We know first hand how difficult it can be to stay up to date with all the latest features from your tech stack. With the e-commerce world developing constantly, your Shopify apps are also bringing out new features. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed, but we’re here to help you make sense of it all.
Here at Blend Commerce, our marketing team has been researching, collecting and putting together a new blog series where each quarter, we take a look at the latest feature updates from our Partners and what these mean for Shopify merchants.
In this blog, we’ll be taking a look at:
Gorgias
Gorgias is an e-commerce helpdesk that strives to turn your customer service into a profit centre. Integrating with Shopify, Messenger, Emails, Klaviyo and Reviews.io, you can bring all of your customer service messages into one helpful place.
New ticket merge possibilities
If you’ve used Gorgias, you’ve probably noticed that you can get duplicate tickets. Gorgias has now added a new feature that allows you to merge tickets. Currently, it is limited to the following combinations:
- Two Aircall tickets from the same customer
- Two Messenger tickets from the same customers and the same integration
- An Aircall and an Email ticket
Source: https://updates.gorgias.com/posts/new-ticket-merge-possibilities
Filters & Search terms in URL
Another update released to help make the merchant’s life easier is improvements to filters and search terms. This new update allows you to:
- Easily return the search results after leaving a ticket using your browser’s navigation
- Share search results with others by copying and sending the URL of your search results
We think the second point is going to be most beneficial to Shopify Merchant as it will help customer tickets be efficiently passed to the right person, allowing response and resolution times to be resolved.
Source: https://updates.gorgias.com/posts/filters-search-terms-in-url
Improved sending Facebook Messenger message experience
For our feature spotlight this week, we are looking at how Gorgias has improved the experience of sending a single message in Facebook Messenger tickets. You can now:
- Add inline images to your Facebook Messenger replies by using the button in the reply area or by pasting an image from clipboard.
- Add attachments in the same message
- Use macros that have inline images or attachments as an action. Demonstrated here by Gorgias.
- Create auto-reply rules with text and inline images
- See all messages sent from the same users instead of the Gorgias bot
Here is a video demonstration of how to add images and attachments to a ticket.
We think this a great feature to add to Gorgias as being able to include inline images in Facebook Messenger replies could be extremely helpful with replying to customers and showing them products with images. This could be particularly useful for clothing brands as they will be able to share product images and size guides easily with enquiries using this new feature, accompanied by using auto-reply rules and macros.
This will all help streamline the experience for both the customer and the agent responding to the tickets as they will be able to do all of this within the helpdesk.
You can find all of Gorgias updates here: https://updates.gorgias.com/
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an advanced email marketing platform that uses detailed customer insights to create developed automated Flows and Campaigns. Integrating with Shopify, ReCharge and POS systems, it’s now even easier to create a streamline experience on and off your store.
SMS Custom Keywords
Custom keywords allow Shopify Merchant a new method to collect SMS sign-ups and customise the customer experience with targeted messaging. You can now:
- Define custom keyword linked to a specified list
- Allow customers to text a keyword to their SMS sending numbers to subscribe
For example, if your customer texted ‘REWARD” you could trigger an SMS to show them details about your loyalty program.
JOIN will be the default custom keyword for all SMS customers and it will behave consistently with the single/double opt-in settings to the associated list.
Text to subscribe keywords provides SMS customers with an easy, and engaging way of collecting SMS subscribers beyond sign-up forms. This is a great addition to Klaviyo’s SMS channels as it will:
- Increase sign-ups due to ease of use, even for those with a Retail Store
- Survey or poll customers and record responses as a custom property on profiles
- Automate customized responses to profiles based on inbound SMS received
As part of this release, Klaviyo has also enabled the ability to use the ‘Sent SMS’ metric as a flow trigger allowing customers to automate responses via flows.
To find out more, here are some useful guides:
- https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050384091-Add-Update-or-Delete-Custom-Keywords
- https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049930372-How-to-Create-Flows-Using-the-Sent-SMS-Metric
Source: Klaviyo Partner Slack Channel
"Notifications" action in Flows
You may have noticed your Flows now have a new feature you can use called Notification. This can be a long-requested feature that allows you to email up to five people when someone first triggers or reaches a particular point in a Flow. This action is designed to support you by sending internal notifications to a set group email addresses around certain activities that require specific follow up or attention. For example, a client may want to alert their Sales Team when someone is added to a wholesale or VIP list or notify their Customer Support team when someone leaves a negative product review.
