The great thing about Shopify’s app platform is that it encourages third-party developers to create features that can be implemented on your store without having to hire technical help. The only downside is that, with so many options available and so many similar apps, it can be hard to know where to start!
In this post, I detail 5 marketing apps for your Shopify store that can help you increase conversions and customer retention. All of these marketing apps for your Shopify store are ones that we used on www.loamandlore.com, and that I am recommending based on personal experience.
Abandonment Protector
The average abandonment rate for shopping carts is over 65%. This means that well over half of the people who take the time to choose items and fill their cart get to the point where all they have to do is press the buy button to complete their purchase – but don’t.
While Shopify does have a basic abandonment outreach email, it has 2 major limitations that Abandonment Protector addresses:
Sending an email within 20 minutes of abandonment.
We actually send our first email 12 minutes after a cart is abandoned, as well as a second email 12 hours later. Looking at our stats, I can see that most recovered carts are due to the first email, that we send almost immediately. Sometimes people just need a little nudge to push them over the finish line. If you wait too long they’ll have already moved on.
Customization and personalization
This app makes it easy to design a rich, graphic-driven email that can be personalized with the prospect’s name. We include a beautiful lifestyle image, as well as a personal note signed by our customer care representative offering any help they might need with their order. (the email uses merge tags to pull in the recipient’s name)
In total, we are able to recover about 25% of our abandoned orders, which typically adds at least 10% to our bottom line.We literally pay for Abandonment Protector’s monthly fee with a single recovered cart.
Price: $8/Month
Abandonment Protector Shopify App Page
Free Shipping Bar
One of the biggest causes of shopping cart Abandonment is shipping charges. While offering free shipping across the board would be great, for most businesses this isn’t economically viable. You should have some sort of free shipping offer however, and if you’ve taken the time to ensure you’re capturing healthy margins, you’ll have a pretty good idea of where to set your free shipping threshold.
Advertise your free shipping threshold.
Since shipping charges play such a large factor in people’s decision to purchase your products, you should advertise your free shipping offer prominently on the site. While Free Shipping Bar can be a little finicky within certain themes, it makes it dead easy to add a custom bar across the top of your site that prominently displays your offer.
Incentivises additional purchases.
Free Shipping Bar actually goes a step further by tracking the value of goods in a user’s cart and displaying a running total of what they need to spend to achieve your free shipping threshold. This subtly incentivizes users to add more items to their cart so that they can save the shipping.
Price: Free
Free Shipping Bar Shopify App Page
YOTPO Reviews
If you’ve ever been on the fence about having reviews on your site because a) hardly anyone writes them and b) those that do are often disgruntled, YOTPO may be your answer. The free version of YOTPOs app sends a follow-up email to every purchaser requesting they provide feedback in the form of a review. In addition to elevating your customer service, this allows you to capture valuable information about your products and customers. While the reviews can be shown on your site (premium feature) you can simply collect them in your dashboard and use them as you see fit.
Get testimonials
At the very least, you can use the reviews you collect as testimonials on your website. Because YOTPO automates the emails soliciting a review, it takes the entire outreach process off your hands. You can simply go into your dashboard and pick reviews to feature on your site. YOTPO also allows you to use the reviews in Facebook ads, a premium feature that I’m currently exploring and will report back on.
Understand your customers better
Getting customer feedback can be invaluable for improving your products and creating better marketing materials. The people who write reviews have shown that they are willing to give feedback, and are great people to reach out to for additional information. Email them and offer a small thank you incentive if they would be willing to speak with you on the phone for 15 minutes. This will allow you to probe deeper about how they discovered your brand and what they think about your products.
Price: Free for Basic email reviews
YOTPO Reviews Shopify App Page
Checkout Upsells & Order Bump
This app allows you to add functionality to implement a common and effective marketing tactic that Shopify does not provide out of the box: the discounted upsell. The Checkout Upsells & Order Bump app offers order bump /w checkout upsell, AOV Boost with BOGO popups, and a thank you page checkout upsell feature.
Upsell Complementary Products
Again, once you have a good handle on your margins, you should know what kind of discounts you can afford at what threshold. Look for complementary products that can be naturally bundled and start to build offers around them. Keep experimenting and see what offers are driving the most sales.
Increase Basket Size
Shipping and handling will likely be the biggest drag on your margins, but the incremental cost of shipping and packing additional items tends to be minimal. So, any increase in basket size tends to
Price: FREE or $9.99/month
Shopify App Page
Optin Monster
Optin Monster is the one marketing app for your Shopify store here that is not found in Shopify’s app marketplace, however, it is fully compatible with your Shopify store. While Shopify and most themes provide simple email popup functionality, Optin Monster expands your options exponentially allowing you to customize how when, and where your popups and opt-in forms appear. You just need to copy and paste a little bit of code from Optin Monster into your Shopify to connect the applications.
Exit intent
One of the coolest features of Optin monster is the Exit-intent technology which tracks mouse movements and serves a popup when someone appears to be leaving the site (ie. moves the mouse up to the top left). We use this to serve as a valuable contest entry form that converts nearly 10% of visitors. It could also be used to serve up an additional discount, or any high-value offer that might keep people on the site or allow you to capture an email address before they leave forever.
Multiple option forms
In addition to the popup features, Optin Monster allows you to create forms in just about every conceivable configuration: on your sidebar, after a blog post, a floating bar that sticks to the top or bottom of your screen – or even a full-screen takeover. You can also be very specific about which pages a specific popup will be shown on, or have it be visible based on specific user behavior.
Price: Starting at $9/month ($29/month for the exit intent feature I mention above)
OptinMonster Website
Conclusion
There are a ton of marketing apps for your Shopify store available. and these are just a few of them. If you have any apps that you would like to recommend, leave a comment below!