Set up the Push Marketing app

The Push Marketing app fulfils the need for merchants to communicate with their customers. It fulfils the core functionalities of the communication process. The process starts by collecting the users' unique device identifiers, from their browsers. Then, it facilitates automated and manual broadcasts. Finally, it registers analytics for campaigns optimization.

Collecting subscribers

Customers can subscribe by allowing Notifications from their Browser. Vitals offers 2 types of opt-in soft prompts. Soft prompts are controlled by the website and they are recommended, instead of the default Browser prompts. The disadvantage of the Browser prompt is that once the visitor refuses to opt-in, the prompt will never be displayed again, unless specifically instructed by the user.

Small Custom Prompt
Full Screen Prompt

The opt-in prompt also has a timing configuration, to tweak for the best conversion for your customers. Ask the visitors to subscribe before they get the chance to take a look at your site or products and risk getting rejected.

Vitals also allows an opt-in prompt delay in Page Views units, instead of seconds. If you are confident your visitors will build trust once they navigate to more pages, use this setting.

Also notice the granularity per device type, with separate Desktop and Mobile configs:

Be sure to add your Logo in the corner of the prompt, to increase brand awareness.

Last, but not least, use the same design language and copywriting style to fully customize the appearance of the opt-in prompt.

Note that Chrome browsers will automatically block the opt-in permission request screen in two cases:

A) where the user usually blocks notifications

B) where the site opt-in rate is very low

See below how this functionality behaves.

Subscribers list

Once the visitors accept the browser prompt, they become subscribers, and they are listed in the Subscribers List tab, here.

The customer ID is not correlated with the customer ID from Shopify and it is used for internal purposes only, for example communicating with Customer Support.

The location is based on the IP reported by the User Agent (browser).

Note that the location field can sometimes be empty, if the browser does not report it.

It can also report inaccurate or fake locations, if the visitor is using a VPN or proxy to hide his true location.

The timing of the subscription is also reported, on the last column. The exact timing is displayed on hover over the relative time.

Automations

The automated funnels will do the leg work to contact specific customers just in time, with Swiss precision and German efficacy.

Staying true to Vitals' one-click activation philosophy, once the funnels from the automation tab are enabled you can already expect the app to build up a queue of messages for your customers.

The funnels host 3 messages and each message can be disabled individually. The messages also have a wait time before they are shot.

Note that the wait time is relative to the previous message. The first message' wait time is relative to the trigger.

The preview will definitely help you decide the best length for your text and visualize what will appear on your customers' screen.

Abandoned Cart Recovery Funnel

This will be the MVP of your game. Take good care if it and make sure you spend some time with him.

The trigger for the Abandoned Cart is made when the first product is added to the cart. The funnel is canceled when a purchase is registered from that subscriber.

> Note that you can't add images to the Abandoned funnel, because the image will be populated automatically with the Product Media.

> Variant images are supported.

> Only one image will be displayed in a message, the image from the first product from the Cart.

Welcome Funnel

The trigger for the welcome funnel is when a visitor has allowed to receive notifications form the Browser prompt.

Welcome messages do support custom hero images. Make sure you personalize the messages to the style of your store.

When using hero images, be sure to test the output using the Send Test functionality to make sure the aspect ratio of the image is correct and the image is not truncated. Use the recommended image sizes for the best results.

Campaigns

Once you have an audience, you can start making announcements. Upcoming sales, new arrivals, you know have the means to broadcast messages to your push subscribers.

The first step is to create a campaign and save it. This will create the entry in our database and will unlock the rest of the campaign settings.

An optional step is to choose a name for your campaign, from the the top of the page (see below).

Content

To customize the content, click the Edit Message link, which will open the composer section.

Here, you have a real time preview of all the elements included in the message. The preview is presented on all major platforms.

Use the preview to check the visibility of the words before scrolling or opening the message.

Also, before starting to write the actual content, make sure you understand the compatible platforms (see the red callout below).

Unsupported browsers

Please note that not all browsers support Web Notifications.

Apple iOS (iPhones & iPads) --> not supported yet (however, MacOS does have limited support on laptop/desktop devices, where the messages are received, but without the two optional buttons)
Safari --> the pushManager is not supported
Incognito / Private Browsing mode --> Chrome, Firefox, Safari
In-app browsers (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc) --> opening links from these apps will use the app's own browser (not Chrome's WebView). Users can't subscribe or receive notifications from these apps' browsers.

Copywrite guide

For the best results in your communication, Shopify has put together a guide to help you with a few points:

Experience values for customers
Merchant voice and tone
Vocabulary considerations

Shopify's Merchant-to-customer content guide: https://polaris.shopify.com/content/merchant-to-customer

For the images, please use the recommended sizes to make sure the media is not truncated.

For the buttons, note that a maximum of two buttons are allowed for Push Notifications. Also note that Mac users will not benefit from any buttons on their notifications. For this specific reason, our recommendation is to avoid using buttons for the most important redirects of the message and use the Main Link on Card instead.

Previews

Please note the previews may present slight differences with the real device, so please use the Send Test functionality as a double confirmation.

Schedule or send

Scheduling is done based on the local time of the current browser user, when creating the campaign.

For example, I'm entering the User Admin at 13:00, my time, and I schedule the campaign at 13:05. When the local time reaches 13:05, the message is sent for all the recipients (with slight delays to avoid creating spikes on the hardware level).

Using the Send Now button will send the message to all recipients at the current local time of the current browser user.