5 Irresistible Shopify Features You NEVER Knew About…But Must

Summary

Perpetual Traffic Podcast Episode Summary

Title: 5 Irresistible Shopify Features You NEVER Knew About…But Must
Release Date: December 13, 2024
Hosted by: Ralph Burns and Lauren E. Petrullo
Guest: Andreas Baranowskas, Head of Product at Shopify

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1. Introduction and Promotions (00:00 - 13:35)

The episode opens with Ralph Burns discussing innovative strategies to enhance Top of Funnel (ToFu) advertising. He introduces Ad Critter, a partner specializing in connected TV ads paired with display retargeting. Ralph emphasizes the effectiveness of this approach, stating, "You reach them, then you remind them, and then you collect the revenue. It's a strategy designed to deliver." (00:01).

Ralph details a special promotion exclusive to Perpetual Traffic listeners: a $500 campaign credit or dollar-for-dollar matching on TV campaigns up to $5,000. He encourages listeners to leverage this offer to optimize their 2024 performance, highlighting the scarcity of the deal with only six spots remaining: "We've already filled up five of them. We have six of these left." (06:30).

Additionally, Ralph and Lauren announce free business audits for six lucky businesses, offering comprehensive evaluations of their marketing strategies. This includes an early bird access to the upcoming Tier 11 Data Suite, which promises to enhance data tracking and attribution across various marketing channels (11:00).

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2. Introduction of Shopify and Their Edition (13:35 - 18:30)

Transitioning to the main content, Ralph introduces the special guests from Shopify to discuss the latest Shopify Winter 2025 Edition. Lauren expresses excitement about the timing of the release, noting its departure from previous editions: "This being winter 25 and coming out in December 2024 is like massive because usually we don't." (07:34).

Andreas Baranowskas, Shopify's Head of Product, explains the concept of Shopify Editions—biannual comprehensive updates that showcase new features and enhancements. He highlights that the current edition focuses on improving existing products rather than introducing entirely new ones: "We made a bold move not to ship new products and just focus on making sure that our existing products work much better and also that they work much better together." (16:40).

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3. Deep Dive into Shopify's Shop Campaigns (18:30 - 25:30)

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Shop Campaigns, a new feature now available to all Shopify merchants. Andreas describes Shop Campaigns as "marketing on autopilot," simplifying customer acquisition by allowing merchants to set three key parameters: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), and budget (19:07).

Lauren elaborates on its accessibility, making it ideal for both seasoned media buyers and junior marketers: "This is an easy thing that the brand owner or a junior marketer can set up because it's just the three parameters." (20:51). She also highlights the strategic advantage of integrating Shop Campaigns with the Shop App, which facilitates seamless customer engagement and retention.

Andreas underscores the flexibility of Shop Campaigns in targeting both new and lapsed customers, stating, "We allow merchants to confidently target customers based on their last purchase date." (25:21). This capability enables personalized re-engagement strategies, crucial for maximizing lifetime customer value.

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4. Enhancing Customer Engagement with the Shop App and Shopify Audiences (25:30 - 40:00)

The conversation shifts to the Shop App, a consumer-facing application trusted by millions. Andreas explains that the Shop App provides merchants with a powerful platform to engage a broad buyer base: "Shop App is a super tool, superpower that Shopify merchants have." (22:01). He highlights features such as personalized experiences, frictionless checkouts, and the ability to re-engage repeat buyers effectively.

Lauren shares her personal experience, emphasizing the App's impact on sales without additional effort: "I've seen purchases come in through the Shop App without me having to do anything." (24:11). She praises the App's visual appeal and its role in reducing marketing burdens, allowing merchants to focus on growth rather than complex marketing setups.

Furthermore, Andreas introduces Shopify Audiences, a tool designed to enhance ad targeting by generating precise customer segments based on extensive data insights. He notes that Audiences help merchants run more effective retargeting campaigns, often doubling the size of retargeting audiences and significantly lowering customer acquisition costs: "They double sales that are coming from the segment and that's the impact that the merchants see." (33:48).

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5. Benchmarking and Performance Optimization (40:00 - 55:30)

A crucial feature discussed is Shopify's benchmarking tool within the Audiences product. Andreas explains that this tool allows merchants to compare their ad performance against similar stores, providing relevant and actionable insights: "We automatically generate and understand what is a similar store cohort for this merchant." (34:33). This alignment ensures that benchmarks are meaningful and tailored to each merchant's specific niche.

Lauren appreciates the benchmarking tool's ability to level the playing field, enabling honest assessments of campaign performance: "If you're listening to this and you have an E-commerce store... you need to look there immediately because you want to know if you're doing well or if you're not." (35:47). She emphasizes how this transparency helps merchants make informed decisions about scaling their marketing efforts.

Andreas further discusses the strategic role of incentives within Shop Campaigns. He explains how Shopify manages discounts and offers to ensure that customer acquisition costs align with merchants' ROAS targets: "Shop Campaign takes care of the incentive itself and often involves the incentive we call it the shop offer to help that customer to convert initially." (39:36). This automation ensures that campaigns remain profitable by dynamically adjusting incentives based on real-time data.

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6. Final Recommendations and Wrap-Up (55:30 - End)

As the episode nears its conclusion, Lauren and Ralph express their enthusiasm for Shopify's innovations. Lauren urges listeners managing E-commerce stores to leverage Shopify's tools to enhance their marketing strategies and achieve better performance benchmarks: "You need to look [at the benchmarks dashboard] immediately because you want to know if you're doing well or if you're not." (62:06).

Andreas encourages both new and established merchants to adopt Shop Campaigns, highlighting successful case studies like Caraway, Liquid AV, and Trive Cosmetics, who have significantly benefited from the tool: "Caraway... generated over 2 million in revenue using Shop Campaigns." (53:23).

The hosts conclude by directing listeners to additional resources, including the Shopify Edition website and their YouTube channel for visual demonstrations of the discussed features. They reiterate the transformative impact of Shopify's tools on E-commerce marketing, urging listeners to integrate these solutions to optimize their business growth.

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Key Takeaways:

• Shop Campaigns: An automated marketing tool allowing merchants to set CAC, ROAS, and budget parameters, simplifying customer acquisition and re-engagement.
• Shop App: A widely trusted platform enhancing customer engagement through personalized, frictionless experiences.
• Shopify Audiences: Advanced targeting tool that leverages comprehensive data insights to optimize ad performance and reduce acquisition costs.
• Benchmarking Tools: Enable merchants to compare their performance against similar stores, facilitating informed strategic decisions.
• Tier 11 Promotions: Exclusive offers for listeners, including campaign credits and comprehensive business audits to enhance marketing strategies.

