Using Web Push Notifications on Shopify

01Welcome and introductions

Hello, welcome. I think we're going to get started here. Thank you to everyone who's joined. My name is Zach, and I'm from the client success team. I'm going to be hosting the webinar today. I help head up our webinars here at Aimtell, and we like to get these webinars out to help people get going, across all different niches and things like that. Today's webinar is going to be specifically focused on ecommerce, and even more specifically on our Shopify integration, our Shopify app.

We just moved back into the office here in Pennsylvania, so we are transitioning back in at the moment. I can tell you that people are still a little hesitant to go into stores, and online spending is still up and up with this crazy, crazy time we're living in at the moment. So there is really no better time to get your ecommerce store set up with web push notifications. If you're a brand new user, we will have a promo code available for you at the end of the webinar, so stick around and make sure that you are here for that.

Okay, I'm going to jump straight in. Today I want to keep this fairly short, 20 to 25 minutes. We know there are a lot of things that can pull our attention away, so I'll keep this short and sweet and to the point. How do we install Aimtell? First of all, you can install it either through our JavaScript or, if you're on Shopify, the way that we absolutely recommend is through our very simple, very easy Shopify app. You'll want to navigate to the Shopify App Store at apps.shopify.com and search for Aimtell. You can read what we're all about and everything like that.

02Installing the Aimtell app

We help with push notifications for Shopify stores themselves, actually, interestingly enough. Groupon, Dolly Parton, Princess Polly (a few from Australia), and Death Wish Coffee as well, just to name a few. So we definitely cater to big and small companies. What you're going to want to do is quickly add this app and follow the installation wizard. If you've not made an account with Aimtell, it's going to ask you to make one and select a plan. Don't worry, you can change your plan at any time in the app dashboard. If you're an existing user with Aimtell, you're just going to want to make sure you log in with your Aimtell account.

Once you've done that, it should take roughly five minutes, very simple and very straightforward. An opt-in prompt will begin showing on your site, and you can begin to collect subscribers and send notifications. You're going to be greeted with this screen here. This is our entire dashboard. This is where all the meat and bones and the magic happens when it comes to setting up and getting a notification out, including analytics and segmentation and so on and so forth. I want to quickly run through the dashboard, because we understand there are a lot of different things to pull you away.

Before we do that, though, you want to verify the installation has gone correctly. You just want to navigate to your site. This here is the Aimtell demo site. It's very simple and very straightforward: go to products, Captain America shield, and the Star Wars waffle maker. Really basic. As you can see, I've already opted in, but the opt-in prompt should show. If there's a prompt there, opt in and click on allow, and then you know that the Aimtell installation has worked.

03Touring the Aimtell dashboard

So, the dashboard. What do we have here? This is your overview. There's the analytics tab, and a lot of different things you can look at here. Opt-ins tell you how many people are subscribing, but also, more importantly, how many new subscribers you're getting, how many notifications you're sending, and a general overview of your clicks. You can customize the date, filter by segments, or, if you've got more than one Shopify site, you can do that too. It's worth noting that with any plan, even our most basic plan, you unlock absolutely everything in the dashboard. You can do whatever you want, really. We don't have any limits on the number of sites you can add. If you've got hundreds of Shopify stores, you can add the app to all of them and tie them back to the same Aimtell account.

Okay, great. All subscribers is obviously where you're going to view all of your subscribers and begin to manage that list. We're going to cover that in another webinar. Segmentation is definitely the cream of the crop here. This is where the really advanced features can begin to come out. We are not going to be covering it today, as this is going to be much more basic and about getting going, with some day-one things you need to do with Aimtell. There are a lot of different capabilities in here, and this is really where the meat and bones are.

Next is our campaigns. This is where you can begin to create and send notifications. You've got manual notifications, which are sort of your one-off sales, new product announcements, or maybe Mother's Day is coming, whatever that may be. Then you've got our automated campaigns: triggered, RSS, and our basic welcome notifications. I'm going to be talking about our triggered notifications today. These are some automatic notifications you can get up and running from day one with our Shopify app.

