One of the primary reasons why business owners choose Shopify over other options is that it hosts a plethora of in-built marketing tools and third-party apps. And as the world of eCommerce grows larger and more competitive, these top 10 Shopify Marketing apps stand out from the crowd for ease of use and plug-and-play setups.
1. Privy ‑ Exit Pop Ups & Email
Privy is a smart way to grow your email list and convert casual browsers into loyal subscribers or customers. It has a suite of conversion tools and email marketing features that seamlessly integrate with your Shopify store. All of these are free to use. It also offers the option of creating exit-intent driven banners and popups, without the need for prior coding or development knowledge.
Aside from this, Privy also delivers on the following services:
- Automated A/B tests
- Coupon code integration
- Targeting and retargeting functions
- High-Converting Triggers for Campaigns
- Dashboard with real-time analytics
Privy can integrate with the best of email campaign apps– think Mailchimp, octane.ai, Retention Rocket. This is regardless of whether your email marketing requirement is newsletters, welcome messages, order confirmations, or cart abandonment emails. When plugged into your Shopify app, you’re all set to attract, convert, and retain customers like a seasoned pro.
2. Hextom – Free Shipping Bar
If there were a list highlighting what customers appreciate the most about eCommerce stores, free shipping would be right there at the top. However, the way you display your offer of ‘free shipping’ is just as crucial as the offer itself. With Hextom, Shopify users can create free shopping announcements that are fully personalized to their business needs and target audience. Their ‘progressive messages’ feature guides the customer towards placing an order and congratulates them on their success, creating a process-reward situation that works to the business’ favor.
With their advanced targeting feature, Hextom users can customize their free shipping display well down to the basic demographic by:
- Targeting based on the country
- Targeting based on pages
- Converting display rates into local currency using real-time exchange rates
Hextom also displays that Shopify marketing apps don’t have to be boring to be useful. They support customizable backgrounds and emojis and can be tailor-made for different screen sizes and resolutions.
3. SureSwift Capital – Plugin SEO
Hundreds of Shopify Plus stores are powered on the SEO front by Plugin SEO, a SureSwift Capital app. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is often considered the driving force behind traffic that flows into your eCommerce store through search engine results, backlinks, and inter-linking. It’s a key marketing factor that increases the visibility of online stores– good SEO tells search engines that your store is legitimate and that people should see it.
Plugin SEO is posited as the ‘complete’ SEO tool because of the range of features it offers:
- Rich snippets
- Multilingual keyword tools
- SEO for special pages
- Blog and 404-page optimization
The list goes on. However, the drawcard that makes this plugin one of the best for 2020 is that it allows templating and bulk editing of titles, meta descriptions and tags of thousands of products or articles in mere minutes. This is a boon given how quickly trends change and how competitive the search engine environment is; it also largely negates the need for manual editing and intervention, effectively cutting costs.
4. Loox.io – Photo Reviews by Loox
A large chunk of people relies heavily on visual stimuli when making a decision, and consumers are no different. Photos in reviews go a long way in increasing the trustworthiness of that review. For starters, it indicates that the customer has indeed bought your product and is reviewing it after. They also act as additional product pictures in the real world, saving you time and money spent on expensive photography studios for the “perfect” product picture.
Loox.io is a Shopify marketing app that allows you to capitalize on this. In a competitive eCommerce environment, this visual form of social proof goes a long way in establishing trust even before a product is bought and increases the likelihood of sales. When you install the app, key features you could explore include:
- Integration with Google Shopping to include reviews and photos
- Import of product reviews from another platform
- Incentivization of adding photos by offering discounts
5. Recart – Recart FB Messenger Marketing
Facebook Messenger doesn’t need an introduction, but its use as a marketing channel is a trend that’s quickly catching up. It’s already been installed by more than 130,000 merchants aiming to improve conversions and sales by targeting consumers where they spend time the most– online. Instead of sending long emails to promotion folders, this app allows you to automate conversations with customers through Facebook Messenger and make the experience a lot more personal.
