Which Shopify Apps Actually Drive Revenue?
Transcript
Charles Travers: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of e commerce marketing chats with myself Charles and Jimmy. Jimmy, what’s going on, mate? It’s been a couple of weeks. What’s what’s happening?
Jimmy Dalgleish: Hey mate, not that yeah, no. So yeah, you’ve you’ve caught your family’s flown over to sea, which must have been nice. So and yeah, I’ve just been spending time with family myself. So and getting prepared for the promotions that are coming up at the moment as well, the big ones that everyone knows about. And yeah, I thought I I think that’s kinda gonna lead our discussion today. Not so much about I guess we talk a bit a lot about the organic side and the paid side of Google or the different channels. But I think today something that’s come up a lot is kind of I guess how you can get more out of your audience and especially on Shopify. So I thought today we might chat about kind of the apps that we’ve used personally that have helped us drive additional revenue or helped us to a better a sales period, whatever promotion you’re running. So This will be an evergreen apps because I’ve been using some of the apps that we’ll talk about today for many years. but yeah, it’d be good to get some insight why I’m using them, how I’m using them, and hopefully give the audience some ideas for additional apps that they can add to their store to really capitalize on any promotion that they’re running, not just not just the major ones, like End of financial year, Black Friday, Christmas period, whatever whatever those are. So yeah, some let’s we’ll we’ll probably jump in and discuss a a few apps there and and see what’s what’s moving the needle for people. But we’ve got a couple that we spoke about previously, but I think I think I’ll kick us off with a bit of a unique one. only because I ran the numbers today and over 12 months for one store, it’s bought in a hundred thousand dollars plus of revenue. and it is so the first app to kick us off for this Shopify apps for I guess your promotions is uppromote affiliate. So it is an affiliate app for your Shopify store and What it does is it can give creators or people that want to promote your products links to put on their social media and other places in their resources. And if they send traffic to your website, then they get a commission back. Now, up promote is the one I’m using, but I actually had someone show me the Shopify one. I think it’s called Collabs. I haven’t used Collabs yet. It looked like it had its own marketplace, which I thought was interesting. Marketplace of creators. So That one could potentially be an interesting one to export to, but maybe we should look at it more as the channel of affiliate marketing rather than saying this app’s better than this app because I I think the different apps work for different people. But yeah, the one there the one that we use specifically is c was called Up Remote. I’ve been really happy with it and literally we only we only went out to one affili one affiliate. brought in all that revenue, $100,000. So it’s not it’s not not necessarily the app that you’re using. It’s the getting the app and getting the affiliate program, I guess, sorted out is the easy part. The hard part is finding quality affiliates or or quality
Charles Travers: Mm.
Jimmy Dalgleish: content creators that will actually have an audience both growing your brand. Now we got really lucky in the affiliate that we chose to do some work for a website in that they hadn’t I saw them kind of early on and I I just knew I I knew guy’s an amazing content creator and we got onto him before he just exploded on social media. and he has become a really big influencer in his space and we’ve been able to capitalize on that because products that He’s promoting to his audience or recommending the store that I do marketing management for. They sell all those products. So it was a it was a good fit. But I’ll go into a bit on how I found the person. So this person used to, it was the typical, you know, comment to get a resource on Instagram. And the resource was a list of products that were beneficial to I guess his audience. Now I downloaded that resource and noticed that he had affiliate links in there, but he also had a lot of products in there that he’s recommending that he didn’t have any affiliation with or any affiliate links. We actually stopped those products. So I reached out to him and said, Hey, see you’re working with this person, this person, this person. See you’ve got these other products that you are recommending with an affiliation yet. we actually stock them and we’d be really happy to to work to you and give you a cushion on anything that you sent through to the store. But when ended up getting on Zoom call and having a chat with him and he was really happy with the owners of the business and he’s like, Yep, let’s do it. So he set everything up and yeah, twelve later. I checked it this morning actually because someone was asking about affiliate marketing, one of the students I was coaching. Hundred and one thousand dollars over twelve months from one affiliate. So if
Charles Travers: Wow.
Jimmy Dalgleish: you’re looking for an extra channel and you haven’t explored affiliate affiliate marketing, like I can’t recommend it highly enough if if big if if you can find the right affiliates. and finding the right affiliates is the hard part.
