Top Marketing Apps for Shopify Stores to Ignite Flying Success

Beyond any doubt, the e-commerce landscape has grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years. Likewise, online shopping has emerged as a commonly preferred activity, whether it is for children, the elderly or the hip tech-savvy millennial consumers. In fact, whereas brick-and-mortar retail spending is anticipated to decline by 14.0% to $4.184 trillion, US consumers will probably spend $709.78 billion on e-commerce in 2020, representing a whopping increase of 18.0%. These figures speak volumes as to the countless opportunities presenting for online businesses.

And when it comes to setting up an e-commerce business – or particularly, a stunning online store, Shopify excels – this robust retail ecosystem never stops growing and facilitating e-commerce businesses of all ranges and sizes. Compared to other e-commerce platforms in the market, Shopify is at the top rank as regards the availability of wide ranges of amazing apps or extensions. Nonetheless, the Shopify App Store is overwhelming. Actually, it’s by no means easy to filter through thousands of apps to pick certain ones that are best suited for your business. 

But, don’t panic! Let’s hit the ground running with our pick of the top marketing apps for Shopify stores that are going to extend your e-commerce store’s functionality and grow your business without lots of hassles involved!

#1. Omnisend

When it comes to email marketing apps on the Shopify App Store, Omnisend turns out to be the top automation platform, offering an omnichannel marketing strategy specifically built for e-commerce business. This all-in-one marketing automation platform is chock-full of robust features, which combine emails, SMS, social media, and other channels into a single platform so that the online marketers can reach more customers and boost revenue.

Notably, Omnisend’s ultra-personalized targeting and omnichannel features do empower you to rest assured that your sent messages are always relevant to the target audience. In practice, the software comes with built-in templates to enable you to create personalized emails, along with features to automate the segregation and sending of these emails. Likewise, the platform offers SMS marketing and Facebook Messenger capabilities, which make it easier for your marketing team to reach out and establish relationships with your customers.

Furthermore, this email automation platform enables you to develop engaging, powerful lead forms to improve your lead capture rates. As for emails and SMS messages, forms and landing pages can be also seamlessly integrated into marketing campaigns. In addition to these features, Omnisend provides you with additional capabilities, such as a Campaign Booster for resending emails, A/B testing, and a robust Content Editor for quickly creating engaging emails.

And, of course, marketing campaigns would not be complete without analytical reports. With a handful of smart reporting capabilities this app offers, you’ll immediately obtain the metrics behind your campaigns’ performance. The platform’s reporting features also include real-time dashboards and click maps so that you get all the information required to evaluate your marketing effectiveness.

Last but obviously not the least, Omnisend does integrate seamlessly with Shopify so that you can instantly and effortlessly make browse and deliver cart abandonment messages.

#2. OptinMonster

Should you be looking for a conversion optimization platform that let you solve the puzzle of getting more email subscribers, reducing cart abandonment along with increasing the overall sales conversion, then OptinMonster is going to be your seamless match!

Actually, OptinMonster is a synonym of powerful customer acquisition and conversion rate optimization technology suitable for small businesses, especially e-commerce stores. The system’s functionality does revolve foremost around active and code-free lead generation, made possible with custom capture forms as well as creative, well-timed popups. Employing it, you cannot only build or modify a highly-converting form within minutes but also attach attractive floating bars, side-ins, and lightbox popups for faster email signups to improve the experience of your visitors. As such forms are extensively optimized for mobile access and submission, you won’t have to worry where your users are coming from.

Not only does OpitnMonster app work seamlessly with Shopify but it also has 1-click integrations for all the top email marketing services and CRM software. As an open API product, this platform is easy to connect with any third-party software solution, including popular providers such as Zapier, HubSpot, MailChimp, and G Suite products. Plus, thanks to its primary focus on attracting mobile traffic and converters, OptinMonster’s functions impeccably on mobile devices as well.

Another thing that makes OptinMonster a unique provider within the sphere is its ability to retain control of any complex conversion strategy since it offers split A/B testing for your campaigns, headlines, and styles, or measure results in no time using its built-in analytics. Speaking of its analytical features, once customer data arrives at your system, this software triggers behavior personalization analytics – then segments customers and subscribers accordingly based on their location and specific interests. The very same platform adopts a special exit-intent technology to pinpoint abandoning users and to target them in the precise moment when they are about to leave.

#3. ReferralCandy

Do you know that every single satisfied customer will tell nine more? There goes without saying that referrals are powerful: Actually, word-of-mouth is directly responsible for roughly 19% of all purchases, and influences as much as 90% purchasing decision. Customers trust referrals over every other channel and there is every likelihood that your target customers do, too! Your customers will know at least one other new customer, so why don’t you reward them for making a referral?

