value
Send repeat shoppers personalized discount codes
If you’re on the Basic Shopify plan, there’s no need for FOMO — there are a ton of ecommerce automations you can get started with outside of Shopify Flow.
Looking to expand your Shopify store globally? This year, the platform introduced Shopify Markets, which lets stores sell to customers around the world, regardless of what plan you’re on:
Convert your pricing to local currencies for international shoppers
Localize your store’s language for different markets
Provide local payment options
Create custom international domains to optimize for search
Expanding your store to new international markets is one of the best ways to grow your business.
If you’re on Shopify’s Advanced and Plus plans, there are more international selling features rolling out soon, including custom product catalogs for different markets and unique storefront designs for different countries.
Want tips on how to begin selling globally? Bookmark this guide.
We’ve covered eight new Shopify features that you need to start using for your Shopify store, and we’re ending this post with a bonus one: the AdRoll app for Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants.
Looking for a one-and-done marketing platform that’ll help you create, manage, and optimize your ads, emails, and social media? AdRoll has you covered. Want to analyze the performance of all your marketing efforts in one, complete with insights and recommended next steps? AdRoll can do that, too.
AdRoll’s solutions are the perfect way to level up your Shopify store so you can reach the right shoppers at the right time and at the right place. Get started now!
Last updated on May 19th, 2022.