Notable Quotes:

• Ralph Burns (00:01): "You reach them, then you remind them, and then you collect the revenue. It's a strategy designed to deliver."
• Andreas Baranowskas (16:40): "We made a bold move not to ship new products and just focus on making sure that our existing products work much better and also that they work much better together."
• Lauren E. Petrulo (20:51): "This is an easy thing that the brand owner or a junior marketer can set up because it's just the three parameters."
• Andreas Baranowskas (25:21): "We allow merchants to confidently target customers based on their last purchase date."
• Lauren E. Petrulo (35:47): "If you're listening to this and you have an E-commerce store... you need to look there immediately because you want to know if you're doing well or if you're not."

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This detailed summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, highlighting the transformative features introduced by Shopify and their practical applications for E-commerce merchants. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or a business owner new to digital advertising, the insights shared offer actionable strategies to optimize your marketing efforts and drive business growth.

Transcript

[Ralph Burns]

Hey, folks, Ralph here with something that could seriously upgrade your Top of Funnel ad game. If you've been a PT listener for any period of time, you know that we talk about Top of Funnel all the time and how challenging it is for you to get quality Top of Funnel clients or leads or customers and then convert them typically at Bottom of Funnel. Well, TV advertising is one of those areas that we haven't discussed here on PT all that much. But our friends over at Ad Critter have figured this stuff out. They do connected TV ads so you can be everywhere without spending millions on super bowl ads. But they pair it with display retargeting, so you're hitting the audiences with a complete approach. You reach them, then you remind them, and then you collect the revenue. It's a strategy designed to deliver, and let me tell you, it really works. We're testing this at tier 11, and so far the results have been very impressive. Now with AdCritter, creating custom audiences are so easy. You don't need to reformat files, you don't need to mess around with complex spreadsheets. You just upload any file in any format and you're ready to go. And the match rate is awesome. They make it easy to connect with the right people, the actual people that have interacted with your ads in the past, and then allow them to naturally flow through your funnel so you can convert them at bottom of funnel. Now, the folks at ADCRator, we twisted their arm to get us a great deal for you, the PT listener. They are offering a special deal for y'all, and that is you can get a $500 campaign credit, meaning $500 in free money to test out the platform or dollar for dollar matching on any TV campaign up to five grand. Imagine the impact of that match. Spend five grand, they'll add another five grand in display. That's a huge opportunity here. Now it's only offered to you, the PT listener. Head over to AdCritter.com PT and check it out. Do you feel like you could have done so much better in 2024? Do you feel like you left so much money on the table? Or maybe your internal team or your agency just wasn't getting it done for you? You were maybe the one that was coming up with all the ideas and then they were doing the implementation. That is not how it's supposed to work. If you're the boss, your internal team or your agency is supposed to direct you and tell you what to do to scale and grow your brand. Let me tell you you are not alone. This is the number one complaint we hear from potential prospect clients who want to work with us potentially. They say their agency or their internal teams have run out of steam and they're the ones who are giving them all the ideas. Well, that's the reason why we put together a very special offer for you for 11 lucky businesses. And quite honestly, ever since we announced this promotion just three or four days ago, we've already filled up five of them. We have six of these left. And the reason we're only giving away 11 with 6 left is because my internal team, I have to give them some time off in December. And we want to get this done for you before the end of the year. So much so, in fact, my sales team has actually opened up more time to book these calls. With you, the business owner, with you, the director of marketing, you, the person that's frustrated with the results that you got in 2024 and you feel like you can do better in the coming year. Well, we are offering 11. Well, now six, because we've already given away five of them. Free business audits for six lucky businesses. And this is not an audit that's done by AI. It is done by actual humans, where they go in and they actually look at your entire business, not just your ad accounts, they look at your tracking, they look at your after the click, they analyze your emails, they analyze all of your ad accounts, everything that you're doing within your business. And we figure out where the holes are. And usually there are plenty of holes and areas of improvement. Yeah, you need an unbiased, unprejudiced viewpoint on how you're going to hit your goals in 2025. And that's what this business audit is for. So if you are interested in being one of the lucky six remaining, there was 11. Now there's six remaining businesses who qualify for this business audit. Head on over to tier11.com2025, fill out the application and we'd love to see how we can help you scale and grow. And oh, by the way, you will also get first Mover access to the Tier 11 data suite, which we haven't even launched to the world yet, and we'll be doing so in January, so you'll get early access to that. One of the greatest things about the tier 11 data suite is, you know, all those unattributeds, all those unknowns, all those directs inside your Google Analytics, or if you're using Triple Whale or if you're using Hiros, well, this lifts the veil on all of Those, up to 99% of your unattributed and your unknowns in your direct are now going to be known in the knowns that are going into individual channels. Your Google, your meta, your organic, your email, those are more accurate. That's how great datasuite is. It lifts the veil finally, for data tracking, unlike anything we've ever seen because it uses three Martech tools pieced together with an integration that we wrote here at tier 11. And you will get early bird access to that as well when you fill out the application [e-mail] 2025Make 2025 the best year yet. Start by planning it now. Book a call with our team today, fill out the application and let us help you scale smarter, not harder, in the coming year. All right, so today's show is just a little bit different. We're going to have the folks from Shopify come on Perpetual Traffic here today and explain a lot of the new releases, a lot of the stuff that's coming out now and into 2025. And they do this twice a year, what they call Shopify Editions. They do it in the summer and they do it in the winter. And we just so happen to have both agency owners here. But also Lauren is running a Shopify store. We have a tier 11 Shopify store. We don't really sell a whole lot on it. So I think it's important for us to show this to you guys because this is a little bit of a departure of some of their previous additions, which I know you and your team, you guys go through this really specifically with all the different updates and there's like hundreds of updates that Shopify does on a twice yearly basis. Obviously they're doing it not just at this time of year, but they're doing it throughout the entire year. So as you can see here today, definitely head on over to our YouTube [e-mail] YouTube you can actually see the inside the Boring and Not Boring Edition. We're going to be showing you today, the Not Boring Edition. So did I explain edition correctly, Lauren? Like, how do you use it? Like, what's your take on it?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So this being winter 25 and coming out in December 2024 is like massive because usually we don't. We have to wait till like January, February. So one, I'm super excited because everyone's going to be on holiday break and not working and I'm going to beat all of you guys because we are. Yeah, I don't know. We Check this out. There's always so many new updates and like our two Shopify developers like comb through all of this and then build full recommendation plans of what we're implementing, what we're recommending. It's a huge update. Cause a lot of the times these additions have new features. It's when Shopify email had launched. It's when Metafields became available across all different areas. It's like it's changing so much. A lot of times you'll see these editions launch quasi attacks on apps where they're making a inferior version of popular apps available for free, included in the Shopify subscriptions. But this edition specifically is the Boring edition and I am so here for it and so grateful for it because look, sometimes these editions come out and they're better than nothing solutions for Shopify store owners when there is a platinum premium app available. But sometimes these apps cost $400 plus a month and a lot of Shopify store owners want basic bundling or subscription level products. So Shopify creates a basic version and they're not always mature enough to use. So this Boring edition is like going back to everything that they've created in many areas and being boring about their updates, but making them fantastically better.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. So anyway, so if you're watching on YouTube you can see actually the boring update, the Boring edition. So this looks like an old school website from like 20 years ago.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

This is like Craigslist when it first came out.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, it's so funny because if you go and we'll leave links in the show notes for this obviously for the past editions, if you've never seen the past editions, like they are super high end production and this one is sexy designs. Sexy design, like seriously cool designs. This one however is completely different. Like how do you get across literally hundreds of updates?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

They have a print button. They have a print button. Who prints Speechless?