Charles Travers: Yeah, I was gonna say
Jimmy Dalgleish: So don’t yeah, I don’t I don’t want you to think that you’re gonna, install the affiliate software and all of a sudden you’re gonna do simple numbers. You need to put in the work and and find the person or the people that have your audience and that are genuine and that create good content. So yeah, but there there’s so many more marketplaces popping up now for user generated content. So many brands are looking for it. So yeah. I I would highly, highly recommend exploring in some capacity affiliate marketing. so I I think I’ll kick off the first app recommendation with up remote, which is what I’m using for this particular affiliate. You can also explore collabs as well, which someone showed me today, but I haven’t used it personally. So I’m not I’m not gonna comment on the collabs app anymore. I’ve just seen it very briefly. But yeah, the one that I’m using Personally on client stores is is our promote affiliate. So yeah, kick it off
Charles Travers: Nice.
Jimmy Dalgleish: with with that one. how about you, Charles? You got a you got a good one for us?
Charles Travers: Yeah, I I’ve been using a little bit recently one called the Matrix Fi, I think that’s how you pronounce it. and very good for kind of bulk uploading. anything from kind of your in the back end of Shopify, you’ll have obviously your page titles, which is actually your SEO meta title. and then like meta descriptions, you can do the the main page or the headline of that page, whether it’s collection product, and then effectively you can upload a spreadsheet with the different fields of different elements on the page. And using this app, it will do it in bulk. So rather than making changes page by page, you know, you can actually do it at more at scale. and I found that can be a pretty big game changer, especially with stores that have got a lot of product SKUs. if you’re doing that manually one by one, that’s gonna take you a long time. so yeah, that would be probably my top recommendation. Certainly from if you’re looking to optimize your pages and you’ve got, you know, hundreds, if not thousands, of products and collection pages, that’s gonna save you a lot of time. so yeah, that would be my my first recommendation when it comes to Shopify apps.
Jimmy Dalgleish: Sure. What’s your thought on those apps, Charles? Because I I have used that app, but I am of the opinion that those apps are gonna be taken over by AI integration, like in doing the bulk edits with AI. What are you what are your thoughts around that?
Charles Travers: Yeah, I think you’re a hundred percent right. I think and I’d be interested, Jimmy, actually your take because so I I’ve been trying to integrate Claude to my client Shopify accounts to be able to effectively replace an app like that. However, there seems to be a it’s only available typically if you’re the the super admin or the the owner of that shopify store i don’t know if you’ve experienced similar issues but it it doesn’t seem to be and then may maybe i’m wrong or I haven’t found something but it doesn’t seem to be something where if you’re a Shopify collaborator you can you can get that integration and it seems to be the one gap that that might be missing especially if you’re like you know a freelancer or an agency that wants to get access to your client store in order to create these automations. But totally agree. I think AI will take yeah.
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, and it’s a good it’s a it’s a good point. And yeah, how I’ve done it is the store that I do a lot of work on, like you you I actually needed a seat like as a user rather than collaborator. So they created me like an administrator seat within
Charles Travers: Yeah.
Jimmy Dalgleish: their store and then I s set it up through the the CLI in virtual virtual studio code. and then yeah, I I I do everything through that. So and it can do the bulk things that you’re talking about, for Matrix Fi. Yeah, I forget how to say it as well. But
Charles Travers: Yeah.
Jimmy Dalgleish: yeah, I I think I think more and more that that will come. But yeah, that that app has been spoken about a lot for bock edits, which is great. So if people are having trouble with AI and they want to try something else, yeah. Definitely a great app to do a lot of bulk edits at scale effectively. So yeah, that’s a good one. Especially if you’re coming into especially if you’re coming into like a campaign, some people like, I need to change the price of every product on my store to reduce the price for a sale. yeah, those apps can be really, really great for that kind of thing.
Charles Travers: Yeah. But no, I I certainly agree. I think AI is gonna take over a lot of these. Once it’s as it once it’s more streamlined to integrate Claude into Shopify if you’re not, you know, the the owner of the store or the the the admin, I think we’ll see a lot more of that. Whereby why would you use, you know, four or five different apps when you can just use Claude. and I’m noticing even with my own business and you know even like apps for my own personal life that you’ve got on your iPhone, I’m I’m effectively like I’m spending so much of my time in Claw Code, I’m just gonna create an artifact in Clawed code that’s gonna replace
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.
