With the development of the e-commerce industry, the more competitors, the more difficulty finding new customers. Knowing merchants’ demand, Shopify announced the launch of Shopify Audiences, a potent prospecting tool targeting high-intent prospects to improve top-of-funnel advertising campaigns. 

Shopify Audiences is a data exchange network that creates custom audiences for all Shopify opted-in merchants using mass conversion data. Instead of focusing only on general demographics like age or gender, this technique aids sellers in focusing on their audience based on previous purchase behavior.

In addition to the introduction of Shopify Audiences, you can utilize Shopify Plus agencies to customize features and assist in locating new prospects. A significant advantage here!

Without any further, let’s start right now!

Overview of Shopify Audiences

What is Shopify Audience?

Shopify has launched a new tool to help its merchants find prospects more efficiently, called Shopify Audiences. It allows brands to select products from their catalogs to show shoppers who are more likely to make a purchase. 

Specifically, the Shopify Audiences tool uses machine learning to develop a lookalike audience for that product, which can then be distributed on advertising networks. Its goal is to increase top-of-funnel acquisition by identifying and targeting high-intent shoppers on Facebook and Instagram. Ideally, the company says it will soon spread to other platforms like TikTok, Snap, Pinterest, Microsoft Advertising, and Criteo this year. 

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Currently, Shopify Audiences are only available to Shopify Plus stores that accept Shopify Payments and are located in Canada or the United States of America. Thus, you have to consider this aspect when utilizing the tool. 

How does Shopify Audience work?

Shopify Audiences are intended to operate in tandem with digital marketing platforms by generating a list of purchasers who are more likely to purchase your products.

To estimate who is most likely to buy from a shop, the algorithm connects customer intent with unique properties of store products and order data. Shopify Audience’s users can use the lists of permitted email addresses from recent customers to generate audiences. Moreover, merchants cannot download a list of hashed emails exported from Shopify to protect buyer privacy.

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When you run Shopify Audiences advertising, the platform makes it simple to understand the value they bring to your clients’ businesses. To do this, Shopify employs a one-of-a-kind attribution mechanism that is only available in Shopify to assist you in understanding how orders are assigned to Audiences.

Indeed, Shopify sees emails within audiences and emails at checkout, giving you a unique insight into the performance of ads you’re running for your clients. Because of privacy rules, this paradigm is resistant to changes in user-tracking regulations. Nevertheless, it will assist your organization in demonstrating value addition.

When an order is processed, Shopify looks to see if the email address matches your customers. If this is the case, the order will be assigned to Shopify Audiences. While you are actively running ads with an audience, orders are counted. Shopify also considers orders received within seven days of your ads ceasing to account for consumers who viewed your ads but opted to buy later.

Who can access Shopify Audiences?

As noted in the introduction, the Shopify Audiences app is currently only available to merchants in the United States or Canada. They must also be Shopify Plus merchants and use Shopify Payments. The app is featured in the Shopify Plus package for these retailers.

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Store owners can then list directly and securely to their preferred ad platforms and run campaigns to target that audience. This functionality is currently limited to lists for Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads. 

Furthermore, merchants can administer the app through the Shopify admin and access performance reporting.

If you already have a website on other e-commerce platforms or currently using a standard Shopify plan, BSS Commerce can smoothly migrate to Shopify Plus without any risks. A flawless and secure process is waiting for you!

How Can You Take Advantages When Using Shopify Audience

Shopify Audiences app offers users several marketing tools and capabilities. The following are the most notable:

Engage customers with customized blog posting & email marketing

Shopify Audience is unique because it gives merchants detailed data via audience-level measurement rather than campaign-level measurement. Thus, you can write blog posts and emails that are useful and fascinating for your readers! 

Your blog postings are an excellent approach to engaging your audience while providing helpful information. All you need is brainstorming ideas on what type of material would be best suited to the likes of your target population, a title, an extract of your post, and then the content related to your niche.

On the other hand, you can easily collect leads and deliver branded newsletters with this built-in functionality. The email marketing tool is minimal; if your company needs more complex features such as workflow creation or segmentation, we recommend employing an app or the services of a Shopify development agency.

This thing is fantastic because you can start gathering leads immediately, giving you a head start regarding email marketing efforts. You can avoid the agony of cart abandonment by sending them an email when they abandon it with these features.

SEO-friendly

Optimizing your site for search engines might be tricky if you’re not an expert, but the Shopify Audiences tool makes it simple.

Indeed, it will benefit Shopify Plus merchants by providing more focused top-of-funnel prospecting, resulting in cheaper media spend expenses and a higher return on ad spend.

Moreover, With Shopify’s Storefront Renderer technology, you can be confident that your site will load quickly. It organizes material on a category-based website structure, which improves search engine rankings and makes it easier for your clients to find what they need. With its 2.97 times faster loading time than other sites, you won’t have trouble retaining website visitors long enough for them to become consumers.