[Ralph Burns]

I know nobody, although my wife does, my mother in law does.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah, I just clicked the button. Ralph. Oh my gosh. They legit have it available. It's nine sheets of paper and when you click it it does like that.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

There it is right there.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Printing noise.

[Ralph Burns]

There's the old school printing noise. You see the DMZ like LaserJet and the DMZ. That's the area between Jen and my. We call it the dmz anyway, the demilitarized zone. So anyway, so yeah, so all this. So we're going to click on the not boring button over here and I've already watched a little bit of this. I think this is the first time that Lauren has seen it. So be very interesting to see iPhone.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

And I didn't realize. I thought it was like a game. They made the not boring edition. I thought it was a game. I didn't realize it delivered the information.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

So we have.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

We have rock and roll pigs.

[Ralph Burns]

We have rock and roll pigs.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Why.

[Ralph Burns]

The pixel compliant session recording solutions.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

This is a huge lawsuit.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah. Delivered by singing pigs. You've gotta be kidding me.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You should be doing the guitar riff, Ralph.

[Ralph Burns]

I should be doing the guitar riff. I'm gonna mute the guitar playing pigs here. You can actually do it like old school style with a remote control button and you can.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Anyone under the 825 doesn't understand why there are numbers on a remote control.

[Ralph Burns]

Right? Like why are there numbers? Right? Where's the Netflix number? So now I just. And now we're on to guitar playing guy here for self serve return API. So anyway, so we're only on like update 51. I haven't gone through all of them. I think there's like 150 plus updates over.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Click on 151 and let's just keep doing the channel 5 one.

[Unknown Speaker]

Look at that.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

I mean, all right.

[Ralph Burns]

This is how you used to actually watch tv. For those of you who don't know What a remote 151. There it is. A little bit of delay here.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

All right.

[Ralph Burns]

We have motorcycle guy customers in Italy. Oh, I went back to 52. Anyway, this is absolutely hysterical. So it's like this is just cool. Like Shopify is just a cool company. Like they just do things differently. And I think this is just.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

They've hired Gen Zers. There's no way a boomer came up with this.

[Ralph Burns]

No way.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

But I bet you, I bet you Gen Zers were partnering with boomers to be like how do we bridge the gap?

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Of generations probably right?

[Ralph Burns]

So anyway, so that's, that's it. We've only gone through like we know there's 151 updates here. There's probably even more. Really excited to have the folks from Shopify here to talk through some of those updates. We can't get to all 151. But there's also.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Did you see that? There's a phone number. I'm going to call the phone number right now.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh my God.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Exit out of that phone number.

[Unknown Speaker]

Welcome to late night with Shopify Edition.

[Ralph Burns]

This is the boring edition.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

To listen to our online, press 1.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Now.

[Unknown Speaker]

Press 2.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Oh my gosh.

[Ralph Burns]

I just clicked the 1. 844-774-0779 number and it immediately opens up FaceTime. I'm on my laptop and Lauren's actually on her phone. So you can do it both ways. So it automatically dialed from the boring page Shopify.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

And it will read you these updates. So you can print it out, you can watch it online, watch it on tv, call in. Oh my gosh, I hope they're going to give us numbers on this. And I 100% want to buy this boring T shirt now.

[Ralph Burns]

Totally. I just actually got two for my kids. Hopefully they don't listen to this show. I know they don't listen to the show for stocking stuffers from Santa. So anyway, get a boring T shirt. Without further ado, let's get to the main show here on Perpetual Traffic with our special guest, Shopify.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You're listening to Perpetual Traffic.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier 11, alongside my.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Awesome co host, Lauren E. Petrulo, founder of Mongoose Media.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

We are pretty excited today. I mean, this is a company we've talked about probably for like every one of our 600 plus episodes. And we finally have them on here. Talking about it. Like we pretty much have the. If you're an e commerce store and you're on one of those other guys, you should go over to this platform. In fact, I know agencies that won't even accept clients unless they're on this platform here.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Mine included.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Yours included. And we are talking about Shopify, our favorite e commerce platform in the world. So really excited to have Andreas Baranowskas. I didn't really even pronounce it. I didn't nail it. Anyway, he's the head of product at Shopify, here to talk a lot of things that are going on, a lot of new reveals because there's a new product that's coming out here and that's already actually come out as well as just talking with Shopify. Check. Yeah. So this is fresh, fresh news, Lauren. Pretty excited to have my artist here. So welcome to Perpetual Traffic.

[Unknown Speaker]

Thank you. Thanks for having me here. I'm very excited. And the surname was pronounced pretty well. Pretty well.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Anyway, I gotta leave this over to Lauren cause she is like the Shopify techie expert here. All I know is the easiest way to get an e commerce store up and running is on Shopify. That's sort of where I sort of begin and end. And then obviously the placement of the pixel and all the tracking that goes along with it is super easy. But there's A lot of new stuff that's coming down the line. So Lauren, fire away.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Well, like full disclosure for anyone that's listening. Like I've personally owned three Shopify stores. I use Shopify pos and as stated earlier, I don't work with clients that use non Shopify. It's too difficult of an ecosystem. So like, yeah, obviously major actual fan Shopify. I mean there's always pros and cons to every e commerce platform. But if you're listening to this now, like it's editions is out, the winter editions come out, it's earlier than usual. I know that they always have such a bundle of updates that come out twice a year. And so now we're super excited because you get to hear and not have to go through all and all and all because oh my gosh, sometimes Andres, like, no offense, but there are so many updates that you give in these editions. Like it takes hours to sift through all of them. Like you're doing like 100 products in one edition. In past ones before, like that's a lot. But this time is a little different. This time it's a lot of new stuff, but it's not like new new, it's like improved new. It's like back to foundations new. So can you tell us a little high level of like what editions winter editions 24 is all about?