Some useful things to know are:
- These notification emails can be sent to any confirmed email addresses — recipients do not need to have customer profiles or exist as users on an account.
- All notification emails sent do count toward any account email sending limits.
- Notification actions have their own recipient opt-in process, read more about it here.
Below you can see the Blend Team demoing this new feature:
With a vast range of use cases, I believe this could be a helpful feature for many Shopify Merchants. In particular, this could work well for linking integrations together, for example, notifying your customer service team about negative reviews or interest in Loyalty Programs will allow for efficient customer communication. You can learn more about Klaviyo and it’s integrations with our Shopify App Lookbook.
Source: Klaviyo Partner Slack Channel
You can find all of Klaviyo’s updates here: https://www.klaviyo.com/whats-new
LoyaltyLion
LoyaltyLion is a powerful, data-driven tool for loyalty and engagement. It gives you the power to build strong customer relationships through a customised Loyalty Program that integrates with Klaviyo and reviews apps so you can reward your customers for the actions they take.
Create an API and collect more data
With LoyaltyLion’s new API update, you can now collect more information on how your customer’s points have changed over time and the reasons why.
The new API shows all the point changes and all the associate rewards and rules within one transaction. As a result, you can gain more insights about your customers and deliver more exclusive experiences - always a great result for you and your customers.
To see even more possibilities LoyaltyLion has with other apps, check out their updates here.
Source: https://loyaltylion.com/uk/blog/september-feature-updates-from-loyaltylion
You can find all of LoyaltyLion’s updates here: https://loyaltylion.com/uk/blog/category/new-features
SMSBump
SMSBump is a highly developed SMS Marketing Platform that uses Shopify customer data to create a personalised experience through Flows and Campaigns. Integrating with Klaviyo, ReCharge and LoyaltyLion, Shopify merchants can reach their customers in new ways with incredible open rate and ROI of text messages.
Revamped Subscription Tools
SMSBump has been working long and hard to build a completely revamped version of their Growth Tools, now known as Collect Subscribers.
We spent some time looking at the Subscription Tools to give you a quick overview of what is new:
Here is a quick rundown of the new features:
The new and updated subscriber collection section comes with additional growth options, such as the Instagram opt-in, and many advancements in the form builder to provide businesses with a seamless omni-channel presence and high conversion rates.
Full Customisations
With the revamped Form Builder merchants can create subscription forms truly native to their brand look and feel. They can choose among 20+ pre-made templates or create a form from scratch. Additional customisation options are available as well: picking the correct font, size, weight, even editing elements like the subscribe and exit buttons, input fields, and many more.
All features in the Form builder are available on all SMSBump plans, with just a few advanced segmentation filters available only on the paid plans, starting at $19/ month.
Advanced Targeting
The improved opt-in tools come with new advanced segmentation filters so merchants now have full control over the audience they target with each pop-up. In addition to customising the timing and page location of forms, businesses can deep dive into segmenting them and configuring different ones for visitors coming from different sources (social media, email or other), geo-locations, have clicked on specific buttons or pages on your website, and many more.
Sneak peek: Social Opt-In
The SMSBump team is also working on something pretty exciting - a way to leverage all your social channels to collect more subscribers with just a swipe. This feature will be available for all paid plans and can be used for all US-based subscribers. Once engaged with the link, customers will be automatically re-routed to their messaging app and will need to simply confirm their subscription by sending out the pre-set keyword.
There is also an improved analytics reporting which will allow you to track the performance of all your sign up forms, including a new look at impression, click-through rate and ROI.
The new and updated subscriptions tools are going to help eCommerce brands accelerate their subscriber growth and leverage other channels to create a seamless experience. Brands now have a greater variety of forms, designs and targeting to collect subscribers, creating a great platform to accelerate growth.
To find out more about SMSBump sign up forms to check out their blog.
Source: https://smsbump.com/blogs/revamped-subscription-tools
You can find all of their updates here: https://smsbump.com/blog/new-features
Summary
There we have it! All of the latest updates you need to know from our Partners. We’re excited to see what else our Partners release next and we’ll be sure to update you!
If you need any additional information or have any questions, leave us a comment below or email us at hello@blendcommerce.com and we’ll connect you to one of our partners or our customer service team here at Blend.