Since Messenger is a two-way conversation, engagement rates are much higher than emails or other forms of advertising such as TV or print ads, no matter how clever or eye-catching they are. The app provide marketers with:
- Click and open rates 4-6 times higher than emails
- Single-click opt-in to increase subscriptions
- Automated campaigns including order receipts, welcome texts, and cart abandonment reminders
- Conversational advertising features driving 15-50 ROAS
6. LoyaltyLion – Loyalty, rewards, and referrals
Brand loyalty is much harder to achieve today when there are a plethora of online shopping options, each offering seemingly better deals that the last. However, there are still factors that encourage customers to stick to a single brand or platform. These include price, convenience, product quality, personalization, customer service and, in recent times, social responsibility and sustainability. To capture and retain such a loyal market, LoyaltyLion can be plugged into Shopify stores. It helps to create a customer loyalty plan that involves points systems, referral benefits, vouchers, and freebies. The free plan is generous in that it allows unlimited customers and a monthly quota of 800 eligible orders. It’s also the only loyalty-centric Shopify marketing app that fully integrates with Shopify Plus UI/UX.
Key benefits of LoyaltyLion are:
- Review incentivization
- Creation of loyalty tiers
- Subscription rewards and freebies
7. PushOwl – PushOwl Web Push Notifications
The PushOwl app focuses on the retention and recovery of abandoned carts. Cart abandonment is many eCommerce store owners’ biggest fear, not least because it has the potential to cause losses in revenue. Although there are plenty of reasons for cart abandonment– long sign-up processes, unfriendly UI– push notifications can help bring a lot of these seemingly lost customers back into the fray.
PushOwl offers clients a dedicated Account Manager who creates customized push notification strategies, usually in a sequence of three notifications. It integrates well with Google Analytics and Shopify Flow, which allow clicks tracking and automatic workflows, respectively. Additional benefits include:
- Abandoned cart reminders
- Web Push notifications for sales, offers, shipping and back in stock situations
- Advanced features including synced subscriber data, push messages with product images
8. PageFly – PageFly Advanced Page Builder
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is crucial for eCommerce stores looking to increase the total percentage of website visitors. These are individuals who not only browse but take a specific action, be it purchasing a product, filling out forms, or otherwise. PageFly is a page-building app that is geared towards CRO and improving action percentages. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy even for beginners to create product pages, landing pages, contact us pages, and more on the fly. They also have more than 50 templates that first-timers can leverage to get selling quickly.
Apart from these perks, this Shopify marketing app also offers work-oriented features that include:
- Positive branding tools such as testimonials and newsletters
- Conversion rate boosters through ‘add to cart’ buttons, forms and more
- Superior content creation and marketing
9. AdNabu, Inc – Google Ads Conversion Tracking
Implementing the conversion pixel or monitoring code in Google Ads (Google AdWords) is incredibly important to run efficient Google Ads (Google AdWords) campaigns. Optimized shopping and search campaigns are possible only if you have accurate conversions data; however, marketers often stumble when implementing Google’s new conversion tracking codes. This is where AdNabu’s app steps in.
The app creates a conversion pixel automatically, without the need for additional coding or prerequisites (other than an active Google Ads account). An added perk is that multiple Google Ads accounts can be supported through this one Shopify marketing app alone. Errors that can be avoided upon installation of this app include:
- Duplicate conversions and incorrect performance views
- No conversion values leading to lesser ROI optimization
- Incorrect scripts leading to no tracking
10. SMSBump SMS + MMS Marketing
SMSBump is one of the most preferred apps for automation of marketing and notifications of a Shopify eCommerce store. More than 20,000 SMEs and 6000 Shopify advanced businesses use this Shopify marketing app, no doubt because of the sophisticated yet customizable automation flow it offers. It only takes a couple of minutes to set up and, once it’s all plugged in, it could potentially bring in a 35x increase in ROI. From SMS flows and segmentation to campaign scheduling and A/B testing, this free app packs quite the punch in terms of features. It also integrates with other Shopify apps, including LoyaltyLion and PushOwl.
Features include:
- Restriction on targeted countries
- Quiet hours to avoid waking clients up at night
- Integration with GIPHY and Pexels
Conclusion
Nearly two decades after it was founded, Shopify has catapulted to the top of the commerce ladder, becoming one of the world’s most preferred hosted ecommerce platforms. Many draw cards set this platform apart from the competition – it’s highly customizable, has a variety of plug-ins to choose from, and takes care of website hosting so you can get to selling right away. Any Shopify marketing app from this list is definitely the icing on the cake!
This article originally appeared in the Recart blog and has been published here with permission.