[Unknown Speaker]

For sure, Edition is a special thing at Shopify. So every, every six months we launch a new edition, a new Shopify edition that tells very comprehensive, very visual product story about the latest things that we've launched, updates, enhancements all over like our platform. And Lauren, you're right, there's often like more than 100 of them and it's usually a visual feast. If you go to shopify.com and you look into the previous edition, they look so nice. Every edition has one thing is that there's like a lot of features but visually so it's so, so nice. This edition however, is different, as rightly pointed out. And we've made a bold move not to ship new products and just focus on making sure that our existing products work much better and also that they work much better together. So what you're seeing is a lot of bit boring, gritty details that will have a lot of impact. And our goal at Shopify is ensuring that merchants win, that merchants make more money. And the reason why they're going to win now, why they're going to win tomorrow is because Shopify is so future proof and innovating better than ever before. Specifically in My own area we do have a new development, not a new feature. The feature that was launched a bit more than a year ago to all merchants in the U.S. all plus merchants in the U.S. shop campaigns is now available to all plants. So now all merchants are able to scale their marketing and grow the shop campaigns to reach and acquire new customers, to engage the customers that they need to win back and so on. So I'm very, very excited about this addition.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So Shopify plus stores, so those that don't know you have to pay premium to get access to that and that can be costly. There's a break even point because you get discounts on the credit card transact and unlock a whole host of benefits which one of my favorite has been able to have the dev store or like the internationalization, you can have multiple storefronts. But there's been a lot of features that have been exclusive to Shopify plus. So Shop campaign specifically is now set up for all stores. But I bet there are a lot of people listening that have no idea what shop campaigns even is. Do you mind going into what that is specifically?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, Shop campaigns in very short term is your marketing on autopilot. So we simplify the customer acquisition altogether with the product and you can think about this as something that is risk free, very low maintenance and so on. So when you go on to set up shop campaign to start advertising using that product, you have two types of campaigns. You can do new customers or you can re engage labs customers. And that's by the way is very new thing that we launched in autumn. And you only need to set three things. First you name the price that you're willing to pay for the new customer or re engage customers. So your customer acquisition cost or CAC that we often call in the industry, you also indicate return on ad spend target so how much GME you want in return for that spend. And then you set the budget. So three things, the cost, the return on ad spend and the budget. And you can also choose to expand your campaign on the third party services such as Meta and Google. Because by default your campaign is going to run on the Shop app and we take care of the rest. So we take care of the creative, we take care of the targeting part, we take care of the placements and we also choose the right incentive. So there's very, very little time necessary to set things up, very little maintenance involved. It's super easy, just set and forget. And on top of that we also provide a prediction on how your campaign is going to perform. So based on whatever you set up based on the price that your entrance on, you can very clearly see how that campaign is going to run. What are the results that you can expect so you can actually set it up correctly on the first go. So yeah, this is paid marketing on.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Autopilot, which is like something where a lot of people listening, they might be like media buyers who are specialists in one platform or another, or they're brand owners that are like, how do I know if my media buyer is effective? You're like, this is an easy thing that the brand owner or a junior marketer can set up because it's just the three parameters. But you talk to specifically about it being default to the Shop app, which is where those Shop campaigns go. So like I'm stoked about this because like, oh, I talk about shops a lot like meta shops or like unique marketplaces and like I feel bad Andres and like, forgive me Ralph at listeners, like I don't like telling people about Shop App because it feels like a secret. But like now we're just going to blow the lid out and be like, yeah, this is a really, really great placement for your ads. So with Shop App specifically, like you just talked about how you can do like repeat buyers and you're using Shopify directly, which is where the sales happen. Can you talk a little bit more about what Shop app and why that is so impactful for a lot of. I'm just assuming half the people listening are pretending they know this and don't actually know this. Like they've heard about this and you're like, okay, I really need to pay attention because yes you do.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Shop App is the consumer facing app that is already used and trusted by millions of shoppers. So if, let's say today you open this app store and you look at the shopping category, Shop is going to be one of the most downloaded, one of the most popular apps out there. And what Shop enables for Shopify merchants is engaging with buyers that otherwise would be very, very hard to reach and very, very broad buyer base. And every day we see thousands of buyers being connected to independent brands for the first time. And that discovery is actually a very, very beautiful experience. So if you open the Shop app, you see a full page merchant presentation where they can be represented by products, but they can also be represented by video, which is always very impressive and allows brands to tell their own story. And when you use a tool like Shop campaigns, it's possible to get even more of this. Acquiring new customers for a brand in this risk free manner at A fixed price and low maintenance. What I think is also worth talking about is how shop is helpful reengaging the repeat buyers and how it benefits merchants. On Shopify, we see that the buyers on the app are a lot more likely to return. We see that almost 60% of orders are coming from repeat buyers.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Sorry, wait, that was 60% are repeat buyers.

[Unknown Speaker]

The way we think about the app and all of that repeat buying behavior is that, hey, Shop app is an app that is a super tool, superpower that Shopify merchants have. It's an app that otherwise would be very, very for merchants to have individual but working together, they can actually have that presence, have that presence on the mobile phone, have that real estate on the phone and something that is used by many, many, many people in North America and at the install base that is very hard, if not impossible to achieve individually. And then having leverage of tools that exist on a mobile phone like push notifications, being featured in emails and driving traffic into that mobile app is something that's now possible that otherwise would be very, very hard.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah, that burden has always been put on the retailer to create their own app. And like, again, just selfishly speaking, like, I've, I've seen purchases come in through the Shop app without me having to do anything. And then I was like, what is this? And then I like went down this huge rabbit hole. And again, like, oh, I feel like so guilty but also like so mad that I'm like revealing this like secret like I really harbored in because it's just like bonus sales. And now like the idea of to tap into the repeat customers. I mean, repeat customers are so hard. Like you're emailing them, you're SMSing them. I mean, again, this is in North America. We've just had a huge presidential election. There's Black Friday. It's like notification fatigue. But you've been talking about how like the like returning customer and more like you mentioned before, there's like the lapsed customer and like how powerful that is. And, and then even like with how this is coming in with additions like the, like the newest launch, like we've now got better strategy to get lapsed customers. The people that have ignored us for so long. And you're like, why didn't you repeat, you silly, silly goose, you.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's something we launched very recently. So it's not a targeting feature. You. In the past, the only group that you could target that you customers. And we were very, very, very good at that and bringing you new customers. But We've always heard from our merchants that hey, there's another segment and our customer base that they really want to reach and they face great difficulty doing that. Other customers that haven't bought for a few months and we call that labs customers. And when we were talking to merchants, merchants very clearly said, hey, we typically use email marketing for this but some of the audiences are much harder to reach, especially if they haven't engaged with the brand for quite a while. And what we do here is we allow and we give tools for merchants to confidently target customers based on their last purchase date. So say hey, if you want to engage customers who haven't bought from you for the last nine months but bought before, here's the tool to do that. So you can precisely target those customers with a very personalized offer inside the shop app. Again, you set the dedicated customer acquisition cost you're willing to pay, you set the return on ad spend target for this cohort and you run the campaign. And this is one of the things that we've seen and heard time and time and time again that hey, I might be willing to pay this price for a new customer, but I'm not willing to pay the same price to re engage that customer. Because merchants think about the life and value of the customer. That just doesn't make sense for them. Right. So and this is why we created this flexibility where hey, you can specify one price for new customers and a different price for to re engage your lost customer base, labs customer base and bring them back to you and bring them back to make a purchase. And this is really not about just enhancing sales, it's about driving lifetime value of of the customer which is very, very valuable as we, as we go through the holiday season.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

So Anders, we were just with a client that is in the non e commerce space. They actually sell more of like they're in the hospitality space and they spent tens of thousands of dollars on an app and they told us, they said they have a 70% close rate when they use an app. And here you guys are offering. I don't think we've ever talked about this here on the show. And we've got the show like this thing is completely free. And just due to the fact that with some of the stats that you're talking about repeat visitors, the buyer experience is that much better. I mean this is an absolute no brainer. This is almost like the best kept secret that we haven't talked about. And I think Lauren, I know we've obviously talked about the in apps. This is A game changer just in itself. I don't think people in our audience really understand exactly how impactful that really is. And we understand how friction free it is on an app. If you guys are offering it for free as just an addition, like why would anybody not do that? And some of the most major brands that use Shopify are already using it. Yeah, call that out to the listener. Like if you're not using it, like you should be doing it right now. You're an e commerce store. It might be a little bit too late for Black Friday Cyber Monday. Maybe it's not for next year, but like this is a game changer just unto itself.

