Shopify Marketing Automation: 2026 Guide

Shopify advertising and marketing automation saves you time and helps you ship constant experiences throughout a number of channels to maintain clients coming again.

Your order and delivery confirmations, even your retailer credit score issued notifications, are automated by Shopify by default. Discover, although, how these are post-transaction? The journey as much as that time, and after, is yours to optimize.

Fast-wins embody a welcome sequence (has the very best click-to-conversion price of any e mail), deserted cart emails, and win-backs. For those who solely did these, you’d nonetheless be forward of most shops.

Under, you’ll discover a full information to Shopify advertising and marketing automation. It begins with what it’s, then its advantages, circulate examples, and finest practices for fulfillment.

What’s Shopify advertising and marketing automation?

Advertising automations are workflows that set off at factors in your buyer journey through apps and techniques that you just configure both inside Shopify or third-party dashboards.

Listed here are some examples:

• Deserted cart emails, which set off when your buyer enters an e mail handle, provides gadgets to their cart, and leaves with out shopping for
• Product cross-sells and bundles on product pages, showing contextually (or primarily based on merchandise you outline) while clients store
• BFCM prep, equivalent to creating e mail templates for various segments and assigning them to e mail sequences masking the entire occasion

When you begin refining your buyer expertise and rising your Shopify retailer, you’ll notice that advertising and marketing automation helps obtain what you need quicker. That might be saving time, lowering churn, growing gross sales, or chopping your acquisition prices.

Why automate your Shopify advertising and marketing?

The best Shopify stores automate their advertising and marketing to:

• Save time, as a result of it’s far simpler to put in an app or add some Liquid code that automates duties (equivalent to bulk modifying pictures) than manually making retailer modifications
• Cut back churn, e mail and SMS apps can catch clients who haven’t bought in 30, 60, or 90 days and convey them again
• Enhance gross sales with automated and scheduled campaigns, particularly round seasonal occasions equivalent to Black Friday
• Maximize return on advert spend (ROAS), with AI apps that produce creatives and find alternatives with out the busywork
• Be obtainable 24/7, through reside chat and buyer assist brokers
• Take a look at and automate sending practices, with A/B testing instruments with auto-send options, equivalent to these offered by Omnisend
• Create higher buyer experiences, equivalent to with acceptable SMS delays, interactive overview emails, and gamified varieties

Key advertising and marketing automations to arrange in Shopify

Your automated Shopify retailer will get better most income and win most gross sales from solely a handful of flows. These are those you must prioritize for advertising and marketing automation for Shopify:

Welcome automation

Your email automation instrument will ship a single e mail or a sequence that welcomes new subscribers following their subscription. It triggers following type submission, both instantly or through a delay you set, equivalent to 10 minutes.

The ROI affect is big, with Omnisend’s 2026 Ecommerce Marketing Report discovering that welcome messages and deserted carts drove 76% of all automation orders in 2025.

Dukier, a canine equipment retailer, makes use of a welcome sequence to inform its story and provide a reduction to new clients. Its e mail template is exclusive, in-built Omnisend:

Throughout its testing, Dukier discovered that behavior-based emails, equivalent to its welcome sequence, had far greater engagement than generic blasts, outperforming them for each common order worth (AOV) and conversion charges.

Deserted cart restoration

A portion of your clients will add merchandise to their cart and depart. In the event that they offered an e mail handle at any stage, you possibly can retarget them with an abandoned cart flow.

Cart abandonment flows can set off instantly, though distractions imply that your clients may not see them. It might be why they deserted it within the first place. A 30-minute delay is an effective compromise with out being pushy.

In 2025, deserted cart emails had a 39.46% conversion price, behind solely welcome emails, so they’re effectively price including to your Shopify advertising and marketing automations.

Images backdrop retailer Kate Backrop achieved a 1:3000 ROI utilizing omnichannel advertising and marketing, with cart restoration being a core think about its success. 