You can then view websites, all the different websites you add, and the tracking code if you're not doing it through the app. If you're a Shopify user, you will be using the app, so that one doesn't really matter. Then there's opt-in prompt, where you can customize the opt-in prompt, and we'll cover that in just a short moment. Then you've got various settings to do with your account, plans, support, and the API keys if you're a more advanced user and have APIs, and then exports. You've also got various tools and logs that are real time, and integrations you can access, and maybe we will cover those towards the end.

04Opt-in prompts and day-one notifications

Right now I want to talk about our opt-in prompts and then some campaigns you want to get up and running. For the opt-in prompt, you can either have a very simple native opt-in prompt, which is one click. You can see a higher overall opt-in count, but you have no control over the actual messaging. If you want to create your own custom opt-in prompt, you click on here and create your own, very simple and very straightforward. However, it's two clicks, and unless you've got a fantastic opt-in strategy, you're going to want to stick to the one-click opt-in prompt.

Great, okay. Just a best practice here, as I touched on: think about what you want your users to experience. For Death Wish Coffee, the company I mentioned earlier, it's all about that highly caffeinated, strong coffee, and their opt-in prompt matches their brand and their aesthetic. That's all available through this. So think about what you want to be sending, and think about how you want to be approaching your new subscribers.

Okay, so some day-one notifications. It's worth knowing that when you install through Shopify, we automatically collect this data for you. We track item purchased, item shipped, item added to cart, and cart abandoned. We also track the following data for subscribers: first name, last name, how many orders they've made, and how much they've spent. There are really a lot of capabilities here that we can use, but today we're going to be talking about cart abandons and item purchased. We're going to use cart abandoned as the trigger and item purchased as the conversion. We'll jump back in here. This is four really, really easy steps. Three, really, but I like to add one to safeguard.

The first step is to quickly use a template. The templates are up here. You want to view the abandoned cart template, and then you want to use it. I've already got this one added in, and it simply redirects you to this page here, and look, here it is. So you want to edit this. The first step is to use a template. The second step is to edit the content of the notification to be specific for your brand. Maybe you want to upload an icon for your brand, or maybe you want a custom image. Coming back to the notification, maybe you want to add a discount code, which is something that works. Or maybe you want to say "your items are waiting for you," or maybe you want to add a shopping cart emoji or something like that.

Then you only edit your destination URL. All this needs to be is your cart, so navigate to your cart page. Sometimes it's checkout, sometimes it's cart, sometimes it's something else, whatever you set up. So I'm going to quickly go and check, copy this, and paste it right here. Now, you see here I like to add a call-to-action button, just one, very simple and very straightforward. You can even add up to three different links, but I like to keep mine nice and simple: a destination and just one button. Sometimes having two buttons helps your notification perform better, so have a play around and see what you think looks good. This is obviously very basic, with no customization. Just make sure you update those fields.

If you use Google Analytics, make sure you click on this button here, and this will track all of the clicks back to your site with Google Analytics. Now, the trigger is cart abandoned. You don't actually need to touch this, as it's all set up correctly. So let me move over here. This is what we check. Now we want the conversion to be item purchased, so we go back in and check: item category, item, and action purchased. We'll go back over here and simply turn this on. You don't need any advanced settings here. Then you click on settings and you can edit timing, which we'll cover more later on in the webinar.

So that's the second step: edit the content of the notification and verify everything is there. Once this is done, all you're going to want to do is click on activate. That's it. Now, the fourth step is that I like to go down to the logs, down here, and click on logs, custom event, just to verify that everything's going through. You can see here we've already tracked on this fake site cart abandoned, and when we first started to track, the other stuff too, item added to cart. You can see the name of the item.

Now, if I were to purchase an item on here, and I'm subscribed, the item purchased would also be tracked in here, including the name and the event value of that item, the price. This is very powerful for seeing how much money you're actually making from a campaign. So that's day one, and that should take less than 10 minutes to get up and running. It is so simple and so straightforward. It's worth knowing, just quickly, that if the triggered notification isn't working, go and verify that everything's being tracked correctly in the custom event log.