[Unknown Speaker]

And one thing that is very, very interesting about mobile apps is how much they reduce the friction that often exists in the environment. So you have the customer who signed in all the time. They don't need to enter any details in the checkout. Their experience can be personalized. It's also frictionless. That then enables both easier ability to reach that customer, but also to convert them once they land in the app. And that's very useful and something that is very, very hard to achieve independently.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Oh yeah, for sure. So talk to us about the Shopify audiences tracking obviously in the app. I mean that's all stuff that you guys are capturing. How you sort of deal with like the privacy issues with a lot of the other platforms like Facebook, meta, all that. Like explain that to us because that's a big topic of conversation here on the show. And what are your solutions in order to mitigate a lot of that?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I think that the audience's story and audience product was the first product that we've launched in this space. And I think it's also worth talking a bit about how we got there and why we even doing things in the marketing domain. We saw that marketing and more specifically paid marketing, advertising is a super important area. Shopify, we want to create a world that has way more entrepreneurs than it has today. And for anyone who has that dream, our job is to offer them the best chance to start a business. And when we look into different areas that have friction in that process, there are many of them, but one of the biggest areas is marketing and advertising. And it's one of the key activities that merchants do in day to day life. If you look at where the merchant's time is spent, they constantly think about, hey, how can I bring more business through marketing? Where do they spend money? It's this area and so on. And when we ask our merchants what's their number one Problem. It's getting customers, it's getting sales, getting new customers through the door. There's so much friction there. And then I just entered the space and I was talking to merchants, I was talking to partners and so on. We all saw that, hey, marketing is hard and it is getting harder all the time. There are so many different platforms to run ads. There are so many different ways to acquire customers. Setting up the campaigns is difficult. Costs constantly grow. You rightly point out that privacy laws change, then the platforms change, and they're changing 2025, right? Yeah, exactly. And I was performance marketer myself for a bit of time, 10, 12 years ago, acquiring installs for an app that's now the largest fashion resale marketplace in the world. And even then, the marketing was difficult. It was a very, very difficult job for someone who has some experience in that space. And it's difficult job for an experienced marketer. And it's almost impossible if you're just starting to grow. And this is a real tax on our merchants ability to grow. Many, many, many merchants could grow their business faster if the advertising spend would be more predictable, if it would be more effective, and if there would be no complexity or complexity about the space than it is today. And in order to solve for this, for the changing landscape, for the marketing performance deteriorating at that time, we first created a product that is now known as Audiences, and then later we added campaigns to the mix that we just talked about. And the difference between these two products is that with shopper audiences, we help merchants to run their existing ads better and campaigns, we simplify the experience altogether. And what happens with Audiences is Audiences is an app. You can discover it using Shopify App Store, you can just install it, you opt in into a data cop where merchants pull data together to generate thousands and millions of insights that then are used to deliver performance. And they connect their accounts on different platforms. So we do support Meta, we support Google, there's Pinterest, TikTok, Critia and Snap. You connect the accounts wherever you advertise and then based on these insights create you an audience that is exported to those platforms and you apply them to the ad sets that you run to the campaigns that you run and this leads to better performance. For example, we see that most merchants using retargeting feature, generating retargeting audiences and applying them on these largest ad platforms, they double or more their retargeting audience, which then means a lot lower cost per acquisition of the customers. This is an audience that is most of the time the best performing one. And you can double down on it now and you can get a lot more. You can double sales that are coming from the segment and that's the impact that the merchants see using the product.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I mean we've used audiences and we have the direct feeds that go into it the same as like we do with Klaviyo and wherever we can get as much data that we can put into the algorithms because we're in this like data drought essentially. Like you can't always circumvent the cookies and everything else. So like for sure, like we've been using that, but in that space. Right. So what like going back like with what we've got live today, right, with additions, like how has that changed? Like what, what improvements have been made beyond making it more accessible to smaller audiences? Like what, what is additions doing that's differently for the user? Like how is it improving? I'm essentially just saying like calling out places that you might have launched prematurely before that weren't ready and now they're going to be better.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So if I go specifically to audiences and if I look back through this year, there has been a lot of change and some of that change is going to be shared in addition. But some of that change happened even before it. And this is a product that just keeps improving, keeps getting better through the year. And I've talked about retargeting audiences, right. And that's something that improved significantly. We had announcement earlier this year we shared the data points about doubling the retargeting audiences, doubling orders that come come from those audiences. We've also introduced benchmark feature comparing your ad performance to similar stores and being very granular about it. So let's say you have a merchant that is selling custom made T shirts and they're an apparel retailer but they are not the same as let's say high end dress designer. And they want insights that are very relevant to their part of the business. And this is where we automatically generate and understand what is a similar star cohort for this merchant. So the benchmarks are really relevant for them and they can compare their campaign performance to similar merchants in that space, not just like any apparel retailer using that product.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I'm like every agency ever that's getting the conversations. It's like, well I saw this thing on TikTok and it's working for XYZ and it becomes irrelevant benchmarks. And it's like this unicorn status that at least we've, we've in the past. Raoul, I'm sure you felt those too where it's like being compared. I was like, I, I can't compare you to a well funded T shirt brand. Yes, you're in the same category but there's a thousand and a half other things that are different. And so that, that's, I at least if you're the marketer that's listening and you, you have those PTSD conversations that sometimes like make you twitch, this just helps level the playing field and have honest conversations. Or if you're the brand owner to understand that like when you're winning. Because I think like a lot of the stuff Andres that you're talking about, like, if you don't know. Shopify capital has been a thing that like Shopify has addressed for a lot of business owners who said the previous issue they had was they didn't have money because inventory. So Shopify capital is always popping up on the app like, oh, you get so much money being flaunted in my face every single day. I'm like, oh, that's a lot. But that's like been a way that Shopify has tried to help the entrepreneur end user. Now you're bringing in this marketing stuff like Ralph, like we know it, there's like, there's a Shopify store open like every six minutes or something. And not all stores are successful. And it's, it's hard. It's really, really hard. But you're a tech software, a tech solution that's trying to mitigate that burden for a lot of people. So it's like almost in like putting my cosm conspiracy hat on. Like you're protecting the entire ecosystem. Like you're building the Disney World of E commerce.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, we are removing the friction from like all of the parts of entrepreneur journey when you really think about it. And marketing is one of the most difficult parts. So that's the thing, I think that's.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Super important for any sort of startup with a Shopify store. It's like, what's my benchmark in the space? I mean that also gives you a pretty good idea of like what your new cost for acquiring customer should be to a certain degree. Because that's one of the most challenging things that probably the most challenging thing that we face as an agency is getting the NCAC or the new cost to acquire a customer down to a level that makes sense not only on the front end, but also for lifetime value. We always say, well you gotta look at your back end data. And chances are that's usually inside Shopify. But a lot of these tools just make it easier for people to be able to navigate because costs to acquire a customer and the advertising costs and marketing and all the platforms we just mentioned, they're not going down anytime soon. So you have to be that much smarter like with your messaging, with your voice. Also knowing what's the benchmark in the industry, maybe not going after a specific niche because it is too expensive for you based upon your cost of goods sold. Like all these are super important business insights that you give to startups, entrepreneurs, budding entrepreneurs that want to leave the corporate world. These are huge tools.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah. And maybe changing the space a bit. And I want to go back a bit to campaigns product because I think it's very relevant to this conversation in terms of understanding your performance, comparing your performance to across different platforms and generally getting a sense of how well you're doing. I think the important topic is also incentives, incentives that you give to your buyers. That's an important part of the customer journey in terms of incentives you deploy. For example, you run a campaign on any of the larger ad platforms out there. You pay for visibility there. Right. You pay for the traffic coming in. Yeah. The impressions. And then when the buyer actually lands on your store, most of the time you offer a first time purchase discount like a code and things like that.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

