5 Best Shopify Automations During Black Friday & Cyber Monday

The days between Black Friday Cyber Monday (“BFCM”) are arguably the four most important days of the whole year for most retailers. This make-or-break dynamic shines an intense spotlight on the teams responsible for executing BFCM successfully. Thankfully, with foresight and planning, a lot of the Q4 stressors can be alleviated by implementing workflow automation. Today, we’ll cover five of the most important automations for the upcoming holiday season.

1. Proactively Reach Out to Customers When Their Order Gets Delayed

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the holiday shopping season and one of the big pain points is going to be the saturation of shipping networks. UPS saw the demand for their services reach holiday levels in the second quarter, and was forced to hire 39,000 new employees to keep up. With many malls and physical retailers still under lockdown, e-commerce is sure to set new records this holiday season. 

How this fulfillment workflow works

• Check on the status of orders that are in-transit
• Send the customer an email if they have not received their order after a configurable number of days
• Optionally, notify your customer service team so they can determine if further action is needed (like reshipping the order, sending a coupon, etc)

1. Fulfillment Status In Transit

2. Delay

3. Retrieve Fulfillment

4. Filter

5. Retrieve Order

6. Email

2. Keep Inventory Available for Real Shoppers

Credit card fraud was already one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft and has only accelerated during the pandemic with fraudulent transactions rising 35%, according to the Fidelity National Information Services Inc. Even with risk detection, credit card fraud still has an opportunity cost when it ties up your inventory while waiting for human intervention.

How it works

• Listen for new orders placed on your store, looking at their fraud profile
• Cancel orders when Shopify’s fraud detection algorithm flags the order as high-risk
• Notify the customer via email that their order has been canceled
• Alert your team about the customer’s high-risk transaction
• Restock the inventory so legitimate shoppers can now purchase those items

1. Order Created

2. Get Order Risks

3. Iterate

4. Filter

5. Mapping

6. Cancel Order

7. Email

3. Reward Your Best Customers

We all know that it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. Current customers can be one of the biggest drivers of profit for your store. Just by increasing customer retention by 5%, profits can increase 25%-95%, and the likelihood of a customer you already have converting on checkout is 60%-70% vs 20% for someone new. Therefore, one of the fastest paths to growth is going to come from those that have already made at least one purchase. Make sure that those customer’s loyalty doesn’t go unnoticed this holiday season.

How it works

• Look for new orders placed on your Shopify store
• Check the customer profile associated with the order
• If the customer has placed previous orders, determine their lifetime spend
• Tag the customer account with “VIP” if they have spent over a configurable amount

1. Order Created

2. Retrieve Customer

3. Filter

4. Update Customer

4. Combine Multiple Orders From the Same Customer

When customers place several orders in a short period of time it usually means multiple shipments for your warehouse. Shipping more boxes than is necessary is not only hurtful to your bottom line, it’s also bad for your carbon footprint. While Shopify does not have the ability to consolidate orders, there are apps that provide this feature, such as Order Merger which offers a free 14-day trial. Alternatively, it’s easy to use a MESA workflow to accomplish this same task. 

How it works

• Watch for new orders placed on your Shopify store
• Check the order’s customer and look up their previous order history
• Look if the previous order has been fulfilled yet
• If not, tag the current and previous order for consolidation at fulfillment

1. Order Created

2. Filter

3. Retrieve Order

4. Filter

5. Mapping

6. Update Orders

5. Tis the Season For Giving

In May of 2020, Shopify announced a great new feature allowing customers to leave a gratuity when they checkout, either online or in-person through Shopify’s Point of Sale. With simple customization, the tipping feature can be extended to collect charitable donations. What better way to share the holiday spirit than by organizing a donation drive to your favorite charity?

How it works

• Listen for new orders
• Check if the value of the tipping field is greater than $0.00
• If the customer has provided a donation, then automatically send them an email confirming the details of their donation along with the required information about the charity so they can deduct the donation at tax time.

1. Order Created

2. Filter

3. Email