The next really simple day-one notification is your welcome notification. It's even easier. Just click on welcome notification and start to build it up. "Thanks for subscribing," and maybe then you want to say "Now check out our latest arrivals," and maybe you want to link to the latest arrivals on your site, whatever your site is. Obviously we don't have any on this site, but I'm sure you guys will. Once that's done, in less than two minutes, click on activate. It'll stay active here and you can view the results in there. Very, very powerful. There are a lot more advanced strategies we can talk about, but for day one you just want to get it up and running.

So there you have it. There are a few really simple things that you can get up and running from day one. It's really, really simple to do, and you can really see the value come in. I remember, just a quick testimony here, I was on one call with a client who was on Shopify. I set it up at the start of the call, and by the end of the call they'd already sent 13 notifications in 20 minutes. That was on a Friday, and I checked back on the Monday, and over the first weekend they'd made thousands of dollars just from this one abandoned cart notification. It is so, so powerful to do and get running from day one.

A question we get asked a lot is what's a benchmark, what's a good CTR for this. It's different for every vertical, and it's different for every type of ecommerce store. Generally, though, your abandoned cart and triggered notifications are going to perform better than your manuals, and your welcome notifications are going to perform better than any other notification. So that's a little benchmark: look at your welcome notification and see where that's at.

05Web push features and strategies

All right, great. Well, that's enough of the dashboard. I want to run through this handy little guide we've got here, a real quick eagle-eye overview. Push notifications are, obviously, notifications you get on your device, whether that's mobile or laptop, and they're dynamic based on the OS you're on, whether that's Android, PC, Mac or whatever. As for the benefits of web push notifications, obviously for ecommerce you can actually help convert those window shoppers. The way you really do this is to bring back visitors who've bounced from your site and convert them into paying customers.

This is great if you're a site that sees a lot of people who visit and browse but don't come back. You can actually target those browsers, even down to the product they were viewing, to get them back onto it and recover those abandoned carts. You engage customers, and obviously with the Shopify tutorial I literally installed it on here, and it takes two minutes to do. You collect those subscribers, and then you engage your subscribers.

Now, here's the meat and bones. Here are the web push features. A single-click opt-in: I showed you the opt-in and how that works. Collecting those opt-ins is far easier than collecting emails or SMS numbers. You don't need to enter personal information, you don't need to put in your email, and you don't need these complicated flows where they click this, they click that. It's one click. We also track, and I briefly touched on it, the first name and last name of your subscribers, if you'd like. You have to activate that, and I'll show you how to do that. You can track the first name and last name of the subscribers and use that in those pushes.

Another one, which is absolutely fantastic, is that you can automate almost every single push that you want to do. Here are some strategies for notification drips. For instance, if someone views a notification and then clicks on it, you can send a follow-up about a vacation a couple of days later. Or a welcome drip is fantastic: they get one notification immediately, and they get another notification a day later, and so on. Then there's personalized content. We're just touching on it, but targeted notifications always work better than more standard notifications. If you're using a first name, a location, a product name or an icon image in that notification, personalize it. Something like "Hey, did you forget about that dress?" or whatever. Use it. It's so, so powerful.

The other one, the advanced strategy here, is notification timing. I always like to say to clients that timing is key. If you're sending notifications at 2:00 a.m., no one's going to click on them. If you're sending them on their lunch break, or first thing in the morning, maybe. Even if you're talking about automatic ones, if you're sending at twenty minutes after versus six hours after, the twenty-minute one for abandoned carts is always going to work better than the six-hour one. The thing is, you can actually do both as well. So think about the timing. It's a rookie mistake I've seen with people getting going, so always think about the timing.

Here are some really powerful examples. Obviously the abandoned cart, which we covered and set up. This is ten minutes of work. Then back in stock notifications. The beauty about this one is that sometimes it doesn't even need to be back in stock. Sometimes people just like hearing "back in stock," so use those ones as well: "Hey, it's time for you to make those purchases." I know one client who was selling masks, and over this Corona virus period they pumped out these notifications and got their ROI just from those notifications, enough to pay for an entire year of Aimtell. Really, really powerful.

