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Ecommerce
Automation 101:
Loyalty and Retention
Set your brand up for long-lastingcustomer loyalty

With rising customer acquisition costs and an increasing number of retailers moving theirbusiness online, it’s never been more important to prioritize long-term relationships withexisting and loyal customers.

To put this in context, ecommerce is
expected to grow by nearly $11 trillion
dollars between 2021-2025, with anestimated 12-24M ecommerce sites aroundthe world.
This growth is mainly being driven byadvancements in technology that havelowered the barrier to entry, and made it
incredibly easy to buy and sell
products online.

Further to that, due to recent data privacychanges made by iOS 14, the cost for digital
paid ads has increased 15-20%.
In fact, according to Ben Jabbawy—theFounder and CEO of Privy—“some brands areseeing ad costs go five times higher than[before] to drive the same amount of traffic”.

As a result of these challenges, brands need to prioritize
retention by both rewarding and incentivizing their existingcustomers to spend more.

Ecommerce automation is software built to convert tasks, processes, or campaigns within yourbusiness into automations that intelligently execute exactly when needed. It’s how businesses
can do more with the resources they have and scale efficiently.
When it comes to loyalty and retention, ecommerce automations can help do things
like automatically:• Kick-off post-purchase campaigns• Tag customers for segmentation and marketing• Track high value customers and returns• Award loyalty points for purchases and product reviews
No matter the use case, the end goal is the same: to increase customer loyalty as efficiently
and cost-effectively as possible.

“I can turn on the workflow with just a few clicks and never worry about
it again. Shopify makes it easy to build campaigns that get the rightmessage to the right customer at the right time, which reallyhelps me grow my brand.”
Bianca Boldişteanu | Queen B Cards

Shopify Flow was built to help brands create the custom workflows that they need to automate
tasks, processes, and campaigns within their store and across their apps.
Flow is based on a simple, no-code “trigger, condition, and action” format. Basically, a “trigger”
is an event that Flow looks out for and which sets an automation in motion. A “condition” is therule that determines if an action should occur, and the “action” is the task that is completed if
the condition is met.

Here’s what that might look like for a workflow that automatically adds a customer to yourloyalty program:• Trigger: An order is created.
• Condition: If the order total is $500 or more.
• Action: The customer is tagged as a VIP in the system.
Empowering brands of all technical skill levels, Flow lets you quickly and easily install pre-built
workflows or create entirely custom ones, all without needing to touch a line of code.

Track and thank customers whopurchased a subscription
Tracking your top customers allows you to
reward the customers who are most active
in your shop. With this workflow, you cansegment and tag customers based on their
lifetime spend or order count, implementing
well-deserved loyalty and retention initiatives
based on the data. The tool can also help you
stay on top of segmentation by automaticallynotifying your team when customers passcertain spending thresholds.
Get started with the Total Spend template

Get started with the Order Count templateTag, thank, award loyalty points
to customers who purchased
a subscription
Subscription programs are an incredibly
popular way to boost customer retention andreceive recurring revenue. Further to that,
78% of customers said that loyalty programs
encouraged them to spend more money ona brand. With this Flow template you can let
your customers know how appreciative you
are by thanking them when they purchase asubscription.
Get started with the template

Kick off post-purchase campaigns
Customer retention is more important thanever. In fact, studies show that existingcustomers are 50% more likely to try new
products and spend more than net-new
customers. Use this Flow template to keep
customer acquisition costs to a minimum,and focus on retention instead. Reaching out
to your customers with custom promotions
makes them feel cared for—and excited toshop. The template allows you to createfully customizable post-purchase upsell andwinback campaigns, across email, text, orbrowser push notifications.
Get started with the template

Gain insights into your returns
Learn more about your store’s returns bylooking at reasons why customers didn’t wantto keep their purchases. Gain insights fromthis to understand how you could improve.
This workflow automatically tags customers
who have placed returns totaling over $100.
From there, you can follow up with them tolearn what you can change moving forward tomend the reason for return.
Get started with the templateWhatever your business needs—build it.

1B+

Automated decisions
each month

150+

Custom use cases
solved every week

34K+

Unique jobs completedby Flow

Although we highlighted 4 key loyalty and retention use cases in this playbook, there are many
more pre-built workflows available in the Shopify Flow template library.
Additionally, remember that Flow templates can always be tailored to meet your needs—
meaning you can always swap out a specific loyalty rewards app, or change an email or text
messaging app with one that you prefer.

Get Flow