Direct to Consumer brands are continuously revolutionizing eCommerce. However, most of these brands are faced with numerous challenges such as how to effectively utilize referral marketing, personalize customer service, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or conversion rate optimization.
The good thing is a myriad of Shopify Apps offering solutions to these challenges already exist. Make sure to watch out for these 18 ROI driven apps as you devise your marketing strategy.
1. Google Shopping
Product visualization beats text-only advertising. Product visualization helps create memory and brand awareness more than text-only advertising. Google Shopping allows consumers to search for, compare, and shop for physical products across different retailers who have paid to advertise their products. Setting Google Smart Campaigns allows you to reach millions of potential customers using YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, and the wider Google Display Network.
Why should you use google shopping? There are several reasons why, however!
1. Google Shopping adds a visual touch to a rather text-heavy shopping experience.
2. Google Shopping allows you to show up multiple times in Google Search Engine Results Pages - through paid advertising.
3. Google Shopping has a 30% higher conversion rate than text-only ads.
To get started with Google Shopping, you only need to set up a Google Merchant Center Account, link it to your Google Ads Account, create a Google Smart Shopping Campaign, target, schedule your shopping campaign, and Voila!
2. PickyStory
PickyStory is an upselling & cross-selling app for Shopify that enables merchants to generate more revenue from every customer by adding deals anywhere in their store.
Benefits
PickyStory’s main benefit is that it utilizes proven deal strategies to grow your sales and revenue.
In just a matter of clicks, you can use PickyStory to:
- Create and display deals on any page in your store
- Auto-sync your inventory at SKU level for all deals
- Add optional discounts to any deal
- Customize your deals to integrate seamlessly into your store
Pricing
PickyStory offers several pricing plans to suit merchants of all sizes:
· Start: For merchants who sell on a small scale; $19.50/month
· Pro: For merchants scaling their business; $34.50/month
· Expert: For merchants selling in multiple locations and currencies; $99.50/month
As an added benefit, all plans are free for the first 14 days.
3. Loox
The Loox app enables high-growth Shopify stores to leverage the power of happy customers across the buyer journey.
With social proof-driven tools for generating product reviews and referrals, Loox helps online stores boost site traffic and word of mouth, improve trust and retention, and increase conversions. Shopify brands can choose from a range of customizable, review display options that highlight their photo reviews and social proof. They can also easily automate referral programs with Loox's plug-and-play discounts.
Social proof reviews from happy customers help:
- Boost sales
- Build stronger brand trust
- Supercharge conversion rates.
You can also drive traffic to your store by sharing those product reviews on Social Media and Google Shopping while improving customer retention.
Pricing begins at $9.99 per month with a 14-day free trial, or see how it works with a demo.
4. Tapcart
With a spike in the number of people shopping via mobile devices, it only makes sense for you to have your own app. Tapcart helps you build the perfect Android / iPhone mobile application using its drag-and-drop editor (no coding skills required).
You can also fuel engagement by using a variety of notifications to run promotions, generate sales, and recover abandoned carts.
Pricing begins at $99/month and includes unlimited push notifications and up to 6 blocks of design.
5. Klickly
Revolutionize your advertising with machine-learning and leverage your (proprietary) customer data. Klickly offers “commission-based”, buyable advertising that enables DTC brands to launch quick ad campaigns with zero upfront spend.
What's cool about this is launching your ads only takes 15-minutes (no coding required). Over time, machine-learning algorithms will optimize your ads and promote your products across 25 million online destinations from the open-web, marketplaces, in-app, games, etc.
Pricing is 100% commission-based with no upfront costs, no CPC or CPM, so you only pay after a customer converts. You control how much you pay by setting your commission and changing it at any time.
6. Cartloop
Gone are the days when email personalization, along with top-notch email designs, were the only alternatives to ensuring sales and conversions. SMS Marketing is fast growing into a sustainable and scalable revenue channel within the industry and assuring increased sales volumes along with building relationships.
Cartloop is a conversational SMS marketing platform for fast-growing Shopify stores that offers tailored customer experiences through real-time, end-to-end communication.
Through real-time, end-to-end communication, Shopify brands can recover 31% more abandoned carts with 24/7 live experts who are texting customers in real-time. Humanize your entire customer lifecycle with a conversational text marketing platform that specializes in recovering those "annoying" abandoned carts.
We combine sales and support, building tailored customer experiences loved by both shoppers and brands. By effectively tapping into the power of the human touch, Cartloop ensures you close more sales, build lasting consumer-brand relationships, and bring the in-store shopping experience online.
See how ShineOn generated over $101k and 30x in ROI in 30-days from using a conversational text messaging approach below.
