Little Stream Software

Feature and highlight your best-selling product variants

2024-05-13T07:00:00Z

As with best-selling products, sometimes you'll have a specific variant that outsells the others.

When that happens you should make sure to highlight that variant as much as possible. Anyplace you mention the product, that variant should be the one shown. Hero banners, product photos, email images, etc.

You could also make it the first variant shown on your store page (via reordering your options in the Shopify admin). Most themes default to the first variant that's in-stock so by reordering the variant, variant will best better placements.

These are tiny changes but if you have a decent number of products the tiny changes can start to add up.

Another thing to keep in mind is that best-selling doesn't always mean revenue or units. Some variants might not be that popular but any customers that buy them come back to become long-term customers. Think really great flavors that sound odd at first.

For those you want a deeper analysis that compares the long-term customer buying behavior to find how the variants stack up. In Repeat Customer Insights that's part of the Nth Product Analysis.

Eric Davis

Go in-depth into your customer behavior to find more revenue

If you haven't installed Repeat Customer Insights yet, it's an easy way to get a detailed look at your customer behavior.

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Plan to email customers more frequently

2024-05-10T07:00:00Z

Many years ago before I started daily emails I did quite a bit of research on how frequent and when to send emails.

At the time the advice was at least once per month or once a week if you could produce the content. Then for sales emails it was to send them around major buying holidays and then often but not too often.

Not super scientific right?

I settled on once a week for educational emails and every now an then for a more promotional email. Maybe a series of emails over a few days for a new product launch.

The advice hasn't really changed at all, even with the rise of smartphones and email being available everywhere.

Which always struck me as odd. Shouldn't easier access to email mean emailing more frequently would be acceptable and wanted by your best customers?

I since switched to daily emails so very little of that matters anymore to me. New weekday? Time to email.

I have been noticing how often I'd get emails from some larger stores though. Some send two or three emails every day with big sale events having even more. While others rarely send an email and when they do, it felt like they were phoning it in.

There's even more research out showing sending multiple times per week leads to more orders (and these tend to be promotion emails too, not just education or entertainment emails). Omnisend Return Path (PDF).

What it comes down to is expectations.

How often are your subscribers and customers expecting to hear from you?

You can influence that all the way at the opt-in (e.g. mention how frequently you email) but you can also give subscribers options. Do they only want an email once a week, once a month, or the fire-hose of everything you publish?

Getting subscribers not just accustomed to more emails, but actually welcoming them when they come, that can unlock a powerful growth channel.

Timing sales emails... that's more tricky. Each email should include some way for the reader to buy from you, it just be a simple call to action or aside mention. Or the whole email could be an ad.

In Repeat Customer Insights I've found that measuring how often someone buys can be a good indicator for when you should begin the sales process again. Using the overall Average Latency is good option, though the Order Sequencing analysis goes deeper to see how longer term customers order differently.

Given the cost and convertibility of email marketing, it's something that should be used more heavily.

Eric Davis

Leaky funnel losing repeat customers?

Are you struggling to grow your repeat purchases because your customers keep defecting? Use Repeat Customer Insights to find out where in their lifecycle you're losing them.

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Using unified customer scoring to better rank customers

2024-05-09T07:00:00Z

The neat thing about having a unified customer scoring system like Customer Grades in my app, is that you can just sort customers quickly get an idea of your best customers.

Compare that to sorting by a single metric, like as Customer Lifetime Value.

With a single metric you'll see who is best for that metric but everything that metrics doesn't measure is missed. If you had one huge account in the past but they didn't come back, they probably aren't your best customers anymore. But looking at a single metric will make you think they are.

For example, if your products were used by the vendors of Super Bowl 2020, that account would have spent a ton in 2020. But then nothing else since.

A unified metrics that pulls in multiple others metrics will account for that. Your Super Bowl customer would score highly on amount spent but would score low on how many orders and recent orders. While that customer who buys $49 cases every month like clockwork could score higher.

