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
• custom

How the integration works

If you’ve already set up and turned on historical backfill in your configuration settings, the initial data sync begins immediately.

If you plan to integrate with a custom external ID (for either the standard integration or the custom integration), you will be required to add your custom external ID as a Shopify customer metafield to all existing Shopify customer profiles and then perform the historical backfill.

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

User and data syncing

After the integration is live, Braze gathers 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 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. If a customer uses Shop Pay as an accelerated checkout option, Shopify may bypass certain standard checkout events and prevent Braze from receiving the data needed to add the checkout token alias.
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) Custom external ID 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 are categorized as either “subscribed” or “unsubscribed” to your store’s subscription group. This applies to email, SMS, and WhatsApp opt-ins.

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

• Manual update: You can manually change a user’s email, SMS, or WhatsApp marketing opt-in status on your Shopify admin page.
• Shopify newsletter footer: If a user enters their email in the Shopify default newsletter footer, their opt-in status is updated.
• Checkout: User consent is captured at checkout when users select the marketing checkbox and proceed with checkout by selecting Pay now on the one-page checkout or Continue to shipping on the three-page 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 unsubscribed	Unsubscribed
Email is pending confirmation	Unsubscribed
Email is invalid	Unsubscribed
SMS subscribed	Subscribed
SMS unsubscribed	Unsubscribed
WhatsApp subscribed	Subscribed
WhatsApp unsubscribed	Unsubscribed
WhatsApp pending, or no consent recorded	Not changed

SMS double opt-in

Use SMS double opt-in to send your branded confirmation text through Braze instead of Shopify’s confirmation email. To turn on SMS double opt-in, do the following:

1. On your Shopify admin page, go to Settings > Notifications > Customer notifications.
2. Turn off marketing double opt-in for SMS.
   • If Shopify’s double opt-in stays on, Shopify sends its own pending status or an email confirmation, and shoppers don’t receive the Braze SMS confirmation.
3. Set checkout SMS to single opt-in.
4. In your Braze SMS settings, select Use Braze SMS double opt-in.

When a shopper subscribes to SMS at checkout or through a form, the following happens:

1. Shopify sends the subscribe to Braze.
2. Braze sets the shopper to pending and sends your confirmation text.
3. The shopper replies with your confirmation keyword and becomes subscribed.
4. If they don’t reply before the confirmation window ends, they stay pending.

For more information on Braze SMS double opt-in, see SMS double opt-in.

WhatsApp marketing opt-ins

Shopify stores WhatsApp marketing consent on the customer’s default phone number. Merchants collect WhatsApp marketing consent the same ways as SMS consent:

• At checkout
• On the customer’s profile on your Shopify admin page
• Through a customer import
• Through the Shopify API

At checkout, Shopify shows either the SMS checkbox or the WhatsApp checkbox for a region, depending on your checkout settings.

To sync WhatsApp opt-ins, select Collect WhatsApp subscribers in the Manage users step and select the WhatsApp subscription groups to sync to. Your workspace needs a connected WhatsApp Business Account to have WhatsApp subscription groups. To connect one, go to Technology Partners > WhatsApp.

Keep the following in mind:

• Braze only syncs the WhatsApp consent that Shopify records. An SMS or email opt-in doesn’t subscribe a customer to WhatsApp.
• You’re responsible for the consent you collect. Consent set on your Shopify admin page or through a customer import is synced as it’s set, so make sure it meets Meta’s opt-in requirements.
• A customer who opts in at checkout hasn’t messaged your WhatsApp number, so there’s no open conversation window. If you send a confirmation or welcome message, use a Meta-approved template. For more information, see WhatsApp opt-in flows.
• WhatsApp currently doesn’t deliver marketing template messages to United States phone numbers. Customers with a US number still sync, but your marketing messages to them aren’t delivered. For more information, see Per-user marketing template message limits.
• Customers whose phone number isn’t in international format, such as +14155551234, aren’t synced because they couldn’t receive WhatsApp messages.
• There’s no double opt-in for WhatsApp. The Use Braze SMS double opt-in setting doesn’t apply to WhatsApp opt-ins.

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.