Want to know more about how Conversational Marketing is the next big thing this 2021, here's what 25 eCommerce experts have to say about it.
Cartloop's pricing model is pretty straightforward. We charge our clients based on the revenue you generate using their SMS marketing. If you're successful, we're successful— a must-have for brands that want to drive more revenue with no risk.
- Starter: $0 per month + 15% of Cartloop revenue
- Growth: $29 per month + 10% of Cartloop revenue
- Pro: $299 per month + 3% of Cartloop revenue
7. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing business alternative for Mailchimp. It will help you build your brand, scale your brand, and establish a unique and strong online presence.
Build your Brand: Leverage the power of dynamic welcome series to create warm customer relations, Cart Abandonment to ensure more sales, and other options for up and coming brands.
Scale your Brand: Benefit from its ability to store a business’ customer data in one system, along with machine learning and data predictive tools, to analyze and make customer-centric decisions helping your brand grow.
Strong Online Presence: Klaviyo makes it possible for you to transition from a Brick and Mortar store whether you own a restaurant, gym, or a retail shop making it possible for you to interact with your customer in today’s ever-changing environment. You can create a free account of up to 250 contacts and start interacting with your customers.
Other Klaviyo features include: Segmentation, Automation, Predictive Analytics, and diverse reports focused on what matters.
Pricing is based on how many emails/SMS you send.
8. Shogun
Shogun is an app that helps you create an engaging landing page so customers will come back repeatedly. It has a landing page builder that features a drag-and-drop page designer with 24+ elements and tools for page A/B testing and measuring performance. This app will greatly help you reduce page development time even with zero coding skills.
Pricing begins at $39/month with a 10-day free trial.
9. ReCharge
ReCharge makes sure that you never lose your customers to other brands. Recharge is a recurring billing app tailor-made for stores with physical subscription products for seamless customer checkout.
The app gives you full access to a customer's billing cycle so you can determine how much a customer will be charged, including options for creating special discounts, setting expiration dates, and prepaid gift subscriptions.
Customers, on the other hand, have access to and can edit information as they wish, including credit card information or when the next cycle begins. Based on your business model, customers can also subscribe to different packages on the go by logging into their account on your website.
For a standard package, the monthly rate is $60/month. For $300/month, their Pro plan comes with a custom checkout domain and allows you to pre-authorize transactions.
10. Reconvert
ReConvert is a simple yet powerful app for thank you page optimization. It allows you to easily customize your thank you page with a drag & drop interface with some nifty features on the side:
- Upsell and cross-sell directly on the thank you page
- Collect additional customer information
- Segment your customers directly upon purchase for future marketing purposes
- Conduct surveys
You can use ReConvert to deliver thank you page offers, run surveys, collect additional customer info, and more. Plus, they have integrations with some of the most powerful apps on the Shopify platform, so that you can get even better results.
Your thank you page is the first touch-point in the post-purchase funnel. Make lasting impressions with a welcome or thank-you video that moves new customers closer to your brand.
From their website, ReConvert users enjoy an average ROI of over 2,000% (no, that's not a typo).
Pricing starts for free and goes up to $29.99/month for their VIP Thank You Pages.
11. Gorgias
Every growing business needs to scale up its customer support team or start a free trial with Gorgias. With a growing business, customer interactions increase, it is hence probable that customer inquiries may be left unattended, or insufficiently attended to given your overwhelmed customer support.
Gorgias streamlines your support engagements by combining your chat, email, phone, and social media messaging into one helpdesk, creating a breeze for your support team and allowing them to close more sales and ensure more fruitful customer interactions.
Through its powerful Shopify and Shopify plus integration, you can also edit customer purchases or set up automated responses without actually leaving the app.
Yearly pricing begins at $60 per month and includes a number of features (click on the image for detailed pricing).
You can now enable seamless text conversations with your customers with the latest integration from Cartloop x Gorgias.
12. Stamped
Stamped offers a pretty comprehensive solution focusing on two main areas that should be of interest to DTC brands this year. These are:
Reviews and ratings allows you to collect and leverage social proof to influence sales conversions. You can manage your visual user-generated content (UGC), measure customer happiness and improve results and ROI using StampedIQ, their native AI.
Loyalty and rewards which allows you to set up rewards and referral programs for your most loyal customers, incentivize desired customer behaviors and celebrate your VIPs.
Over 45,000+ brands use Stamped to boost customer satisfaction, enhance user engagement and accelerate their brand growth.
Pricing shown below for their full suite of products starts at $179/month. What’s great about them is that you can customize which area and features you’d like to focus on first. Click on the picture to view more details
13. LimeSpot Personalizer
LimeSpot is an AI-driven merchandising platform that gives retailers the power to create personalized shopping experiences via 1:1 product recommendations, enriched acquisition tools, and real-time segmentation.
