Shopify overview

Shopify is a leading global commerce company providing trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a business of any size. Shopify makes commerce better for everyone with a platform and services engineered for reliability while delivering a better shopping experience for consumers everywhere.

The Braze integration with Shopify provides a powerful solution for ecommerce businesses looking to enhance their customer engagement and drive personalized marketing efforts. This integration seamlessly connects Shopify’s robust ecommerce capabilities with our advanced customer engagement platform, enabling you to deliver targeted, relevant, and timely messages to your users based on real-time shopping behaviors and transactional data.

Requirements

Requirement	Description
Shopify store	You have an active Shopify store.
Shopify store owner or staff member permissions	Access to all General and Online Store settings. Additional Admin Permissions: Orders: View Customer: ReadWrite View Customer Events (Web Pixels) Manage Settings View Apps Developed by Staff/Collaborators Manage/Install Apps and Channels Manage/Add Custom Pixels

How to integrate

Braze offers two integration options for Shopify merchants that are designed to meet the diverse needs of eCommerce businesses: Standard integration and Custom integration.

Standard integration

The standard integration is tailored for Shopify online stores, providing a seamless and straightforward setup process. This option allows you to quickly connect your Shopify store to Braze, empowering you to leverage powerful customer engagement tools without extensive technical expertise. With this integration option, you can sync customer data, automate personalized messaging, and enhance your marketing efforts through comprehensive Braze features.

Custom integration

The custom integration offers a more flexible and composable solution if you use Shopify Hydrogen or support a headless store. This option empowers you to implement Braze SDKs directly into your Shopify environment, enabling deeper integration and tailored functionalities. Whether you’re looking to create unique customer experiences or optimize specific workflows, the custom integration provides the tools necessary to fully leverage Braze’s capabilities in a headless setup.

How the integration works

If you’ve already set up and turned on historical backfill in your configuration settings, the intial data sync will immediately begin. Braze will import all customers and order placed events from the last 90 days prior to your Shopify integration connection. When Braze imports your Shopify customers, we will assign the external_id type that you chose in your configuration settings.

Following the initial data sync, Braze will continuously track new data and updates, directly from Shopify and Braze SDKs.

User and data syncing

After the integration is live, Braze will gather user data from two key sources through the Shopify integration:

• Shopify Web Pixel API and app embeds: This powers the Braze Web SDK and Javascript SDK to support on-site tracking, identity management, eCommerce behavioral data, and power messaging channels like in-app messages.
• Shopify webhooks: eCommerce behavioral data, product syncing, and subscriber collection

During integration onboarding, you will need to select when the Braze SDKs initialize and load your Shopify site:

• Upon site visit (such as session start)
  • What it does: Tracks anonymous users—such as guest shoppers—to access more data for deeper personalization
• Upon account signup (such as account login)
  • What it does: Prevents anonymous user tracking for a more conservative, privacy-oriented approach, so user activity is tracked after the user signs into their account

Braze uses the Shopify integration to support multiple identifiers that track your users from their guest shopping experience until they become an identified users:

Braze identifier	Description
Braze device_id	A randomly generated ID stored in the browser that tracks anonymous user activity through Braze SDKs.
Cart token user alias	An alias that Braze creates to track cart update events. This token is created by using Shopify cart token.
Checkout token user alias	An alias that Braze creates when the user starts the checkout process. This token is created by using the Shopify checkout token.
Shopify customer ID alias	The Shopify customer ID is assigned as an alias when the external ID is assigned during account login or when an order is placed.
Braze external_id	A unique identifier that helps track customers across devices and platforms. This maintains a consistent user experience and improves analytics by preventing multiple profiles when users switch devices or reinstall the app. The Shopify integration supports the following external_id types: Shopify customer ID (default) Hashed email (SHA-256) Hashed email (SHA-1) Hashed email (MD5) Email Braze assigns an external_id to your users by calling the changeUser method within the SDKs when: A user logs in or creates an account An order is placed For more information on what happens when you assign an external_id to an anonymous profile, refer to User profile lifecycle. Braze will also leverage the external_id to attribute downstream eCommerce behavioral data from Shopify webhooks.

The integration requires Braze SDKs and Shopify services to work together to appropriately track and attribute Shopify data to the right users in near-real time. To find more details on the data tracked through the integration, see Shopify data.

Syncing Shopify email and SMS marketing opt-ins

If you enable subscriber collection in your configuration settings, you need to assign a subscription group for each store you connect to Braze. This means your customers will be categorized as either “subscribed” or “unsubscribed” to your store’s subscription group.

The Shopify marketing opt-in status for email and SMS marketing can be updated in the following ways:

• Manual update: You can manually change a user’s email or SMS marketing opt-in status in your Shopify admin.
• Shopify newsletter footer: If a user enters their email in the Shopify default newsletter footer, their opt-in status will be updated.
• Checkout process: If a user updates their opt-in status during checkout.

This table shows which Shopify marketing opt-in states correlate with the statuses within your Braze subscription group.

Shopify marketing opt-in state	Braze subscription group state
Email is subscribed	Subscribed
Email is unsubcribed	Unsubscribed
Email is pending confirmation	Unsubscribed
Email is invalid	Unsubscribed
SMS subscribed	Subscribed
SMS unsubscribed	Unsubscribed

Sign-up forms

Shopify newsletter footer

Users who enter their email address into the Shopify newsletter footer will experience one of these workflows:

Users who haven’t logged into their account

1. Braze receives an inbound Shopify webhook whenever a customer is created or updated.
2. Braze creates a user profile containing the email address and Shopify customer ID alias that are associated with that user.
3. The Braze SDK updates the anonymous profile with the email address.

Users who have already logged into their account

Braze will create a user profile containing the email address and Shopify customer ID alias that are associated with that user. Braze won’t update the logged-in user’s email address, because we assume that Shopify has already provided this information.

Braze sign-up forms

Braze provides two types of sign-up form templates:

• Email sign-up forms: Create these using the drag-and-drop editor.
• Traditional editor email capture form: A more straightforward form for capturing email addresses.

When you use these sign-up form templates, Braze automatically updates the global email subscription status on the user profile. For more details on how the global email subscription state is handled, including information on on email validation, refer to documentation for each form template type.

Third-party sign-up forms

If you’re using a third-party platform or Shopify plugin for your sign-up forms, you need to work with your developers to integrate Braze SDK code to capture the email address and global email subscription status from form submissions. To learn more, review Shopify standard integration setup and Shopify custom integration setup.

Product syncing

Braze supports the ability to sync your Shopify store’s products into a Braze catalog. For more details refer to Shopify product syncs.

Data subject requests

As part of the Braze platform’s Shopify integration, Braze automatically receives Shopify’s compliance webhooks. However, because customers are the data controllers of their End Users’ data, customers must carry out any actions required to address Data Subject Requests received with respect to End User data in Braze (including End User data received via the Shopify integration). Please see our Data Protection Technical Assistance documentation for more details.