Its e mail makes use of shortage language, equivalent to “I can’t assure that they’ll proceed to be obtainable,” to encourage purchases:

Submit-purchase automation

Submit-purchase flows embody transactional updates, equivalent to delivery notifications, and customized messages that encourage further model engagement and actions. For example, you possibly can request a overview.

As a result of post-purchase flows arrive following a high-intent second, they’ve excessive open charges, and that gives you with alternatives for extra income.

The e-mail under, created in Omnisend, turns a thank-you message right into a cross-sell. Clients can click on by way of to merchandise and begin buying once more:

Win-back flows

Win-back flows reengage clients who haven’t bought just lately, usually inside 30, 60, or 90 days. Clients who match into these segments profit from retention emails to remind them about earlier experiences together with your model.

The e-mail under, created in Omnisend for a pet retailer, frames inactivity with an emotional hook and makes use of personalization, together with the shopper’s title within the coupon code, and referencing that they’ve a cat, to encourage engagement:

A neat function in Omnisend is buyer breakdown, which offers lifecycle stage maps with the share of shoppers who’re in danger, those that want nurturing, and people you’re about to lose. You’ll be able to then goal them with efficient messages:

Birthday/anniversary flows

Birthday and anniversary flows can go 3 ways:

• Reference your buyer’s birthday
• Reference your buyer’s signup date
• Reference your buyer’s buy date

All of those create a private contact to your Shopify advertising and marketing automation. In 2025, birthday emails alone had a 16.02% conversion price and a whopping $744 AOV, increased than every other e mail circulate by a major margin.

The birthday e mail template under makes use of a GIF that cycles by way of candles, a bun, a gift, and a celebration hat. It units an thrilling tone and affords free delivery as an incentive:

SMS + Electronic mail combos

SMS + e mail flows profit from your clients’ preferences. If they’ve opted into receiving textual content messages, you possibly can ship them unique affords, reductions, and product entry.

Omnisend permits you to add an SMS to any circulate, equivalent to back-in-stock alerts. The circulate under triggers an e mail and an SMS on the identical time:

Including SMS to your Shopify marketing automation is price it, with Omnisend clients seeing 3x income per message with mixed e mail + SMS.

Moreover, automated SMS earned a median of $0.74 per send in 2025, in comparison with $0.15 for campaigns (scheduled and one-time sends).

Greatest practices for Shopify advertising and marketing automation

Comply with these finest practices when studying learn how to automate a Shopify retailer:

• Begin with three core flows: Welcome sequence, deserted cart, and post-purchase follow-up (overview request or thank-you e mail). They’ll prime you in your e mail instrument’s circulate builder and begin you off with the best-converting automations.
• Personalize your content material: Add your buyer’s first title to the topic line if the phrase depend permits, in addition to the primary heading or as the primary phrases in your e mail physique. Doing so creates an instantaneous connection together with your buyer, encouraging their engagement.
• Take a look at topic traces: All the time twist into new topic line codecs since you by no means know what’s going to work. Omnisend has a free subject line generator for concepts, and allows you to A/B check them even in its Free Endlessly plan to see which achieves the very best open charges.
• Use e mail + SMS: A few of your clients will want SMS over e mail for transactional and a few promotional flows. Catering to these preferences offers the top-tier expertise they count on and helps you enhance your ROI.
• Let clients unsubscribe: Omnisend and most different e mail instruments embody unsubscribe hyperlinks on the backside of emails. It’s an analogous story for SMS, though these are known as opt-outs relatively than unsubscribes.
• Don’t overautomate: Function a customer support e mail handle that has private replies, and do the identical in case you have a chat widget to cut back fatigue.

Able to automate your Shopify retailer?

Automating moments in your buyer journey, from their preliminary welcome to a win-back e mail after a month or so, is the very best factor you are able to do to:

• Enhance income
• Enhance retention
• Enhance common order values
• Cut back your buyer acquisition prices

Omnisend has 28 pre-built flows, 250+ pre-built e mail templates, and 32 pre-built segments that can assist you begin with Shopify advertising and marketing automation. The app has a 4.7/5 ranking on the Shopify App Store primarily based on 2,920+ opinions.

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