Unless you wish to miss out on sales, it’s a “must” that you orient a part of your marketing efforts to referral building. And this is where ReferralCandy comes into place. To put it simply, ReferralCandy is a prominent Shopify app that incentivizes shoppers to refer their friends. Having supported a plethora of small and medium businesses over the world, the platform does understand the power of referrals, which is why it developed a business model to help bridge the gap between SMBs and enterprises.

With the automatic reward delivery, referral reminders, as well as a dashboard where you can track referrals, Shopify store owners can easily attract more and more customers who already know that what they are getting quality products and services.

The customizable interface is another great plus of this referral platform, to be more concise, ReferralCandy lets its users make the platform their own – through its white-label feature and APIs, Shopify store owners can add their own colors and logos to the interface, along with the customize your site’s look and feel using its drag-and-drop template editor. No matter how simple it may seem to be, this feature does give your customers the assurance that they are still on the shop’s website and that their data remain safe.

After all, by taking the concept of asking friends for recommendations and adding technology into the mix, ReferralCandy offers businesses the leverage of word-of-mouth marketing in an easy-to-use platform. Let’s boost sales, build social proof, increase customer retention, and drive revenue with ReferralCandy.

#4. Sumo

Unlike the big-scaled eCommerce stores, small Shopify business owners are – more often than not – struggling to know exactly what and how to market and grow their stores. Understandably, as an SMB owner, you’re already wearing multiple hats in your business — from sourcing, logistics, sales to marketing, and even customer support — all while leading your team. Should this seem to be overwhelmed to handle on your own, then the powerful Sumo could help!

Sumo is a throng of solutions that are tried and tested to grow the traffic of your online store, allowing you to establish a huge base of online followers as well as monitor and steer your online front to flying growth and success. With Sumo app, you can:

• Reduce cart abandonment: facilitate more completed checkouts with perfectly-timed incentives.
• Increase average order value:  Increase order values with wide ranges of offers that excite your customers.
• Grow your email list: capture emails of your visitors in the most delightful way possible.

By employing this platform, everything is so simple and straightforward – actually, you don’t have to be a coding expert to make Sumo work! In reality, pop-ups are often ignored by visitors since a number of people label them as annoying sales and marketing tools. With Sumo, pop-ups become appealing yet effective means to capture all the information you need from your visitors such as full names and email addresses. Sumo makes it easy for you and your team to craft stunning pop-ups that can be configured to appear at strategic touchpoints during your visitors’ visit, ensuring successful email capture, retaining them to stay and explore your Shopify store with displays that are optimized for desktop and mobile devices.

Notably, Sumo does offer a solution that allows you to set-and-forget proven sales and marketing strategies in less than three minutes: Sumo Shortcuts. Just to name a few, Sumo has launched the Reduce Cart Abandonment Shortcut, Grow Email List Shortcut, Increase Average Order Value Shortcut with more to come. With such handy shortcuts, you are provided with the easiest way to turn your visitors into real online customers.

#5. PriSync

It goes without saying that price is a big part of consumers’ experience, especially when it comes to online shoppers. Your pricing strategies can be driven by numerous factors, which include what your competitors are doing too – how their own pricing tactics, promotions, and discounts are. It may probably be a huge headache, but with Prisync, everything will soon come into play.

To be more specific, Prisync is competitor price tracking and monitoring, dynamic pricing, and repricer app for e-commerce merchants. Not only does this platform have a price monitoring engine that scans competitor product prices worldwide but it also monitors stock availability, brand or category level indices as well as lets you check historical trends to predict when your competitors will change their prices. All you have to do is to simply add product links in your account or batch import data into the app with a CSV or XLSX file. Amazingly, you only need to do this once – and as soon as your set of data is imported, Prisync can now monitor prices from an unlimited number of competitors, empowering you to adjust your prices to remain on the crest of a wave. Actually, aided by Prisync’s intelligent price tracking feature, your Shopify store can have an edge against the competition.

The software’s features also include email alerts that will notify you about your competitors’ product prices; whereby, you can apply smart dynamic pricing rules that’ll match and crush your competitors. Increase sales and profit margins while your prices are in auto-pilot strictly following your rules that you’ve set.

Furthermore, Prisync does offer powerful reporting and advanced analytics where you can view it in a visual dashboard. Also, should you wish to share the derived analytical metrics with colleagues or review them in the future, just simply export data into Excel files.