In the long-term you want more $49/month regular customer than flash-in-the-pan accounts.

Eric Davis

Find patterns in customer behavior

You don't have to be in the dark when it comes to your customers. Using their existing behavior, Repeat Customer Insights shows you patterns and optimization potential for Shopify stores, leading to more and better repeat customers.

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Shopify Dispatch Issue #450 - WLS radio, Advertising cookies

2024-05-08T07:00:00Z

Issue #450 - May 8th, 2024

WLS - Chicago

Kevin Hillstrom writes about Sears, the WLS radio station, and how Sears was doing Amazon Prime-like tactics over a hundred years ago.

Another everything old is new again moment.

Google’s Cookie Delay Reveals Industry Fears

Armando Roggio reports that Google has pushed back the removal of 3rd party cookies from Chrome again, now back to early 2025.

That gives advertising companies like Google time to work out an alternative tracking system. At the very least it'll let ecommerce companies get through 2024's holiday shopping season without ads completely tanking.

Figure out which sales channels send you the best customers

With the acquisition source analysis, Repeat Customer Insights can show you which sales channels are sending you the best customers.

My articles this week

The cost of bad advice

Use win-back campaigns to remind soon-to-defect customers

Use win-back campaigns to recover your high-value defected customers

Automate data exports from Repeat Customer Insights

Eric Davis

Would you like to learn how to improve your store, attract happy customers, and sell more products?

Learn how in the Shopify Dispatch.

Shopify Dispatch is a weekly curated newsletter with links and resources for Shopify merchants about Shopify and ecommerce.

The cost of bad advice

2024-05-07T07:00:00Z

This year I have a couple hundred plants ready to go into the ground but the weather is still too cold.

Some I started too early. Others I started too many (tomatoes). Some we questionable seed that ended up growing quite well.

Later this week it should start to heat up so heat will begin to accumulate. All I need to do is keep them alive for another couple of weeks.

This is better than the alternative, weather is good but I don't have enough plants to go into the ground.

It's taken me years to get this figured out and a lot stemmed from some (bad) advice I had early on about limiting seed usage. That bad advice and bad habit was probably the biggest limitation I've had in our garden.

(The good advice would be to start way more seeds than you need, plant out what you want, and recycle any leftovers)

Following good advice, especially good advice that's tailored to your actual store, is vital. Especially with the amount of made-up AI "content" getting churned out these days, you're likely to get bad or even harmful advice.

Eric Davis

Which marketing strategies are producing the best customers for your store?

Analyzing your customers, orders, and products with Repeat Customer Insights can help find which marketing strategies attracted the best customers over the long-term.

Learn more

Use win-back campaigns to remind soon-to-defect customers

2024-05-06T07:00:00Z

Similar to the advice from last Friday, you should not only try to win-back defected customers but also ones who are on the fence of defecting.

Oftentimes customers just plain forget about your store and have a hard time remembering where they bought something. This is even more problematic if they ran out of your product and threw away the container. Short of memory, they're going to struggle to reorder.

"I know the package had an animal on it and the package was blue. Or was that green?"

As those customer relationships age without an order, eventually they'll fall into defected territory. Sending a win-back campaign (even one without a discount) can help them remember your product before they get that far away.

"Oh yeah, it was a yellow crocodile. Exactly what I thought..."

The Average Latency (Average Customer Purchase Latency for data-geeks) can be used to time when to start the win-back campaign. Or the automatic segments in Repeat Customer Insights can detect when specific customers aren't reordering and tag them which can kick off the win-back campaign in Shopify email, Klaviyo, etc.

(Staying top-of-mind can also be solved by having a solid new customer welcome campaign and regular email campaigns. It takes more resources to do a regular email campaign but the pay-off is much higher)

Eric Davis

Find patterns in customer behavior

Learn more

Use win-back campaigns to recover your high-value defected customers

2024-05-03T07:00:00Z

Win-back campaigns can be effective to get expired and defected customers to come back to your store.

