10 Shopify integrations to grow your subscription business
Eighty-four percent of eCommerce decision makers called competition in their market “tough” or “very tough” in a 2021 study by SearchNode. Given Amazon’s market share, this statistic isn’t surprising.
According to BuiltWith, a third of these decision makers have Shopify accounts. The vast number of Shopify integrations are a huge part of the eCommerce platform’s appeal, giving merchants multiple tools to help their online stores stand out from the competition.
Standing out from the competition means designing a frictionless and personalized customer experience. Subscriptions now play an outsized role in this type of experience. When combined with other key Shopify integrations, they give customers a powerful reason to create a relationship with your brand.
The most popular integrations are apps that you add from your Shopify admin page. Shopify Plus merchants have exclusive access to a group of apps designed for rapidly growing stores. (If Shopify can’t connect you with a desired platform, you may have to rely on Zapier for the integration.)
While Shopify has tons of integrations, there are a few that stand out for eCommerce businesses. With these 10 Shopify integrations, you’ll not only create a better eCommerce experience in general and subscription experience in particular, but you’ll also build long-lasting relationships with your customers over time.
1. Refersion: Reduce CAC with referrals
Refersion rewards existing customers who recommend new customers. It’s a Shopify app that can grow your subscriber base and drastically reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC).
Say you run a health and beauty subscription service. Shopify estimates that the CAC in this vertical is $127. Use Refersion to offer existing customers a $10 voucher if they refer a customer who signs up for a subscription.
If you give the new customer a $10 voucher on their first shipment, you’ve only spent $20 to win the customer – a substantial savings from the $127 average.
In addition to reducing CAC, Refersion’s functionality makes it easy for customers to participate in these loyalty programs. Take jewelry brand Pura Vida:
Subscribers are already getting product discounts. If they successfully refer a friend, they’re getting even greater value out of their membership.
Key features
- Manages rewards for loyal customers, influencers, and affiliates.
- Recruits top eCommerce affiliates with their eCommerce Affiliate Discovery tool.
Pricing
- After a free trial, Refersion starts at $99/month for up to 50 conversions.
2. Okendo: Build social proof with product reviews
Okendo captures and showcases customer reviews that build trust in your brand and subscription experience.
Customers are less likely to enroll as subscribers if they lack confidence in your products. Reviews help give them that confidence. According to a 2022 BrightLocal study, 49% of survey respondents take customer reviews as seriously as a recommendation from a good friend.
With Okendo, you can both solicit reviews via email or SMS and display those reviews at key touchpoints in the buying journey. Organic foods brand ALOHA sticks a slider of reviews on their homepage to head off any customer doubts.
Okendo also gives customers the option of rating products according to certain criteria, providing prospects with even more insights.
Key features
- Syncs with SMS and email marketing platform Klaviyo for improved customer segmentation. If a customer leaves a positive or negative product review, that information flows to Klaviyo automatically. Klaviyo associates the review with an existing customer profile or creates a new one. Tailor your email marketing messaging to the level of customer satisfaction with your product.
- Pushes reviews and UGC to external marketing channels such as social media and Google Search.
Pricing
- After a 14-day free trial, Okendo starts at $29/month, depending on your number of monthly orders.
3. Octane AI: Create a guided selling experience with quizzes
Octane AI uses quizzes to help brands tailor products to customers’ preferences. The added personalization lets customers know they’re subscribing to the right products, and you get valuable data you can use in marketing campaigns.
According to a 2021 Acquia global study, 54% of marketers reported better customer engagement because of increased personalization efforts.
Health food brand Hunter & Gather has a wide range of products. Their quiz not only helps introduce their products to customers, but it’s fun to fill out as well.
One advantage of the quizzes is they start personalizing the browsing experience immediately. Asking for a name and email address first in exchange for a discount is still effective. But a customer who submits their email gets the same welcome flow as the next customer who submits their email. Octane AI gives each customer a unique immersion in your brand as soon as they visit your storefront.