Product reviews: my colleague and I were talking about this before the webinar, and we wanted to talk about this one because it's huge. We track the conversion, we track that purchase, so guess what? You can easily set up a really simple triggered notification to send "Hey, did you enjoy that product? Click on this notification to leave a review, take two minutes to complete a survey." It's a fantastic way to get those reviews in without much thinking. Another one I've got written down here is item shipped. Maybe you want to keep your customers up to date with items that have shipped. New products available is similar to the back in stock one. There's also the post-conversion review, post-conversion referral or anything like that, or even upsells: "Oh, hey, you bought this, maybe you'd like this," whatever that may be. And of course the welcome push is so, so powerful.

I also wanted to touch on some new features that we're bringing out for the Shopify app. You'll be able to use custom icons in the abandoned cart notification based upon what they actually abandoned. Let me say it this way: let's say you sell dresses, you sell a red dress, and a customer abandons their cart with that red dress in their cart. We are actually able to track that, take that icon from the cart, and automatically use that icon in the web push. As you can see in this example here, and we even tried other things like product name and even the product page. For instance, this is a sunglasses company, and their product name is Moonshine Premiums, and you can see in that notification those specific sunglasses. So, so powerful, all dynamic based upon the cart. Really, really strong, and coming very, very soon. We'll keep you updated in the next few weeks.

06Next steps and promo code

Okay, so what are the next steps? First of all, if you're a new user, I mentioned at the start that we had a promo code for you. Install the Aimtell app. We give you 14 days for free, and I tell you what, with this promo code you get, I think it's 25% off. The promo code is bestwebinar, one word, lowercase. When you log on, you'll see they place you at the promo code, so you can add bestwebinar, one word, lowercase, and you can get 20% off your first month, as well as the 14-day free trial.

Once you've installed the app, what you're going to want to do is get on a demo with us. It's very easy to do. You're looking at it right here: you click on this little question mark and request a demo. That's all you need to do. You can book a time in one of our sales reps' calendars right here and get a one-on-one call, and we can help you get your customized opt-in set up. I'm just looking here. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask away.

07Q&A from attendees

I have a question here from Nigel about welcome drips. The question is, you mentioned welcome drips, how do they go about setting them up? Okay, great question. Nigel is asking: I want to set up a welcome drip, and I want to send one immediately, maybe, and then one six hours later and one a day later. Good question. There are two things you want to do here. You can go to websites, and then go to misc settings here. So edit, and then misc settings here, and then you want to turn on this little button here. I like to turn on "track subscriptions as event." That's the only setup you need.

Then what you need to do is go to triggered notifications, templates, and we've got two here pre-built: we've got 0 minutes and 24 hours later. You just use these templates and edit them for your content, same as your abandoned cart. Use these templates, edit them for your content, and it's up and running. You can even duplicate them and add more. Maybe I'll do another one for a week later. So we'll just view this one, and I'll show you how to change the time. We'll view that and use this template here, which is editing this template, and then on the settings page at the end you can change the time. This one is set to go at zero minutes. You can do hours and days later, so you can set this to be whatever you want it to be.

Okay, good. I don't see any more questions coming in. If anyone has any more questions, please feel free to ask away, and I'll attempt to get to them if we have time. But just to close out here, I'll say there is so much value in using web push notifications, and it's bigger than just our abandoned cart and welcome notifications. Like I said, we used quite a few different examples. The fact that we can already track those conversions, that we already do the backend work for you, is a huge advantage to you. You can get this up and running literally within 20 to 30 minutes. You install the app, you view the template, you use that template, you edit it, and you activate it, and that's it.

Great. Well, thank you so much for tuning in today. Like I said, if you're a new user and you want to take advantage of the promo code, it's bestwebinar. Feel free to connect with me after if you have any more questions. It's been a pleasure talking to you. I hope you all stay safe, and we'll see you again soon for another webinar. Thank you so much.