Charles Travers: a lot of these these apps that I’m using ra because if I’m spending, most of my day within the Claude code interface, then why would I need to go onto my phone to do this and then this app and this app? So yeah,
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.
Charles Travers: I think we’ll see the same with with with with Shopify apps as well, where Claude’s going to take a large or any other kind of AI LLM is going to take a large chunk of market share, which will be unfortunate for some
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.
Charles Travers: of these tools. But I think only the good thing is only
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.
Charles Travers: the best will survive. only the real best, the ones that that you know, deliver real value where actually it’s easier to just use that tool versus try and build it yourself. Those are the ones will that will still remain. But yeah, it it’s gonna be interesting.
Jimmy Dalgleish: I’ve seen I’ve seen this I’ve seen this week. Yeah, I’ve seen this week too. a lot of part apps and sell apps have actually been hacked in Shopify. I’m not sure if you’ve seen that Charles, but they’re redirecting
Charles Travers: No, I think.
Jimmy Dalgleish: to a different di they’re re they’re all redirecting to a different website, different payment page, and it’s been a major issue for Shopify this week. and and a lot
Charles Travers: So I actually you say that I I I had a client message me tod today about potentially product URLs being redirected to a random like domain and I was thinking, is that what you’re
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yep.
Charles Travers: talking about? Because I couldn’t figure out apparently it’s been s yeah, I I was I then started doing some analysis and I’m like I can’t see what what the issue is. I couldn’t see that from what I was seeing on my end it was not
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah, it’s a cart it’s a cart page and it’s tricky too, ’cause it doesn’t happen every time. It’s done randomly. But yeah, some major apps have been hacked. and even the students that I’m coaching,
Charles Travers: okay.
Jimmy Dalgleish: I I I I reckon I reckon maybe three out of every ten students it’s been has been affected. So it’s major. So and I’ve
Charles Travers: Okay. That’s
Jimmy Dalgleish: seen a lot of I’ve I’ve seen a lot of cart apps actually been stripped from the Shopify marketplace, like just completely. So yeah, it looks like looks like a pretty pretty made issue. So yeah, definitely worth a read up on. We won’t talk about it on this show because we’re doing the apps today, but yeah, a lot with AI at the moment, like it’s making hacking like a lot easier. So people need to really dial in the security as well. But yeah, major compromise on Oklafy this week for those things. I’ll jump into
Charles Travers: Interesting.
Jimmy Dalgleish: the the neck next app that’s I’m using and This one is owned and run by an Australian and it’s called Deemley. Now, this app, what happens is you can install it and then you can choose a percentage for every order that the customer will get back in store credit. So for example, we run like a quite small one. So you get five percent store credit back for every purchase. But the good thing about it is, especially over large sales, is a lot of people coming anyway and then they get like a handy little store quit as well. But then if they don’t use it, the app actually sends them because the the credit expires after I think you get to choose your time frame, but I think for us it’s sixty days. So the app sends them a message at fifty days saying your credit’s about to expire in 10 days. So if they bought two months ago, all of a sudden a few days later, they’re getting reminded that, hey, you’ve got this free money sitting here, so you may as well use it. And it promotes them to come back and spend again. And then when they do spend again, they also store credit. and, you know, they go through the cycle again. So it’s great for customer retention. if you are selling products that everyone else is selling, it’s a nice little differentiator to get you over the line. Like they’re if they’ve got two stores same price same price but one of them you’re getting a five percent store credit back then you’re probably going to choose that one over the one that you’re getting nothing no other benefit from so yeah it’s redeemly r-ed e l y yeah great little app I don’t I’ve got it I’m I don’t know the exact I had the exact revenue numbers for the affiliate app Because I looked it up this morning. I don’t have I’d be curious to to give you guys kind of a a 12-month let’s see if I can go last 365 days. the sales that have influenced 1.364 million. Now that’s not to say that it’s fully responsible for all that that 1.364 million, but It’s just saying from the that’s saying that the sales that were influenced, they they got the credits and then the credits awarded in that time has been sixty-eight thousand dollars. so yeah, handy handy little app to for client retention, be bringing people back. It’s it’s yeah, really, really good. So if you’re looking for Something just to give you higher customer return rates, then yeah, couldn’t couldn’t recommend it highly enough, especially over a sales period. because what typically happens is you have a massive sales period and then sales will drop off a little bit. But if you can bring those people back two months later, yeah, it’s it’s perfect. So yeah, Redeemly is number two for me in our little app list today.