Key features
- Offers multiple customizable quiz templates
- Single-question pop-ups encourage customers to engage with your site
Pricing
- After free trials, Octane AI starts at $50/month based on store revenue.
4. Gorgias: Improve the post-purchase experience with customer support
Gorgias is an omnichannel customer support integration specifically designed for eCommerce businesses. It’s an essential app for creating post-purchase customer support experiences that reflect positively on your brand.
With so many communication options available, Gorgias lets customers contact brands via email, voice, SMS, chat, and even Facebook Messenger. According to Zendesk’s 2022 Customer Experience Trends report, 93% of customers will spend more when companies offer their preferred option to reach support.
Shopify-powered store Death Wish Coffee Company uses Gorgias to let customers track orders via live chat and ask questions about products they might want to add to their next order. Agents can respond in real-time.
In addition, Gorgias makes agents more efficient by improving their workflows. Agents can access a customer’s complete communication and Shopify order history from a single dashboard.
That way, if a customer is calling about an unresolved issue, the agent doesn’t need to ask the customer to state the problem again.
Key features
- If you also use Okendo, you can trigger a support ticket whenever a customer submits a negative review.
- Seamless integration with your Shopify product listings means agents can update orders from within Gorgias.
Pricing
- After a free trial, Gorgias starts at $60/month for 300 tickets.
5. ShipBob: Uphold your brand with seamless order fulfillment
ShipBob handles two critical pieces of the post-purchase subscription experience – order fulfillment and inventory management.
ShipStation’s 2020-2021 Last Touch, Lasting Impact report finds that 83% of customers are likely to take their business elsewhere after a negative delivery or shipping experience.
But even if a shipment arrives on time, there’s much more to order fulfillment that can impact a subscriber’s perception of your brand.
After all, a designer socks brand like Brummell wouldn’t just throw their products into a brown box and ship them. The box weight, color, tissue, inserts, and product arrangements all impact the brand experience.
ShipBob also offers branded packaging for aesthetically pleasing on-brand experiences. Plus, you’ll get alerts if a product is running low, so you don’t risk disappointing subscribers with an “out of stock” email.
Key features
- Sends customers shipping update emails or SMS through Shopify or your email marketing platform.
- Helps brands expand with international shipping to 200+ countries.
Pricing
- Pricing depends on multiple factors – storage, packaging requirements, etc.
6. EcoCart: Show customers you care about the environment
EcoCart helps customers offset the environmental impact of their orders at checkout. With a single click, customers can pay a small additional shipping fee to make their order carbon neutral.
Younger customers, especially, expect brands of all sizes to play a role in environmental preservation. According to a 2021 Deloitte study, protecting the environment is the number-one concern of Generation Z. A whopping 62% of them would likely stop buying from a brand that didn’t align with their values, notes this recent study from Attest.
Sustainably sourced fashion brand Tribe Kelley nestles EcoCart just before customers move to the final checkout page where they click “Complete Purchase.”
The additional $1.80 goes to organizations that plant trees or perform some other environmentally friendly activity. Customers can choose a cause where EcoCart sends their additional fees.
Tribe Kelley doesn’t offer a subscription experience, but once they rolled out EcoCart, they saw a 19% lift in their conversion rate.
Key features
- After checkout, EcoCart sends a QR code linking customers to a report on how their donation made a difference.
- Gives merchants a dashboard that tallies the total environmental impact of their efforts so they can easily share it in their marketing campaigns.
Pricing
- Pricing depends on order volume.
7. Rebuy: Increase AOV with cross-selling and upselling
Rebuy uses artificial intelligence to analyze your customers’ purchase behavior and generate personalized product recommendations, including upsell and cross-sell possibilities.
Don’t think of product recommendations as intrusive, and you could be letting your customers down by not providing them. A 2022 global study from Klarna reveals that 43% of US online shoppers expect personalized product recommendations when visiting an eCommerce store.
Whenever a customer adds a new product to their shopping cart, alcohol-free spirits brand Ritual Zero Proof displays a more expensive bundle as well as complementary bottles at similar price points.
