Back in the day, email was the de facto channel for 1:1 customer communication. But as inboxes overflow and attention becomes more scarce, these days, SMS is where it’s at.

Text messaging is one of the fast-growing channels for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands and retailers. With everyone owning a phone (including my 5-year old niece, regrettably), SMS is an intimate way to stay connected with your customers, whether it’s to let them know about the latest promotion, product drop, flash sale, or to collect feedback or reviews.

As brands, we tend to use SMS for sales-specific campaigns. But did you know that transactional messages such as shipping alerts can help drive more sales, too? You betcha.

Why should eCommerce brands use SMS for shipping updates?

SMS is one of the most powerful sales and marketing channels for DTC brands. But guess what? SMS is also a terrific retention strategy. And better retention means more dollahs, y’all.

When it comes to customer retention and loyalty, it’s as simple as this: If you only send batch-and-blast promotions, you’re missing the point.

Believe it or not, updating customers on their order using shipping notifications is one the best ways to drive a better, happier, customer experience. In fact, thanks to big-box retailers (thanks, Amazon), consumers expect this type of communication. We actually get anxious when when we’re left with crickets days after we purchased those new kicks or my sweet, sweet Baboon tote (lovvveee yyoouuu Baboon 😘).

Sending updates to your customer regarding the status of their orders - including any potential delays in their shipment - is a terrific way to increase repeat purchases. Why? Because it builds trust. Anyone that’s had a positive experience with your brand is more likely to refer to you or buy again, or leave a positive review on your store, which then helps you acquire more customers.

Virtuous cycle indeed.

But hold up. Aren't shipping updates, like, so transactional? So, robotic?

Believe it or not, you can even use shipping as a creative way to showcase your personality and your brand and make the communication feel more personalized.

Just because shipping messages are transactional in nature, doesn’t mean they have to look like it. The example above is simple but a very nice touch. You can have more fun and show some personality!

Here are 5 great reasons brands should be using SMS for post-purchase shipping alerts:

1. SMS has super high deliverability compared to email
2. It’s a great way to build a direct connection with your customers (and VIPs!)
3. It gives customers peace of mind their order is on its way
4. Reduces the number of “where is my order” support tickets
5. SMS can help drive repeat purchase rates (and thus more sales)

Two easy ways to grow your SMS marketing list

First things first. In order to notify customers about their order via SMS, you need them to first opt-in the receiving text message alerts. Essentially, you need their phone numbers.

But as you know, giving up a phone number is a heck of a lot harder than an email address. Even if you’re just getting started or recently launched a new store, start building that SMS marketing list now.

Here are two easy ways to collect phone numbers on your ecommerce store:

1. On the order confirmation page
2. Across your site (say in a popup or banner) in exchange for an offer

1. How to collect SMS opt-ins on the order confirmation page

One of the most obvious places to get customers to opt into text message alerts is right after they’ve purchased. Especially when it comes to receiving shipping alerts, this is by far the most logical place for the consumer to sign up for these updates by text message.

Here’s an example from clothing retail brand Venus. They offer the option to sign up for text message alerts (plus a Facebook Messenger option) directly on the order confirmation page.

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You might ask, doesn’t Shopify offer this functionality out of the box? Yes, but it’s limited and controlled via the SHOP app. If you really want better control over the messaging and make it more personalized (not to mention get analytics on what's working and what's not), consider disabling the Shop app on your order confirmation page and using a solution like Postscript instead, which integrates natively with your Shopify store’s order confirmation page to collect mobile opt-ins.

2. How to add get SMS signups on your ecommerce site

Adding a form on your website to collect phone numbers in lieu of email is another great method to grow your SMS list. The most common way to do this is to add a pop-up modal or banner on your homepage and across your website and combine the “ask” (aka asking for a visitor’s phone number) with some sort of offer.

You’ve likely seen these pop-ups before or even have one on your storefront today. 99% of the time, these pop-ups collect email addresses, but you can use discounts or special offers to ask customers to subscribe to your SMS list, too.