$15 off. 10% off.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You have to incentivize them. You just paid for to be here. Now let me give away even more margin. We give away more bottom line, Black Friday year round.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly. So. So your customer acquisition cost actually consists of at least two parts. The first you pay to that platform and the second there's additional expense to get that customer across the finish line on your store from your own margin. Right. And an interesting thing with shop campaigns is again like this is an ads on autopilot. Right. So all of this is taken care of for you. And you specify the customer acquisition cost you want to pay. This is the actual price you pay. And shop campaign takes care of the incentive itself and often involves the incentive, we call it the shop offer to help that customer to convert initially or to win back that customer.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So you provide that Shopify provides that discount not from the business owner, not from the product cost of goods and margin. You're again in this Disney World protection of. We have hotels and golf courses and parks. You never have to leave except for leaving from the airport to get to the park. You're just, you're containing the ecosystem so that the user and the business owner have a safe and good experience to come back.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And this is. And this is possible because you have experience and understanding of the funnel end to end. We can identify the right size of the incentive. So incentive doesn't need to be always $15. Right? It can be dynamic depending on who the customer is.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Well, that's huge.

[Unknown Speaker]

The right type of incentive and so on. And there are like, sorry, like take that back.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

There's some people, like, we don't skip over that part.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

So like Andrew, we need to become your hype crew here. You just like struck like the 60% like you said 60% before and now like a lot of these. Laura, reiterate that point for the audience because I know they weren't listening the first.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

It's like essentially making an incentive love language. We all know about like the different love languages. Are you like a gift giver, quality timer? Now you're saying like, hey, we're going to give you the incentive love language and like it's going to be dynamic based off of your buying behavior. Because again, in that ecosystem you own that data. You already know that data because they're shopping across bajillions of Shopify stores already. Whoa.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And on top of that, there's another thing is that there are also other factors that influence how conversion happens. Not only if it happens, but at what basket size does it happen? Right. So because if you're a marketer, if you're a merchant, you are seeking certain basket size because that indicates what kind of life and value you're going to get on. So for sure, right?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Because your value matters.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, exactly. And because you're able to set your target return on ad spend, let's say you have the customer acquisition cost of 50 and your target ad spend of 3. So this basically means that you expect the transaction to happen at roughly $150 basket size. Right. And this is where the system that is powering shop campaigns is very smart because you can deploy various ways to actually influence that. This transaction then happens that we deploy things like minim order value as necessary in order for you to unlock that incentive. As an example, what that's like, we.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

All cheat the system. We're always like free shipping and we increase it to be 10% over what average order value is so that we can push that up. And you're just saying you're able to contribute that within your campaigns directly and.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

You can do this in real time, like as it actually happens, individual to the individual user, as individual to the individual shopper.

[Unknown Speaker]

Am I understanding that correct? We can be smart about it because you set the royal target and Our goal is to deliver on that target, and we are getting smarter and smarter and smarter over time in terms of how we do that. And we also see merchants really nailing this thing where, hey, they experiment creating one campaign, over time, they improve into another one, and they reach the result where the basket size that they have using shop campaigns is even higher than their online store. And the lifetime value is very comparable, which is rare for any paid acquisition channel when you're comparing it against, like, the blended thing across the world.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

So let me make sure I get this. So you will automatically figure out what the discount will be, as well as on the back end, if the AOV isn't necessarily. Or that cost to acquire a new customer, obviously that affects sort of your discount on the front end. But then also aov. Are there upsells that are automatically added to increase AOV in order to make sure that the campaigns are running profitably? Is that what I'm hearing you say?

[Unknown Speaker]

Not yet. We don't have upsell today.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

That would be Disney World.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, this is an obvious area. Yeah, yeah. We actually are suggesting certain products as you go through the journey, as you go through the funnel. And this is one of the areas where we still need to get faster, smarter. And look, I think with this product, there is just so much space for improvement in terms of making sure that we are super efficient and very smart while isolating all of that complexity from the merchant. Again, merchant says only three things that they care and they think about. So how much I'm willing to pay for this? What's my target return on ad spend? Which basically means what's my target basket size and what is my budget? And then usually increasing that budget, because if the price per customer makes sense for you and it delivers the right return, that spend, you usually want to spend as much as you can on these things.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

We hear that all the time. My credit card is an open bank account for you, Lauren. If you can just hit this number, if you can hit this roas, like, sky's the limit.