You'd send them after a set amount of time has lapsed since a customer's last order. (In Repeat Customer Insights the Focus on: Downturn dashboard can tell you that timing).

Often the email will mention one of the products they bought and give a discount code. With consumable products like Consumer Packaged Goods you could even list multiple products and use copywriting around "time to refill".

Sending the actual win-back campaigns have almost no-cost but if you give discounts you might want to limit who gets those campaigns. Sending them to the defected customers who spent the most will give you the best return on value. These would be the "Defected high spender" and "Defected whale" segments in my app's Recency-Monetary (RM) Customer Grid.

Though they take a bit to get started, win-back campaigns can run on auto-pilot and you'd only need to review and refresh them once or twice a year.

Eric Davis

Promote products that create your best customers

When it's time to run a promotion, how do you pick the products to feature? Best sellers are okay but wouldn't it better to promote the products that crate the best customers? Repeat Customer Insights will analyze your product and buyer behavior to show which products and variants lead to the highest quality customers.

Learn more

Automate data exports from Repeat Customer Insights

2024-05-02T07:00:00Z

The email subscriptions feature in Repeat Customer Insights was designed to make your store metrics easier and more accessible. With it you can send copies of the reports to anyone, automatically on a schedule.

One side benefit of this is scheduling automatic data exports.

The data export includes the full, analyzed customer list along with copies of most of the reports.

The data export can also be scheduled with the email subscriptions feature. That means you can have the app email a fresh data export every week or every month.

Those exports can be downloaded and archived for a later historic analysis. Or sent to a specific data analyst (even one outside your organization if you wish). Or even just act as a reminder to look at your store's performance.

A little bit of automation can go a long way.

Eric Davis

Which marketing tactics are attracting the best buyers?

By analyzing your customers, orders, and products, Repeat Customer Insights can help find which marketing tactics attract the best customers.

Learn more

Shopify Dispatch Issue #449 - Avoid IP redirects, EU Accessibility Act

2024-05-01T07:00:00Z

Issue #449 - May 1st, 2024

Avoid automatic redirection based on IP address

Ilana Davis writes about how automatic IP redirection is bad for SEO.

I wish Shopify would follow the rules about it instead of letting stores break their entire domains. Feels like they flip-flop every year since I started paying attention.

E.U. Accessibility Act Impacts Global Merchants

Bet Hannon highlights the upcoming EU Accessibility Act that comes into effect in 2025. This could become a major issue for Shopify and Shopify themes (not even counting the number of lawsuits in the US).

Figure out which sales channels send you the best customers

With the acquisition source analysis, Repeat Customer Insights can show you which sales channels are sending you the best customers.

My articles this week

Tracking historic customer segments automatically

New product demo data added to Repeat Customer Insights

Send reminder emails to one-time customers

Stop promoting products that don't create repeat customer

Eric Davis

Would you like to learn how to improve your store, attract happy customers, and sell more products?

Learn how in the Shopify Dispatch.

Shopify Dispatch is a weekly curated newsletter with links and resources for Shopify merchants about Shopify and ecommerce.

Tracking historic customer segments automatically

2024-04-30T07:00:00Z

The first of the month is fun with Repeat Customer Insights.

That's when the Historic Customer Grids take their snapshots of the customer segments.

This shows and compares how many customers where in which segments. e.g. Loyal customers grew by 10%. It's surprisingly useful to see how customers flow from segment-to-segment over time.

It's one of those things that becomes more valuable the longer you have the app running in the background.

If you want to get your Shopify store customer segments tracked, you can install Repeat Customer Insights (future-you will thank you).

Eric Davis

Segment your customers to find the diamonds in the rough

Not all customers are equal but it is difficult to dig through all of your data to find the best customers.
Repeat Customer Insights will automatically analyze your Shopify customers to find the best ones. With over 150 segments applied automatically, it gives your store the analytics power of the big stores but without requiring a data scientist on staff.

Learn more