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Generally, you can get the benefits of both Shopify Plus and Shopify Audiences tools combined. Hence, you can easily create a blog and contribute to your company’s SEO benefits. You must ensure that the content on all postings is optimized and structured to rank higher in search results (image alt tags, keywords, page titles, URLs, etc., are all vital.).

Social media integrations

You can use several methods to sell your items online these days. And one of them is through social media. 

With a few clicks, you can establish social media marketing campaigns from your Shopify store, and this channel is one of the most robust ways to stay in touch with your consumers and develop compelling content. This is ideal for firms who want to snowball but don’t want any extra work on their plate.

You may attract leads to speak with your messenger bot using Facebook Ads. You could even use it to sell products by connecting the platform to a chat-based sales platform like Shopify.

However, you must create a Facebook company page and an ad account in the Business Manager to access these features.

Ideally, you can leverage integrating existing system services to more control ad campaigns. BSS Commerce can help you integrate 3rd-party systems like ERP, CRM, and marketplaces, which bring added value for both store owners and buyers.

Protect customer privacy 

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Balancing client acquisition and privacy is a huge concern, especially as prominent platforms and legislators worldwide make changes. Shopify has verified that it will only use the data of businesses that have chosen to participate in Shopify Audiences. These merchants can opt out at any moment through the Shopify admin. Furthermore, all customer data is hashed and aggregated securely. Audience lists are encrypted and securely communicated when exporting; you cannot access lists from ad platforms.

Provide audience reporting data

Audience reporting data will differ amongst ad platforms. This status is due to variances in the attribution models utilized, and ad platforms do not have access to order data like Shopify. To understand the efficacy of your advertising, use Shopify Audiences reports for sales and order data and third-party statistics for spend, impressions, and clicks.

One small tip to you is only to target one audience for each ad set you to make to reduce order attribution overlap and ensure that reports are accurate. It would be better if you avoid using multiple ad sets to target the exact audience at once.

Create and manage all in one place

As previously said, the Shopify Audiences app is simple and perfectly connected with the Shopify Admin, allowing you to manage everything in one spot.

After being exported, an audience is not updated. On the same day, when you export the audience from your Shopify admin, launch your advertising to ensure that your advertising uses the most up-to-date information possible.

Getting Started With Shopify Audiences

Setting up Shopify Audiences consists of two phases. we have outlined below.

Step 1: Setting up

Bear in mind that you agree to automatically contribute customer data to Shopify Audiences by activating it. This tool will erase all personally-identifying information to safeguard your and the customer’s privacy.

Before configuring the Audiences app, check your eligibility for Shopify Audiences and install the app.

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Next, set up audiences from within the app. It would be helpful to check that you have enabled data contribution and agreed to the terms and conditions.

Furthermore, to connect your Facebook ads account, click Set up.

Navigate to connect section, then input your Facebook account information and click proceed. Make sure you choose the relevant Facebook account to which you want to export Shopify Audiences.

Finally, accept the Facebook Custom Audiences terms and conditions, and you have done all setup.

Step 2: Creating your first Shopify Audience

After setting up, you must create an audience to enable its feature. When you establish an audience, the attributes of the product you select generate a list of consumers likely to purchase that product.

Your audiences share the following characteristics:

  • Only buyers from the United States and Canada are eligible.
  • Existing customers and buyers who have opted out of data sharing are omitted.
  • After they are exported, audiences are not updated. Export new audiences regularly to keep your buyer list up to date.

There’re three steps here: 

  • Choose Create Audience.
  • Choose the product on which you wish to base the audience.
  • Give your audience a name, and then click the export audience button.

Additionally, audiences exported from Shopify admin to a third-party advertising platform like Facebook are encrypted and safely delivered. You cannot download the exported Audiences from Facebook. Facebook compares the sent data to their database and then deletes it.

NOTE: The number of audiences generated in seven days is restricted; you can see this quantity when you export your first audience. The 7-day period begins on the day you export your initial audience and ends seven days later when you export your maximum audience.

Suppose you want to deliver a whole new and professional Shopify Plus store. Choosing BSS Commerce as a partner to supercharge your eCommerce store is a wise choice. With almost ten years in the industry and a certified Shopify partner, BSS commits to boosting your store’s performance with Shopify Plus’s integrated solid eCommerce solution.

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Wrap Up

As a leading e-commerce platform, Shopify continually optimizes new features to help merchants acquire new and relevant customers. Introducing Shopify Audiences is undoubtedly a welcome helping hand for digital marketers.

In summary, Shopify Audience can be an excellent tool for expanding your customer list. Despite its establishment in the first quarter of this year, many businesses report higher qualified buyers. 

Leveraging the captive audience of 1.7M+ consumers already established could help drive additional revenue for both parties involved. Moreover, it creates a sustainable platform where users are not bombarded by ads or invaded their privacy.

For example, with Shopify Audiences, BUBS Naturals has improved ad targeting and performance and increased return on ad spend. 

Hopefully, this article has brought you valuable information about the Shopify Audiences tool. Feel free to contact us for the Shopify Plus development service