[Ralph Burns]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

So that's exactly what shock and pain says.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

He made bold claims earlier, Ralph. He was like, practically risk free. I was like, ooh, legal's not gonna like that phrase. But in the sense of where you're bringing it practically, because you guys have so much control over the environment and so much data available that's proprietary to you all you're. You're circumventing and you're saying, look, I get it. Apple meta, you guys have your turf wars, the government and Google they're trying to disband a whole bunch of stuff. You're like, hey, well, when you're in our playground, we play by our rules. And where everything else ralph that we keep talking about, where we get like so stuck is playing in one platform's rules while abiding to another one. And this is just.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Well, the best part of this is the merchant actually owns it all. I mean, it co owns it with you all because that's the technology. But it's not like you're giving that data to anyone else. It's already in your home database. It's in your source of truth. Which makes this even more compelling. I don't think either one of us realized a lot of these features here. We're not just staging this like we're genuinely flabbergasted because this is such a game changer. Yeah. And you add on shop pay and all the other sort of friction free approaches here plus the app, it's like, oh my gosh, you're an e commerce store, why wouldn't you be on this platform? But we've said that already, so.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

But I appreciate that. Like, I just feel like you're honest. Like again, I painfully like, you guys have Shopify, not you. I'm not blaming you. And if you're behind Shopify email, I am blaming you. But like, you guys have launched a lot of products that don't come anywhere near the App Store. And so like, it's always this like interesting balance because there's a lot of app developers that are creating solutions that Shopify doesn't have yet. And then Shopify rolls out a partial solution. That's where, hey, if you want to pay for the premium app, absolutely go for it all day long. You want a better loyalty program, you want a better subscription program, you want bundling that goes beyond what former capabilities are. You're offering entrepreneurs a low cost to no cost solution for something that's almost like the Costco generic version. And then you can have the premium, like Dolce and Gabbana premium apps available. But in the past there are sometimes and like you guys would launch things that don't have for me foundationally, what would make a difference for someone to have a thriving one. So what you're saying is even with like audiences, even with the, there's still stuff that can improve with campaigns, lots that can improve. And this specific, like what's launched now, which came out like December 11, what's the biggest difference is that like you guys looked back and improved existing for better Efficiency and a better product. So it's not like new new. It's like Nike bringing back a pair of running shoes.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Yeah, we're finding it. Just getting better at what you're already really good at.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I think you rightly point out that the space, for example, advertising, marketing space, is a space that already has many, many different players. Right. And again, this leads to some complexity, but there are existing solutions. And I think whatever we do here, and most of the time what we do at Shopify is not really about, hey, here's the tool. This tool replaces what you were doing before, especially with this. I think we are with campaigns, we are adding people who were not, not really doing it at the scale that they're doing right now before and with this launch. In addition, when we expand shop campaigns, availability to all merchants, we think that we really go into this space where, hey, a lot more merchants will start their paid marketing journey earlier and this is the first product that they're going to use because it's so simple, right?

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

It doesn't mean that this product is better for merchants and, or in all of the cases than, let's say what largest ad platforms out there are offering. Their offerings are so sophisticated, so advanced and so on that they all have a role to play. Our products have often a role to play in getting merchants to start doing something. Like if we take Shopify email as an example, it can be a great way for you to start using email as a channel. But then there are so many other tools that are in the ecosystem that are providing so much value that be very, very useful for you in your journey. So I think it's all a big ecosystem. And I think as we do things with shop and paints, we're making that system bigger. We are making sure that merchants are actually able to do more marketing because at the right terms, they can do a lot more of it and they can do it across many different platforms and so on. And with Shopify audiences, we are improving what they already do on other platforms and they are able to do it better. And again, this usually leads to them being able to spend more and grow their business faster.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Yeah, okay, that's fair. That's fair. What you're saying is that it's a solution for if you don't have an alternative, it's a really easy place to start. Mine was just that there was a time when your sales team was like, no switch. And I was like, what? So we tried. We gave it an earnest try. And it was a place where a lot of our clients were well past where because we were like, oh, I can see where this will eventually go. But okay, so as long like if it's a, hey, there's a lot of good places to start and then once you've got proof of concept then you can expand and explore. Do you need a more sophisticated solution? But what you're doing now, at least with this most recent launch is there's a lot of previously more premature solutions that are now getting more and more developed into statistics. Especially, especially for new and like mid market e commerce. I mean well, if you, when I say new and mid market it's because if you're not on Shopify plus which is like a few grand a year, you, you're at a different revenue level for your store. So now you've got this available which has been a plus exclusive, which is pretty cool with, with shop campaigns specifically.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, now, now shop campaigns is available to all and we, we do expect many, many different merchants use the product. As I said, I think there's a huge opportunity for merchants to start using the product early and early in their journey when they just start their paid marketing thing. And we also see large merchants using the product effectively because it allows them to de risk part of their marketing spend and be very effective at that. And if you look at the merchant base that is using the product, we do have quite a few cases where you have a merchant that is sizable and they're achieving very, very impressive results. So I can share a few data points. For example, Caraway, very, very well known merchant on Shopify. They generated over 2 million in revenue using shop campaigns and that's part of their marketing mix. We had Liquid AV that is becoming a more and more known brand, was I believe a sponsor for F1 race earlier this year. They actually managed to reduce their cost per acquisition using this platform very significantly. We had Trive Cosmetics acquire More than 15,000 customers using this tool and so on. So you can see even established merchants are getting the results and are trying the tool. It's just the scale at which different merchants operate, what part of their marketing mix can rely on this tool and so on is different. So it really depends on what are your goals, what one should do. But as long as you enter your goals into the system, we can actually deliver.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

And it's pretty simple in most cases with those brands. So those are big brands, our campaigns. Like do you know what percentage versus their in app campaigns? Like how much ad spend are they devoting to shop campaigns just on average or is this like where would you sort of recommend? Because everyone who's listening to the show does some form of advertising, probably in app, in most cases, probably not on your platform. Which is the reason why we had you on the show to make sure everybody understands that this is a tool that they should be using. But like how do you get started? And then once you're at scaling one of those big brands, like what percentage of spend is that? Just to give people sort of an idea of like where do I begin with this?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, it's very hard to say because it really depends on what does your mix of spend and what are your goals. What, what I observe with most of the merchants is they, they enter the goals that make sense for them and they try to max out. Okay, as much as possible what platform can deliver. And the first place where we deliver is through shop app. But you can also extend that campaign onto Meta and Google and get additional traffic there while still sticking to that fixed price rise target and budget. So, so we see merchants trying, trying to max out but the moment it works they, they're trying, they whatever is possible, whatever is available on the system. And the most engaged brands attribute around one fourth of their new customer growth to Shopkins. We don't really know how much they spend on other platforms and so on. So we just like we can get from the feedback that they're sharing in terms of how much can they rely on that. But again this highly depends on the size that you are and so on. And I think for some merchants who have never done advertising, this can very easily be the first thing that is 100% of their spend. And then they start expanding into other things. They start trying doing things directly when they can afford that complexity, when they can have the time to do that. This is just often the first step that you can do to start the journey in super minimal time investment.

[Ralph Burns]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

So for somebody who's brand new way of doing it.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Yeah, someone is brand new because it's so easy to set up. But for somebody who's more established, maybe set aside a percentage of your budget and just test it out, see what kind of new customer acquisition costs, what type of return on ad spend you're getting. All right, makes sense. I mean it's just, why wouldn't you. I mean, I guess what all is said. My guess is that if you test it and you get success, all of a sudden you start to see a larger portion of the overall media spend being devoted more to shop campaigns is my guess because it's such a smart Tool.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And your media spend usually increases because again, what is interesting about marketing and paid customer acquisition is that budgets are not usually not fixed. You are not limited by the budget, you are limited by performance of different channels. So if you have a channel that is performant, you try to spend against it as much as possible.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Correct.

