My Journey from Etsy to Shopify + Mailchimp
Starting a small business is a journey filled with excitement, challenges, and growth. My adventure began on Etsy, where I launched GoodnightFox.com, a shop dedicated to helping toddlers enjoy learning through play. As the business grew, I realized that to reach more families and create a stronger brand presence, I needed to expand beyond Etsy. This led me to the powerful combination of Shopify and Mailchimp, enabling me to grow my brand through email marketing.
The GoodnightFox.com Mission
At GoodnightFox.com, our mission is simple: to make learning fun for toddlers through engaging and creative play. We offer a variety of sensory play kits, dramatic play setups, and other educational resources designed to stimulate young minds and foster a love for learning. Every product is crafted with care and thoughtfulness, ensuring that each play experience is both enjoyable and educational.
The Etsy Experience
Etsy was a fantastic starting point for GoodnightFox.com. It provided a platform to reach customers who were already interested in handmade and unique items. Sales were steady, and the feedback from parents was overwhelmingly positive. However, as the business grew, I realized that Etsy's limitations were holding me back. I needed more control over my branding, better analytics, and, most importantly, a way to directly communicate with my customers through email marketing.
Making the Leap to Shopify and Mailchimp
The decision to move from Etsy to Shopify was driven by the need for growth and scalability. Shopify offered the flexibility and tools necessary to build a robust online store that reflected the GoodnightFox brand. Integrating Mailchimp allowed me to leverage email marketing to engage with customers, share new products, and offer exclusive promotions.
Setting Up Shopify for Your Shop
1. Choose the Right Plan:
Start with a plan that fits your budget and business size. Shopify offers various plans, so pick one that allows room for growth. I started with the cheapest plan so that I could get a feel for it and I haven’t had to upgrade since. I have added a few add-ons and plug ins — Mailchimp has been the most critical to growing my shop. I’ve also tried a loyalty app and an SMS app.
2. Customize Your Store:
Use Shopify’s customizable themes to create a unique look for your store. Ensure it’s visually appealing and easy to navigate. You can also purchase a bunch of pre-made themes for your shop. But I wanted to get my shop up and running quickly, so I made very minimal customizations just to get it looking like my brand.
Pro Tip: You might find that it’s odd that you can’t show a catalogue view on the homepage. I’m not sure why that is, but setting up your catalogue collections is critical so that you can highlight the right products on your homepage.
3. Add Products, Collections, & Navigation:
Organize your products with clear descriptions, high-quality images, and appropriate categories. You can automatically bring your Etsy listings into Shopify using their import feature. But just know that you might want to rewrite your descriptions because the formatting doesn’t come over perfectly. It’s no big deal, just get your shop up and running and start driving traffic to it and you can slowly go back and edit and clean up your listing.
You’ll want to make sure that you tag your listings as you go with the appropriate “Collection”. Collections is how Shopify lets you show certain types of products on your homepage and in your navigation. There are two ways to do collections — you can either have them work automatically based on key words — for example, for my shop, I have “Donut Shop Dramatic Play Kit” and my “Dramatic Play Kit” collection is set to find those words in each listing. Or you can check each product to be in each collection manually — you’ll just want to make sure every time you add a new product, you don’t forget to check that it’s part of that collection.
There are many different ways to use collections — here are a few examples:
Product type collections: Dramatic Play, Sensory Kits, Flashcards, Play Rounds
Seasonal collections: Fall Collection, Spring Collection, Winter Collection, Summer Collection
Discount collections: Bundle & Save, 20% off, BOGO
Learning Theme: Montessori Basics, Body Parts, Math, Reading, Writing
4. Set Up Payment and Shipping:
Configure payment gateways and shipping options that work best for your business and customers. I enabled both ShopPay and PayPal for my shop.
5. Launch Your Store:
Once everything is set up, launch your store and start promoting it through social media and other channels. Of course, you’ll want to slowly start letting your audience know that you’re not just on Etsy, that you’re on Shopify too! Don’t forget to add a testimonials section to highlight your positive reviews! Shopify doesn’t have reviews built into their basic play, so you’ll want to capture those yourself or search their app store for a ratings and reviews plug in.
Integrating Mailchimp with Shopify
1. Create a Mailchimp Account:
Sign up for a Mailchimp account if you don’t already have one. Because Etsy is a Marketplace, you’re not able to capture all of your loyal buyers as email subscribers, which makes it very hard to reach back out to turn them into repeat buyers. With Shopify + Mailchimp you’ll be able to turn all of your one-time purchasers into repeat buyers with Customer Journey Builder which creates automated drip series.
2. SETUP SUBSCRIBER POPUPS:
The other benefit is that you can start capturing subscriber traffic on your blog or social media sites by offering a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a freebie or discount that you can offer to your followers for subscribing to your email newsletter. I have two different lead magnets for my shop.
Free Downloads: Because I offer printables in my shop, I have a free download section of my Shopify site where I send subscribers coming from my blog site.
15% off First Order: For my Shopify site, I offer 15% off discount for new buyers. The traffic to my Shopify site is more primed to purchase, so I offer a bigger discount.
3. Connect Mailchimp to Shopify:
Use the Mailchimp app for Shopify to connect the two platforms. This allows you to sync customer data and automate email campaigns. Once you’ve setup the integration, your Shopify data and customer purchase behavior will automatically flow over to Mailchimp. Here are a few of the many benefits of the integration:
Customer Profiles: In Mailchimp, you get a full profile view of each of your customers and a timeline based activity feed including how they’ve engaged with emails as well as purchases they’ve made in Shopify.