Charles Travers: Nice, nice. So next one for me, it’s also one that Jimmy uses as well or has used is is push out, which is all around push notifications. So basically it allows people to opt in to push notifications for that particular brand, and then that user or customer will every time they log on, you can actually create kind of sales messages that will pop up either on your desktop browser or if you’re browsing on a mobile, also on your mobile. and found this was to be a great channel as an alternative to email, or because effectively what you’re doing is you’re building a separate list. so it’s not Your email list is a it’s a completely new channel. and I for one of my clients, I set this up, one of my SEO clients, and I’m seeing some really, really good results. And the great thing is you can set up automations as well. So you’ve got things like abandoned car, where like if if the user or the customer doesn’t check out, it will pop up with the push notification to tell them. Look, you’ve you’ve put this in the car. Do you still want to buy it? Etc. and that alone, just the automations, I found has driven a lot of revenue. I was just look give you some ideas in terms of numbers, and obviously it depends on the how much traffic you’re driving to your site. let me just see what I can find here.
Jimmy Dalgleish: I think the great thing about it too is having used it a lot is you don’t need their you don’t need the person’s email. So they can they can come to your site, they accept notifications and then you’ve got another touch point for someone that’s visited your site. And when the notification goes out, it almost comes through like a phone text message. it’s like a notification on your phone if you’ve accepted it on your phone. So it is a really another really cheap and efficient Touchpoint. I think the the power of the push out app though, you can completely install it for free and get an audience, but the powerful part of it is the check the abandoned checkout flows. So if someone gets to the
Charles Travers: Yeah, absolutely.
Jimmy Dalgleish: checkout and they and they don’t actually convert, this app sends them a reminder, like an email flow, but it just goes to their device that they did it on, which a lot of the time is the mobile. So it’s it’s a really powerful one to to get noticed because people see the notifications on their mobile. there’s a a much, much higher open rate than than email. So they’re kind of the advantages I’ve seen when I’ve used it. But I haven’t used probably the campaign function of it as much as you have, Charles. So I know you’ve had some wins on the actual sending out the campaign functions on there.
Charles Travers: Yeah, for sure. just just to give you some idea in terms of numbers. this is for one of my clients. So just looking at all time, and I’m just trying to see how far back we had set this up. I’m think it’s looking like maybe late twenty twenty-four is generated just from the automations. 281,000 US dollars with the abandoned cart recovery over two hundred thousand US dollars. So not small numbers. but yeah, obviously it depends on the size of your list as well, like how many people were gonna actually opt in and subscribe. but just to show, you know, how effective push notifications can be and Yeah, in terms of an ROI, it’s it’s an insane ROI because I think in terms of a subscription cost, I think they’re paying about a hundred and fifty US dollars a month.
Jimmy Dalgleish: Okay.
Charles Travers: so yeah, I mean I I’m just in terms of campaigns, we haven’t run many campaigns at all. It’s really just been the automations in the back end recently, that is. But when we
Jimmy Dalgleish: Yeah.
Charles Travers: did run campaigns aro particularly around Black Friday, that would be you know, I’d be really looking to capitalise on that. you may be a little bit late now, bear in mind it’s kind of late October. So you’ve not you probably won’t have time to kind of really build up that subscriber count.
Jimmy Dalgleish: Mm-hmm.
Charles Travers: but you know, the sooner can get started, the better.
Jimmy Dalgleish: I think the that’s just the subscriber count’s good for the campaigns, but it doesn’t really affect the abandoned card flow. So ’cause you can
Charles Travers: Yes. Yeah.