What this means for your Shopify store is:
- Increase store performance from higher average order value
- Helping your customers find the right products.
- Differentiates your inventory to prevent choice paraylsis
- Keep it fresh and relevant
- Attracts and retains customers
Pricing starts at $10/month and a custom plan is also available upon request.
14. LangShop
Ready to sell without borders? LangShop provides multiple translation methods and features to equip your Shopify store with multilingual and localized language capabilities. LangShop translates 100% of your store’s website content and allows visitors to customize their language and currency preferences while browsing.
They currently support over 80 currencies and a 24/7 support team.
Pricing for their unlimited plan is at $34/month and includes unlimited page views and translated words and visitor language redirection. They also provide a 14-day free trial.
15. Findify
Findify is a leading eCommerce site search and personalization company using AI algorithms to change the order in which each individual shopper sees products on site. This solution helps merchants increase revenue (by up to 30% on average), boost conversion, optimize speed, and improve UX.
Findify believes in measurable results, which is why the company likes to focus on the tried and tested experiences of real-life clients. For example, they helped to double the online sales for Shopify client, White River.
Pricing is based on the number of site visits and begins at $499 up to $1,199 per month.
16. OptiMonk
OptiMonk is a top-rated conversion optimization tool trusted by thousands of Shopify stores. It helps you to grow your list, reduce cart abandonment and increase sales with popups, sidebars, and notification bars. The tool comes with 200+ ready-to-use templates and a Drag & Drop editor, so you can create your first campaign in minutes.
Pricing is based on page views. The Free Plan includes 3,000 page views. Essential plan starts at $29/month.
17. Growave
Loyalty programs are the key to building customer relationships, improving customer lifetime value, and increasing order value. Usually, there are two types of loyalty programs— points-based or tier-based loyalty programs.
In points-based loyalty programs shoppers can get rewards depending on the number of points they earn, while in tier-based loyalty programs, you can motivate customers to earn additional points in order to progress to the next tier and receive more rewards and deals.
Growave is an all-in-one marketing app that offers the ultimate loyalty program for Shopify brands. On top of that, the app offers other features such as Reviews, Wishlists, Instagram and more.
Growave allows you to design both point-based and VIP tier-based loyalty programs for your Shopify store. Compared to other Shopify apps, Growave allows you to set up as many VIP tiers as you desire.
Furthermore, the app promotes re-engagement by reminding shoppers to join the loyalty program, redeem points, and use available rewards through emails. So, if you're looking for a Shopify app to help you build a loyal customer base, Growave is the best choice.
Pricing: Free plan is and for paid plans there is a 14-day free trial. However, the Klaviyo integration is available only for the Enterprise plan.
18. Change Commerce by Shopping Gives
Empower your brand to measure social impact against your bottom line. ShoppingGives enables brands to seamlessly integrate social impact throughout their customer journey to create native and authentic experiences for their customers. Consumers are becoming more mindful of which brands they support, they’re increasingly choosing brands whose values align with their own.
ShoppingGives can help you navigate the complexities of cause marketing seamlessly. This platform helps brands navigate the complexities of cause marketing by handling the entire donation process so they can focus on their business.
Pricing is free for the first 20 orders and the Impact Plus Plan starts at $270/month.
19. Bonus: Reveal by Omniconvert
Calculating the lifetime potential of your customers doesn’t have to be complicated. Reveal is a platform that helps retailers understand and predict their customers' behavior to improve Customer Lifetime Value.
The platform turns complex data into easy visualization so that you can better understand your customer segment accordingly and based on every marketing channel. To identify who your most valuable customers are, Reveal keys you in on:
1. Advanced buying behavior segmentation using the RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) model
2. Tagging and segmenting customers based on buying behavior and value
2. Customer Value Optimization by tracking and rewarding customers based on their lifetime spend
3. Who have the highest potential to be your Power Customers
3. Advanced and highly personalized email flows and campaigns using customer segmentation
Pricing is calculated based on your store’s monthly revenue.
Key takeaways
With ever-changing technological advancements, consumer expectations continue to increase while the demand for a seamless shopping experience rises.
DTC models give you a unique opportunity to interact with your customers, create relations, and build on your overall brand awareness. The apps highlighted above will not only give you a competitive advantage but also ensure that business revenue increases, traffic grows and customers remain satisfied.
Hey, did you manage to take a look at the latest Gorgias x Cartloop integration we highlighted above? We’ll show you! You can book a demo with us or try it out with a free 14-days trial.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in November 2020, and has since been updated for relevancy and comprehensiveness.