Customer Journeys: See more below for the triggers you can use from Shopify!
Audience Segments: See more below for the attributes that you can use from Shopify!
4. Design Your Emails:
Use Mailchimp’s templates to create engaging newsletters and promotional emails. Make sure to include a call-to-action and links to your products. I recommend setting up a few basic templates that you can reuse over and over again. Here are a few that are relevant for shops like mine:
Discount Email Template: I use this template whenever I’m having a sale. I spent some time formatting the discount offers to be bold and eye-catching. You’ll want to optimize this email for click through rate.
Newsletter Email Template: This is the template that I use most because I send out a weekly newsletter as well as some dynamic content newsletters. This one will pay dividends so spend a little bit of time optimizing the format and making sure you have strong CTAs that drive action to your site.
New Product Launch Email Template: Don’t make it a hassle every time you launch a new product! You can create one template for all of your product launches and reuse it over and over again.
Educational Email Template: Include in this template all of the good nuggets of information about how to use your products, This could include text, step by step instructions, video content, images and tutorials. Once you have this email, you’ll have this content ready to go for any journey or email where you need to plug it in.
5. Segment Your Audience:
Segment your email list based on customer behavior and preferences. This ensures that your messages are relevant and personalized.
Automatic Segments: Mailchimp will automatically build segments based off of your customers’ buying behavior in Shopify. So if you want to be able to target customers who have purchased more than once, you can easily create a “Loyal Customers” segment using Shopify attributes inside of Mailchimp. Here are some example ideas for segments you can build:
VIP Customers (purchased over $200 in my shop): Building loyalty amongst your following is critical to getting your shoppers to promote your brand. Reward loyal customers with big discounts, special promotions, early access to new launches. I offer a gift
Loyal Customers (purchased > 3 times in my shop): Purchasing multiple times is a great signal of loyalty. Continue to reward loyal purchasers — you can even create a unique discount code once they’ve unlocked a certain number of purchases. How awesome is it to make them feel like a special member of your community.
Local Customers (within a 25mi radius of my location): I used this segment when I did local tradeshows and events at nearby shops. This was a great way to connect with my local buyer community. You can also start to personalize your content based on the weather, local events, etc.
Hasn’t purchased ABC Flaschards (hasn’t yet purchased my flag ship product): Having this segment for your flag ship products and other offerings is key. This lets you target your customers specifically with product you know they’ll love.
Teachers, Moms, Content Creators: If you know you have specific audiences that visit your shop, try to use key signals (such as the emails they open or pages on your shop they view to tag them by audience. This can help you send more personalized emails to them.
6. Automate Your Campaigns:
Set up automated emails for abandoned carts, welcome series, and product recommendations to keep your customers engaged.
Customer Journeys: In Mailchimp, you can use events and behaviors from Shopify such as “page viewed” “added to cart” “abandoned cart” to trigger emails directly to your customers. Here are a few that I have turned on:
Welcome Email: Welcome all of your new subscribers with a welcome series. You can make this series plug and play. Start by reinforcing your brand with a “Welcome & About Us” email. Then follow it up with a unique discount to thank them for subscribing (I do 70% off my printable flashcards). This warms them up to quickly make their first purchase to take advantage of an awesome deal. Continue to share meaningful content that provides value in their lives related to your niche. And don’t forget the reminders to countdown until the offer expires.
Abandoned Cart Email: Remind customers that you’ve saved what’s in their cart so that they can come back to your site and continue shopping. Mailchimp makes this easy with a dynamic content block that automatically pulls this information in from Shopify.
Repeat Buyer Email: Turn one time buyers into loyal repeat purchasers with this pre-built journey. This journey helps you follow up after that first purchase and land the second purchase through a series of targeted emails.
Order Notification Email: Send out customized and beautiful branded order notifications so that buyers know when your product has shipped.
Tips and Tricks for Success with Shopify + Mailchimp
Focus on Branding: Consistent branding across your website and emails helps build trust and recognition.
Analyze Your Data: Use Shopify and Mailchimp analytics to track performance and make data-driven decisions.
Engage with Your Customers: Encourage customers to leave reviews and share their experiences on social media.
Offer Incentives: Use discounts and exclusive offers to encourage email sign-ups and repeat purchases.
Stay Consistent: Regularly update your blog and social media with fresh content to keep your audience engaged.
Getting Started with Mailchimp
1. Sign Up and Set Up Your Profile:
Start by creating a Mailchimp account and setting up your profile with your business information.
2. Import Your Contacts:
Import your existing contacts from other platforms or spreadsheets.
3. Create Your First Campaign:
Design your first email campaign using Mailchimp’s drag-and-drop editor.
4. Set Up Automations:
Use automation tools to create workflows for welcome emails, follow-ups, and more.
5. Monitor and Adjust:
Keep an eye on your campaign performance and make adjustments as needed to improve engagement and conversions.
Transitioning from Etsy to Shopify and integrating Mailchimp was a pivotal move for GoodnightFox.com. It allowed me to take control of my brand, directly engage with my customers, and grow my business in ways I couldn’t have on Etsy alone. With the right tools and strategies, you can also make this transition smoothly and successfully, setting your business up for long-term success.