Jimmy Dalgleish: or the abandoned checkout flow I should say, because if they come onto the site and accept and then, you know, they’re gonna go straight into that flow. The the good thing about campaigns is though you can reach out to people that may not have visited your site for a long period of time and just remind them about that. So what I I I will just mention too about the price of the out because Charles mentioned around a hundred and fifty. That’s only ’cause the the size of their audience when you’re starting out, it’s either free or if you want the abandoned part function, I think it’s about twenty-nine dollars US a month. So it’s not a hundred and fifty US a month straight out of the gate, but If you do get quite a large audience and you require a higher number of push notifications, then that kind of scales with the amount of kind of the audience that you’ve got on that app. Yeah, I agree. So I recommend all my clients at least get on it to start collating an audience and an additional touch point. but yeah, it you’re right. It’s it’s it’s it’s a no brainer. I think yeah I think everyone should have it on there. I think it’s the I think I was checking some stats the other day. I think it’s like in the top ten for the most downloaded apps on Shopify. So it it is one of the more popular ones. but yeah, it’s yeah, if you’re not utilizing it, would highly recommend it because yeah, it’s a low cost and it’s got really good return and I’ve actually purchased a few times having received push notifications on my phone for a checkout that I forgot about. And then it’s just like a reminder. It’s like, yeah, I meant I was meant to finish that. And then, you get distracted by life or family or whatever happens. And then yeah, so I’ve seen the power of it myself, which is why I got into it like s so many years ago. I think I first started using pushour maybe six or seven years ago. So Yeah. But yeah, yeah. It’s been around for a while. So it’s a proven app. It’s got a great support. and yeah, it’s a handy little revenue driver. So all right, let me have a look, because I was gonna do push out next and I’ll see if I’ve got it see if I got another one. We’ve got a probably got enough time for what one more, so I’m just having a look. this one’s a bit this one’s a bit left of centre, because it’s not directly related to revenue driving, but I’ve been recommended this a few times and I tried it and the information that you can get from it is really great. So it’s called it’s called Zig Pole. So I’m not sure have you used Zigpole, Charles? It’s like a it’s it’s like a post-purchase customer survey. so as soon as they purchase on the confirmation page, it’s a little survey and it it asks them, why why they purchased, you know, what do you know about the brand, all these type of things. It’s it’s basically a survey where you can collate information about your audience and your customer. And I didn’t think it would be that great, but I’ve actually tried it and the information that actually comes through is really valuable and you can it can help it can help craft the messaging in your campaigns or so yeah, if you’re if you’re looking for kind of a a post purchase survey for your customers to get some really useful data and information, Zigpol customer surveys is a is a is a really good one. So I would recommend checking that out if if you haven’t already. I think I honorable mention as well, and the reason I say honorable mention is because not everyone this app will be relevant for, but I’ve been using SEAL subscriptions lately. So for stores that have a c maybe a consumable product like a a drink or food or, supplements or something along those lines where the person would purchase regularly, getting a subscription app on there can really help and just help with cash flow and and get people automatically coming back to your site every month or every two months just because they’ve put the purchase on a on a repeat purchase subscription. So but yeah, it’s like say you’re selling, I don’t know, like electric bikes. You’re gonna have a subscription service. You’re not gonna have a new electric bike showing up every two months. So the yeah the subscription service is kind of really r only relevant to I guess consumable products. but yeah I think we’ve got a really think we’ve got a really good list there. Unless you had any others, Charles, that you wanted to give an honorable mention to or Are you happy with that little bundle that we’ve got there? Yeah. So That’s a really good point, ’cause not enough people do that. They have so many apps, they’re not using them. They’re paying for ten that they’re not using. and for example, like, I’ve I’m just switching all all our blogs over from the app that we used to build them on called bloggle. Claude is rebuilding them natively. But that app’s like sixty dollars a month and like that’ll just be replaced now by like having flawed format the the blog posts for us. So yeah, it’s a r actually that’s a really good point to like just end the app conversation on. Do an audit of the ones that you’re running currently because you could probably find probably at least a hundred dollars in savings just by cutting the ones that you’re no longer using. Be careful though, too. If you don’t know what it is, get clarification from someone else about why it’s on there and what it does without just removing it. So because I have seen some people remove apps that were like critical to what their site was doing and they just didn’t know what it was or what it was what it was doing so they removed it. So yeah I think we’ve I think we’ve got some good at apps for you all to check out there on Shopify. If you want to find out more check us out at e-commerce marketing chats on or dot com. to find us everywhere. It’s got everything listed on the new fancy website that Charles has put together for us. And yeah, if you’ve got any other app recommendations that you reckon we should check out, or you’re an app kind of developer yourself and you want us to try something out, let us know and we’ll we’ll see what we can do. But and until then we’ll we’ll chat to you guys all next week.