Ritual Zero Proof subscribers are already providing recurring revenue. Using Rebuy’s recommendation engine, Rebuy stands to increase subscribers’ average order values.
Key features
- Display recommendations at every stage of the purchase journey, from the Shopify product page to the thank you page.
- Bundle a subscription box with a recommended product for an additional discount.
Pricing
- Offers a free trial and a free plan for up to 50 orders/month.
8. Wisepops: Increase conversions with smart pop-ups
Wisepops deploys pop-ups and other site notifications to encourage specific customer behaviors, such as subscription options, at predetermined touchpoints in the customer journey. While excessive pop-ups can be annoying, they lead to conversions when planned strategically.
Marketing automation platform Drip found that pop-ups shown after eight seconds of website browsing have the highest conversion rates.
Wisepops lets you hyper-personalize pop-ups according to specific customer behaviors. For example, target a repeat buyer with a pop-up at checkout showing the value of subscribing. Show new customers who spend eight seconds on a product page a pop-up with a promo code good for their first purchase.
You can also access a dashboard showing brands which pop-ups are performing best in terms of displays and clicks.
You can even A/B test pop-ups that are performing moderately well to see if a different photo or CTA leads to higher conversion rates.
Key features
- Pop-up campaigns adapt easily to desktop, mobile, and tablet.
- Basic plan includes 60 templates for designing your pop-up campaign.
Pricing
- After a free trial, Wisepops starts at $29/month for 100,000 pageviews.
9. Churn Buster: Reduce involuntary churn
Churn Buster prevents a common cause of involuntary customer churn: failed credit card payments. Involuntary churn is unintentional. It often happens against a customer’s will. Customers are usually unaware that a credit card has expired until their subscription orders stop arriving.
Failed payments are more widespread than you might think. According to PYMNTS research, they prompt as many as 27% of subscribers to churn.
To combat it, Churn Buster starts by retrying the card before notifying the customer via email or SMS that it needs updating.
Wilson Hung, former director of growth at Kettle & Fire, noted that he saw “a clear and significant increase in subscription reactivations after turning on Churn Buster.”
Key features
- If a customer doesn’t respond to initial requests to update their credit card, add order details and promos to follow-up messages to encourage the update.
- Syncs with your billing platform to better personalize email and SMS messages, and provide a smooth and trustworthy card update experience.
Pricing
- After a 14-day free trial, Churn Buster starts at $99 per month if your MRR is up to $50,000.
10. Ordergroove: Optimize the subscription experience
Ordergroove is a Relationship Commerce platform that builds customer loyalty through highly flexible and customizable subscription experiences.
Without a subscription integration that gives subscribers the convenience they expect, you’ll find them less likely to submit UGC, add a recommended product to their cart, or refer a friend.
Subscription enrollments are still growing post-pandemic. According to Insider Intelligence, subscription sales will see 14% growth in 2023 and 13% growth in 2024.
CLIF Bar uses Ordergroove to offer a subscription experience alongside the option to purchase a product once.
Ordergroove’s integration allows them to include an incentive to sign up and gives enrollees the chance to set their shipment cadence from the product page.
Subscribers also get their own portal where they can skip a shipment, pause their subscription, or swap items out of a curated box. Once you’ve mastered this baseline of subscription expectations, your other subscription-enhancing Shopify integrations will prove more effective at helping you grow the customer relationship.
Key features
- Uses artificial intelligence to predict subscriber churn due to overstock.
- Includes a dashboard where you can monitor key metrics such as subscriber churn, activation revenue, and more.
Pricing
- Pricing is determined after consultation.
Grow at your own pace with Shopify integrations
As a Shopify customer, you can explore new ways of adding customer value without breaking the bank. While you may not end up using all the recommended apps above, they’re essential places to start if you want subscribers and nonsubscribers to stick with you.
To learn more about how Ordergroove can improve your Shopify store, click here for a free demo.