How to Effectively Utilise Shopify Flow

Shopify Flow is a relatively new tool for Plus users to take advantage of, with its introduction occurring in September 2017. This feature allows users to create unique workflows with handy automation capabilities which means some of the behind-the-scenes tasks of your site are taken care of - whilst you can focus on your main priorities.

This time-reducing feature completes ongoing tasks after only a few clicks of setup, and you should definitely get on board if you’re a Shopify Plus user. We think this tool is great, which is why we also included it as a deciding factor as to why you should consider upgrading to Plus in another blog post.

The technicalities of Shopify Flow

Luckily, the outstanding benefits of this feature aren’t difficult to achieve, and your workflows can be created in a rather straightforward manner without any complex coding awareness. All it involves is a 3-part builder, displayed visually on your screen for simplicity, and involves a trigger, condition and action. So, let’s take a look at a few ways you can use this feature to make things easier on your site…

Email marketing techniques

Shopify Flow is an extremely useful tool for segmenting your customers based on their buying and spending habits, to allow for automatic targeting of them more closely for campaigns and promotions which may suit their needs. For example, you could integrate Flow with email marketing tools in order to reward customers who have spent a large amount in a single order on your site. E.g. set the trigger as an order being created, then the condition of this being greater than £150 (or a figure which is deemed a large purchase depending on your own product prices). Once a customer creates an order over this price point, you can choose the action to send them a discount for future use. That way, you reward customers for purchasing and also encourage a return to your store.

Low stock reminders

It’s common knowledge that a lot of customers will feel more inclined to go through with their purchase if there is some sense of urgency created around the stock levels of the items they want to buy. Shopify Flow can make this happen for you, meaning when your stock reaches a certain level, they are warned by either a ‘low in stock’ notification, or, perhaps your products can move into a category of ‘last chance to buy’. The trigger can be an inventory change, then the condition can be a ‘less than [no. of stock]’, in order signal for the warnings to appear. You could even alter the condition during flash sales and other events to attempt to boost sales more.

Fraud avoidance

Fraudulent purchases can be a nightmare, and also end up wasting a lot of time when trying to resolve them. Although Shopify on its own is pretty good at assessing fraud, this allows more control and also gives you the chance to take immediate action. You can send automatic alerts to your sales team and they can investigate the matter further. The trigger for this is ‘order risk analysed’, condition being ‘= high’, and the action would need to be some form of notification to your customer service team (or the designated team to deal with fraud issues) which could be over email, or integrated with Slack messaging, for example. This way, hopefully fraudulent orders can be targeted at an early stage and therefore carry less risk and difficulty for your business at a later stage.

Re-order levels

As well as managing the inventory in terms of notifying customers when stock is low, it can also be managed in order to set a certain level whereby items should be replenished. You can use flow to send alerts personally which you can act upon, or instead you can create an automatic email to your supplier. Alongside this, stock that runs out can be automatically unpublished from your site until it is replenished, to avoid any customer disappointment.

These are just a few detailed ideas of how to utilise Shopify Flow on your website, but there’s plenty more you can look into as well. Perhaps if your business gets regular wholesale customers, consider some sort of workflow which identifies these customers and offers you a notification so that you can contact them personally and gain closer, personal relationship with these big buyers. You could draft follow up emails for abandoned orders in order to boost your sales even if it is at a later point. Get experimenting with Flow and watch your site improve, as well as experiencing more free time to tackle your business goals with full attention.