3 Great SMS Collection Examples

Here are three ecommerce brands who do an awesome job with their SMS calls-to-action:

[insert hydrant]

[insert childs place]

[ insert olipop]

The offer doesn’t always have to be a discount. I’ve seen other offer types such as:

1. Memberships
2. Content offers (like ebooks, free apps, etc)
3. Contests or chance to win free stuff
4. As part of a subscription
5. Special bundles

You can use apps like Privy or Okendo to create these types of pop-ups in just a few minutes.

Not sure which offer will work best? These apps also enable you to A/B test different offers for different people. You can test different discount amounts and / or test entirely different offers (which, I highly recommend anyway!)

5 Must-Have SMS Shipping Notifications

Ok, now that we’ve established why it’s important to build your SMS list and how to do it, now let’s build some SMS shipping automations. These campaigns will make your brand stand out and help build trust when issues arise.

Ok, let’s get started.

Step One: Install Wonderment to collect shipping event data

In order to build any type of shipping related SMS automation, you need to first install the Wonderment app onto your Shopify store. 

Wonderment will automatically know when orders are In Transit, Out for Delivery, Delivered, and Stalled (among other events such as Return to Sender or Delivery Failure), and then send this data in real-time back to your SMS provider (such as Postscript or Attentive).

Once Wonderment is installed, head over the Settings > Integrations. There, you can input your Postscript or Attentive API Key. Once you Save your API key, Wonderment’s triggers will be available in Postscript or Attentive, which you can use to start building flows in minutes.

Not using either of these SMS providers? Wonderment also supports SMSBump and others! Reach out to us for integration details.

Now that you have shipment data on all your orders, now it’s time to create some SMS automations…

5 Must-Have SMS Shipping Notifications

1.  “Your Item Has Shipped”

Sending a notification to the customer when an order actually ships is a no brainer. Thanks to Amazon, most consumers expect this notification almost immediately, but that’s not always the case for many small business stores. Sometimes, it takes days to fulfill an order.

Shopify will automatically send a shipment confirmation email when an order is fulfilled. With apps like Postscript, you can do the same via SMS as well. If a customer opts into shipping updates, this one is a must-have update.

Wonderment Trigger: To set up this automation, use either the Shipment Created triffer (when the order is fulfilled) or the Carrier Picked Up trigger (when the order is first scanned by the shipping carrier and is officially in transit)

2. “Your Order is Out for Delivery” 

If you’ve signed up for shipping alerts yourself as a customer of an ecommerce shop, you might have received a similar Out for Delivery notification.

This is an important update so that the customer knows to expect the package that day, which is especially critical if you sell perishable goods (like food and beverage), electronics, or high-value and big-ticket items...things you don’t want sitting out the door step for very long.

Wonderment Trigger: Out for Delivery

3. “Your Order has Been Delivered!”

And now for the most exciting update of them all, the Delivery notification. Sending a Delivered notification is important for the same reasons I mentioned above. Not only that, there are cases when orders go out for delivery but don’t actually get delivered, so notifying the customer when the package is actually on their doorstep or in their mailbox is important.

Wonderment Trigger: Shipment Delivered

4. “Your Order is Delayed”

To go above and beyond, consider setting up a stalled or delayed order notification wherever a package is stuck in transit. Delivering bad news might not seem ideal but proactively notifying customers about shipment issues goes a long way to providing a better experience and helps to build brand trust, not to mention help prevent “where is my order?!” tickets.

Many big box retailers send delayed order alerts, and now as a Shopify merchant, you can too.

Wonderment Trigger: Shipment Stalled

5. BONUS: Smart Product Review Requests via SMS

In this example, we’ll set up an automation that isn’t a shipment update itself but still leverages shipment status data to trigger smarter product reviews.

Most reviews are time based, meaning we set “send a product review after X days.” Which might be fine for the majority of orders, but what happens if a shipment is delayed and the customer is asked to review a product they haven’t received yet? No bueno.

To trigger an SMS automation only after a product has actually been delivered, use Wonderment’s “Shipment Delivered” event, just as you would the Delivery notification.

If you use review apps just as Junip

Ready to see this for your store? Get a demo today.