Spently for Shopify Notifications

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Send better messages to your customers

Anything you send to your customer is an opportunity to build your relationship with them and get them to keep coming back to your store. Yes, marketing emails are a good start, but the reality is that most people are so bombarded with emails that they’re not super likely to click on them. Instead, emails that are most clicked on are ones that directly deal with a customer order.

Order notification emails, like confirmations, recepits, shipping updates and invoices, can be a really effective touchpoint for marketing to your customers. They’ve already proven that they’re interested in your products (well, they’ve bought something, haven’t they?) and they’re most likely to read emails directly related to their order.

With Shopify, you’re given a handful of email templates that are - well, pretty boring. You can customise these templates, but only to a limited extent if you’re not a coder.

So what’s the fix?

Spently is an app that lets you design and customise order notification emails. There are a couple of reasons to use Spently over the standart Shopify emails

Branding

You can make your email templates the sale colours, fonts and styles you would normally use for your brand, and include all of your social media links.

Product recommendations

One cool feature is automatic product recommendations based on the items already purchased. It’s like getting a receipt that says “Here are the details about the sweater you bought. How about some slippers to match?” with a link to those slippers. These product recommendations link directly to your online store.

Custom discount codes

Spently has its own version of a discount code generator, which creates custom codes that include the shopper’s name, expire after two weeks, and are one-time-use only. You can turn these kinds of codes on and off, and choose which kinds of customers receive them (for example, ones who spend over $100 as a loyalty reward).

Automatic follow-ups

One of the nice things about Spently is that you can send both transactional emails and automatic follow up emails. That means, for example, that you could set up an automatic email to go out to anyone who became a member three months ago to celebrate and encourage them to visit your store again.

Keep up with your analytics

Of course, any email platform worth its salt will be able to easily tell you how people are reacting to your emails. You can see click rates, return on investments and other types of engagement with the Spently dashboard.

Types of emails you can send with Spently

You can send any type of email related to an order using Spently, either through their pre-made templates or by designing your own. Types of emails include:

  • Order Confirmation
  • POS e-Receipt
  • Abandoned Checkout
  • Shipping Confirmation
  • Shipping Update
  • Shipment Delivered & Out for delivery
  • Order Cancellation
  • Order Invoice
  • Gift Card Notification
  • Customer Activation
  • Customer Welcome
  • Customer Contact
  • Password Resets
  • Refund

You can see what email templates can look like on their “Inspiration” section.

A closer look: POS receipts

One of the major spaces Spently is trying to innovate in is blending in-person and online sales. Unlike boring ol’ digital receipts, which are usually electronic versions of paper receipts, you can use the app to give in-store customers links to your website and social, special discounts and product recommendations or rewards points. Those that use a point-of-sale setup for pop-ups or retail can automatically send receipts that direct the customer to visit you again online.

We’ve talked about omni-channel retail for stores that are trying to use customer information to reach their audience across different platforms. By including personalised links or information on receipts for in-person purchases, merchants can help direct customers to their online platforms and loyalty programmes.

Spently or MailChimp?

MailChimp and other email marketing services like Klaviyo can also be used for many of the same emails. By connecting your email service provider with Shopify, you can set up segments and automations to send order notifications, abandoned cart emails and any kind of confirmation. These emails are fully customisable, look great and give you a bunch of data you can use to target customers in the future. So which should you use?

It depends on how many emails you need to send, and how robust your marketing plan already is. Although Spently can become your go-to for transactional emails, it’s not necessarily useful for general announcements and marketing emails for customers who haven’t recently bought anything. Email marketing services like MailChimp, Emma and Klaviyo are all designed to do everything, including setting up and running ads on Facebook and Instagram, automatically utilising data based on previous customer behaviour, as well as integrating with any other apps you use like online chat and a CRM. Spently is more limited in which kinds of emails they can send and data it collects.

That being said, if you’re not ready to roll out a full email marketing strategy, Spently is easier to use, can be set up in just a few minutes, and focuses on the most important email interactions you have with your customers. You can keep using them for free if you just want the most basic order notifications to look nicer and be more branded than the standard Shopify email.

And good news! Right now Spently has a promotion that gives you two months free on any premium plan.

Get Spently here

Want help choosing an email strategy, customising emails or building your brand? Get in touch with Elkfox.