Follow The Post-Purchase Path For Long Term Growth

 These days, there are three compounding challenges making growth difficult for direct-to-consumer businesses:

1. We don’t surf the web like we used to. We’re spending most of our time online in just a handful of apps. You know the ones! If you have an online store, you’re probably paying to advertise on them.
2. Sales channels are bloated. The social channels you advertise on are getting crowded. There are more direct-to-consumer brands launching every day, competing for keywords and audiences. And email inboxes are bursting with messages from brands, family, and friends.
3. Customer acquisition costs are rising. The cost of customer acquisition has gone up 60% in the past six years and, due to all of the reasons above, they’ll only continue to climb.

The landscape sounds rocky, but acquisition is only one of the paths you can take to grow your business. The second—and too often overlooked journey to growth—is the post-purchase path. 

Play the long game for long term growth 

The goal of the post-purchase strategy is to turn first-time buyers into lifelong customers. You’re playing the long game, but there are many short-term wins. When a customer is happy with their purchase experience, they spend more money with your brand over time. They also trigger new growth by telling others about your brand offering. This strategy is all about nurturing your existing customer relationships. You’ve worked hard to earn that first sale. Now it’s time to stay top of mind and build trust and loyalty through continued service to strengthen the relationship. 

Post-purchase tactics include:

Traditionally, a post-purchase strategy takes a lot of time and money. So Shopify built a sales channel that provides and automates these services for free. We want to give independent businesses a head start in the future of mobile commerce. And we know the way to do it is to get you closer to your customers by seamlessly integrating every post-purchase touchpoint from your store—in a convenient mobile app. 

Build lasting relationships with Shop

When we imagined what a sales channel for Shopify merchants would look like, we knew it needed to be customizable like the online storefront, a direct line of communication between you and your customers, and an environment built to support the entire shopping journey. You need a channel that puts your brand experiences first. So we built Shop, the first, brand-first sales channel designed to increase your customers’ lifetime value. Unlike social channels made for photo or video sharing and funded by advertisements, Shop was built for better shopping experiences to build loyalty for your brand.

For your customers, Shop is a personal shopping assistant app that:

• Streamlines every touchpoint with your brand into one mobile app experience
• Provides better service along the shopping journey to help you build trust and loyalty
• Keeps your brand top of mind with relevant touchpoints that drive repeat purchases, sooner

Roughly 32% of customers already use Shop

For the past year, the Shop team has built an audience of more than 24 million engaged Shop app users. We did it by creating a better shopping experience for your store with Shop Pay's one-tap checkouts and order tracking. Every feature in Shop’s ecosystem plays a vital role in bringing customers back to your store sooner. But the features I’m announcing today are the post-purchase all-stars. 

Drive repeat purchases with targeted marketing automation 

Shop can help you make repeat sales sooner. The first of many-to-come marketing automations takes place at a true moment of delight in your customers’ journey. With Shop’s post-purchase offers, you can automate a push notification that sends a discount to your customers for their next purchase—as soon as their current order ships. So you can connect with your customers when they’re excited (because their order is on its way) and give them another reason to smile, while proving you value their ongoing business.

To make your post-purchase offers even more enticing, there’s now more room in every cart at checkout. Shop’s new cart makes in-app checkouts more convenient by letting customers check out from many shops at once. Improvements like multi-store checkout also help Shop maintain its place on the home screen of your customers’ phones, and empower your brand with more opportunities to interact and connect.

Want to get started? Add the Shop channel now and create your first post-purchase offer automation.

Optimize for more repeat purchases 

Both Shopify and the Shop app use data to grow and deliver more value to our customers, and we want to empower you to do the same for your mobile sales from Shop. The new analytics dashboard has the metrics you need to track Shop's impact, optimize sales, and evaluate how it performs against other channels. 

Discover how many of your customers use the Shop app and check out with Shop Pay, and how many Shop users follow your store profile. You can also track how your post-purchase campaigns are performing to learn which incentives lead to more sales. 

The Shop channel gives me a streamlined view of Shop’s impact on my business, and provides the data and tools I need to make more sales. Seeing Homesick’s Shop stats has helped me understand the importance of maintaining the post-purchase relationship with our customers.

Shop is here to help you play a smarter long game, with automated tools that engage and increase your customers’ lifetime value. 

The Shop channel is available for merchants in Canada, the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Specific requirements are needed to enable some of Shop’s features. You can check your store’s status on the settings page of the Shop channel. Or read Shop's merchant guidelines.