#6. Shoelace

For those who have been in the marketing field for a while, “retargeting” is by no means an unusual term – actually, it is a powerful ad strategy, based around the idea that people who browse your website without buying have shown interest, and can be enticed to visit your website again through more targeted ads – and maybe make a purchase this time.

As speaking retargeting for your Shopify store, Shoelace is an ideal option. Such an app designs retargeting ad campaigns, not only for platforms like Facebook and Instagram — but across the entire customer lifecycle, to educate customers about your store until they eventually come back to your store and purchase something.

In practice, there remain a large number of e-commerce merchants who make the mistake of showing the same ad over and over again to all store visitors – whether they’ve bounced off the homepage or added a product to their cart. Instead, the right tactic to retarget potential customers should be to provide them with appealing and value-based information about your brand, at different stages of purchases, so they make a more informed purchasing decision. And luckily, Shoelace helps with that!

Combining automation, human expertise, and insights from thousands of digital marketing campaigns, Shoelace allows you to deliver the best advertising and retargeting experiences that tell your brand story and wow your customers. From ongoing ad journeys that are tailored to your audiences’ experience to one-off campaigns to specific segments, this platform lets you leverage every customer touchpoint as an opportunity to create memorable experiences that foster long-term relationships. 

• Boost conversion rates and grow sales with personalized ad sequences
• Increase repeat purchases by keeping your customers engaged
• Build stronger, long-lasting relationships with your customers

BONUSES

#7. Candy Rack

Candy Rack is amongst the best upsell or cross-sell Shopify apps available on the market. It allows you to upsell & cross-sell your customers by offering extra services, free gifts and/or related product bundles (frequently bought together) via the modern one click upsell popup window which looks great even on mobile devices.

So, how Candy Rack is different from other upsell or bundle apps? It’s simple, slick, and effective. Upsells by Candy Rack are offered via a non-intrusive popup on the product page that’s shown after the shopper clicks on the Add to Cart button. The popup typically adopts a tree lay-out, hence, each upsell or cross-sell looks like an add-on to the parent product.

In addition to the unique approach to offer upsells, Candy Rack also “boasts” several extra features such as true upsells (upgrades), auto-upsells (based on the Shopify Product Recommendation API), and design/messaging customization.

#8. Smile

A Smile.io loyalty program grants your visitors access to exclusive perks, attractive discounts, and a fun way to engage with your brand every time they log in to your store. Likewise, it delivers them a beautifully-branded rewards program experience from their first visit to your store all the way to checkout.

Another noteworthy advantage of Smile.io is that it is truly easy, fast, and exciting to get started. Actually, you can get your loyalty and rewards program configured, designed, and launched on your Shopify store in less than a day.

#9. Google Customer Reviews, Badge

The key that makes Google Customer Reviews, Badge ranked amongst the top Shopify apps is its capacity to collect valuable feedback – ratings and reviews – from customers who’ve purchased on your site as well as automatically place them on your Shopify store. You can customize the position of these Google Reviews badges and ratings as per your convenience.

Employing this app, you can:

• Establish customer confidence: Google Customer Reviews will collect reviews from real customers & will help in gaining trust from users thanks to Google Reviews badge
• Improve your conversion rate: should you run a Shopping or Search campaign with a Google Ad, you’ll see a note appearing next to the announcement, which leads to an increase in the conversion rates and sales.
• Monitor product quality: In the section for product reviews, you will see star ratings in your Shopping ads, which may also appear in your Google product lists. These Google Notes not only allow buyers to take facts-driven purchasing decisions but they also let you, as a store owner, improve on your offerings based on these reviews.

#10. Plug in SEO

Sometimes, it’s completely fair to state that better SEO rankings equal to more sales. As you wish to “own” search results and generate traffic to your store, look no further than Plug in SEO. Super easy to set up and use, it works just like your personal SEO assistant, helping you with everything you need to improve your Google ranking, drive organic traffic to your shop and manage SEO optimization.

The best part is Plug in SEO won’t leave you hanging. After identifying any problems, the plug in will alert and provide an in-depth set of instructions on how you can fix it yourself. Those with technical know-how will appreciate how helpful the app is, even providing the specific code snippets so you can get it done on your own. After all, if you are suffering the tech headache with these things, Plug in SEO will be a wonderful solution.

The Bottom Lines

The majority of businesses start small. And this is when Shopify excels because this robust retail ecosystem does provide a simple and easy-to-use solution where you can set up a basic online store in seconds.

From email marketing, referral building, retargeting to dynamic pricing, and SEO optimization, there present tons of Marketing tasks to handle. But, fortunately, again, such a wonderful Shopify is filled with several high-end apps and extensions that let you extend your e-commerce store’s functionality and fast track your business’s success.