[Unknown Speaker]

And as long as you have money to invest and even in this area, Shopify can help through the financing products that we have.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

It's kind of like they have a solution for everything. Laura. I guess that's your goal.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Disney World of E Commerce.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

You probably should have all these tools really at the end of the day. So it doesn't really surprise me. I mean we knew probably 20 or 30. I knew 20% may seem maybe 40%. I'm fascinated by the app too. There's a repeat customer play on this. There's a friction free play even for new customer acquisition. Like how do you recommend people introduce it if they're established Shopify store, they have a banner on their site. Do they put it on the thank you page? Like how do you integrate the app into it?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So the typical integration experience struggling has been the thank you page. And Shop app is a really good tool for buyers to start tracking the order, tracking the packages, reducing the customer support workload for your store. But that was the first step in the journey journey. And right now it really makes sense for you to make sure that, hey, you are actually present inside the Shop app and enable it if you haven't enabled it yet. And there are also tools for you to customize your store, to customize your presence inside the Shop app. There are a ton of minis.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

This is the secret thing I don't want people to know. This is optimizing your app, your store, like, oh, Andrew, all of this video.

[Unknown Speaker]

Content that you can place and we have integrations with partners like Tolstoy where your video content can actually appear inside the app, which then is very attractive. Like it's one again. There are multiple ways to tell your brand story and in. What is important in Shop is Shop actually gives you tools to do that. It's not like a cookie cutter experience. Everything is the same. You have possibility to make sure that that presence represents who you are with the right tools in the mix. So that's what I'm always very fascinated about. And there's also something that makes the app feel like really good. It's a fantastic visual experience. And then because you are signed in, it's also a personalized experience. And because you're Signed in. The checkout is frictional.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Okay. So I'm signed in. I don't know if it's going to show well but I got the app for me and it's like cool, here's $5. And I can see like I'm just gonna stores that I have bought at like so there's like Alice chocolates, frownies, Java, like all the ooties, like all these stores like and even like the offers like I purchased from Bamboo Ave. Like I've gotten there some trunks of shout out to Trey. But like you've got like wonder skin with an amazing. Oh my gosh, this is so hard with the reflection. But it's like it's totally, totally custom tailored. And you have have further more examples of what I've already been seeing in ads nonstop where it's like, oh, I've been looking at cakes, those bralette. Yeah, I'm speaking to the wrong audience right now. You understand it looks like a really they've great advertising. But even when I go into my like my profile, I already have money on the account, my payment set up, my shipping pieces are there and I've got all the tracking that I've had for past orders that I can see with reactivated engagements like Timeless Pearl. If I want to get more earrings, I can see customized offers. So like the app is a very visual experience. I'm looking at my app and it looks like a boutique that was made for Lauren E. Petrulo.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Not to mention intensely free and great branding. I mean it all of a sudden elevates your brand. I mean think of that, the person that's just starting out and all of a sudden they have this capability and that's really powerful for your Shopify store. Have you actually done the app? Because it's a tremendous branding play just out to itself.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So when we set up our shop like it was when we were just doing our full cleanup of all shops, there's like two other marketplaces that we have shops as well. So we just did like a spring cleaning. I don't want to say them out loud because it's like again, free traffic that we got to our store. So yeah, you can find Asian beauty essentials in the shop app all day long. All right, well, oh my gosh, Ralph, you're like sending an immediate email to your team and be like every e commerce client we have, we need to do a full huddle and say we need to evaluate what their shop experiences are like. We definitely now need to check out the benchmarks dashboard because for me at least, it's just like a God's gift to unfavoring expectations. Like I'm just like, I've said this out loud. I've said this to clients. E commerce is hard. E commerce is new. We've had clients with double digit roas that still thought it wasn't good enough. And it's like this level of expectation because it's so new, there's not as much loyalty, there's not as much longevity. So we find E commerce clients hop from vendor to vendor to vendor thinking that, that it's a marketing issue because marketing's hard versus always a business strategy issues. Anyways, like all this to say is like looking at that benchmark now, like that dashboard with this addition. Like if you're listening to this and you have an E commerce store like, or you're managing someone else's e commerce store, like you need to look there immediately because you want to know if you're doing well or if you're not. Because I'll bet a lot of people are going to be like, oh, we are doing better than I expected. So it could be like, hey, great, now let's, let's take the win and let's amplify further. Or if you're not where you need to be, that's a fair assessment if your provider is doing what they need to do for you.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Yeah, agreed. Well, I mean Edition just came out and this might be the first time that you're hearing about it here. So Andreas, where's, what's the best place to send people for resources about Shopify if they haven't already gotten the message by now and they haven't already googled Shopify? Where is the best place for you to recommend perpetual traffic listeners to go?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, so Edition always has a website and in this case it's, it's. No, nothing, nothing really different. Like, so we do have a website. That website is really, really impressive. I really suggest everyone to visit it and you can, you can find it probably with the link shared somewhere around this podcast and you will also very clearly discover it if you visit shopify.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Wow, that's tremendous. Well, I think suffice to say you've surprised us quite a bit. I mean, I'd like to think that we're fairly in tune with what's going on in the digital space, but there's.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

So much be on top of it all.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Yeah, like there's so much. I mean we didn't even talk about Chopin, which I think is one of the like, the best additions in history right there alone. But we didn't even get to that. We got to all the other stuff that you guys have of going on. So if you're an E Commerce store and you're not on Shopify or you're thinking about starting an E Commerce store, I mean, I don't think there's any, you know, other solution out there, Lauren. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

Not one I'm working with. So I know, like, I'm totally biased, but, like, I own three stores. It just makes a lot of sense. The only thing. Right. I mean, of course, like, and just congratulations. I'm sure you're now, like, taking a breath of fresh air because you guys have been building so much towards this launch. And now that it's good, like, you're, like, gonna enjoy sleep maybe again. But don't sleep too long because your summer editions is gonna be, like, in another six months, and we have a.

[Unknown Speaker]

Lot of exciting stuff for that coming. Oh, I'm very excited about it. Yeah. So not, not, not a lot of sleep, like, for the next six months.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

I guess that's okay. You're Lithuanian. Your skin doesn't show it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can, I can do that. No worries.

[Andreas Baranowskas]

Only Lauren could say that. Well, I guess that means we have to have you guys come back and talk about some of the new features when the next edition comes out. But thank you so much for coming on today on Perpetual Traffic. Andreas, this has been absolutely tremendous. We'll leave links over in the show notes [e-mail] of course, you can watch this in our stunned expressions as Andrew's talked about a lot of the features that are going on right now inside Shopify over at our YouTube channel, which is perpetual traffic.com YouTube. So on behalf of my awesome co host, Lauren E. Petrulo, ciao until next show. See ya.

[Lauren E. Petrulo]

You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.