If you like online shopping, chances are high that you’ve bought from one or more Shopify stores.

Shopify is a popular ecommerce platform with a diverse client base. There’s also Shopify Plus, an enterprise version, for businesses requiring high-volume store support.

Read on to find out which well-known ecommerce companies use Shopify, and what you can learn from their success stories.

What types of companies use Shopify stores?

More than a million businesses based in more than 175 countries have Shopify stores. Any retail company looking to sell products on the internet will enjoy using a service like Shopify. Doing so is often easier than developing an online store from scratch.

The Ottawa-headquartered ecommerce platform maintains a reputation for reliability and ease of use. Shopify is a trusted third-party service provider for international brands and influential celebrities.

Drake, Kanye West, and Lady Gaga sell their merchandise using Shopify stores, and Google and Tesla Motors have used Shopify Plus in the past.

Startups and solo ventures may also find Shopify beneficial in increasing profit margins.

One of the most celebrated Shopify merchant stories belongs to Gymshark. In 2012, then-teenager Ben Francis founded the ecommerce company. He was also attending university and working as a pizza delivery man at the time. Today, the sportswear brand is worth millions of dollars, thriving without a single brick-and-mortar store.

What can you learn from successful brands with online stores powered by Shopify?

The formula for a profitable Shopify store isn’t a secret. Retail companies that build strong relationships with customers are more likely to succeed in the long run. The strategy is a solid one for most businesses that rely on marketing.

Below are five brands that are excellent at keeping their customer base interested. They have their unique strengths that other ecommerce companies can emulate and learn from as well.

1. Use social media to your advantage.

It’s not enough to have a Shopify store. If you’re in retail, an online shop is no longer something special. Rather, it’s almost essential. What’s more important is what you do to stand out from other merchants targeting the same audience.

In this day and age, social media is inescapable. Every brand has a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account because that’s where their potential customers are. Think of Fashion Nova as an early adopter of this trend.

Fashion Nova displays its Instagram feed near the bottom of its website’s home page. From there, you can click on the individual posts and add items shown in the images directly to your store cart.

Source: Fashion Nova

Like most social media-savvy brands, Fashion Nova also has a unique hashtag: #NovaBabe. They encourage customers to add it to content⁠—from selfies to full-blown personal photoshoots⁠—featuring Fashion Nova products. The brand features user-generated posts on their Instagram occasionally.

As an email marketer, you can take inspiration from the strategy above or simply add links to your brand’s social media accounts in every email sent. You may also dip your toes in social media marketing and execute initiatives on Instagram to grow your email list.

2. Leverage your personal brand to grow your business.

Kylie Cosmetics is efficient but not innovative. At its core, it’s a private label business. Manufacturer Seed Beauty⁠—also tapped by KKW Beauty and ColourPop Cosmetics, which both run Shopify stores of their own⁠—handles the production and packaging of the brand’s beauty offerings.

How does Kylie Jenner’s beauty brand maintain one of the most successful Shopify stores ever? Kylie Cosmetics flash sales get sold out in minutes.

Like Fashion Nova, Jenner used the power of social media to grow her brand. Unlike Fashion Nova, the TV star didn’t start with a brand identity to develop from nothing. Jenner’s personal Instagram has more than 140 million followers. That makes Jenner one of the 10 most-followed people on the app and one of the most powerful social media influencers in the world.

Source: Kylie Cosmetics   

The pinnacle of influencer marketing must be to endorse and promote your own product. Jenner is so popular that Kylie Cosmetics carries her name. There are marketing campaigns based on her personal favorites. She even appears as a product model in the online store’s pages.

Jenner’s aspirational public persona and her network of famous family and friends have made Kylie Cosmetics a success. The key takeaway? Know your brand’s identity and consider using influencer marketing to boost awareness and sales. Consider growing your personal brand along with your business.

3. Be brave and do some offline marketing.

The brand makes one of the most recognizable energy drinks in the world, but that’s not what Red Bull sells using Shopify. Their U.S. online store displays assorted merchandise and performance apparel.

Having a profitable store that doesn’t even carry their main product is an impressive feat. It’s indicative of Red Bull’s full-throttle commitment to maintaining their all-out, high-energy brand identity.

Red Bull appeared in Thai and Austrian markets in 1987, long before social media or email marketing was commonplace. The brand relies on digital marketing these days, but their posts and campaigns reference real-life events and physical activity.
Case in point: the famous 2012 Red Bull Stratos campaign that featured Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner parachute jumping back to earth from the edge of space. Red Bull also sponsors some active sports teams.

Source: Red Bull Shop US  

Red Bull uses offline marketing campaigns like stunts and live events to keep their brand memorable and to keep their community involved. The bold and aggressive nature of their advertising complements the fact that they’re selling an energy drink too.

You may not have the budget to find a daredevil’s stunt. Instead, you can promote your ecommerce company offline by holding a pop-up event or joining trade shows.

4. Add function to form by segmenting your email list.

Taylor Stitch is a fashion with a function apparel brand that came out already competing with a saturated marketplace. The brand takes pride in its attention to details like fabric quality and fine workmanship.

It wasn’t social media marketing that boosted Taylor Stitch sales and propelled their shop to the top list of Shopify stores. The effective segmentation of their email list resulted in increased conversion rates. Taylor Stitch worked with dozens of segments, each needing different email content.

Source: Taylor Stitch

The validity of the segmentation strategy ties in with Campaign Monitor research: Segmented campaigns can result in up to a 760% revenue increase.

The brand’s focus on email marketing shows to this day, with an entry popup on the Taylor Stitch website. It asks for your email and, even though it took up the whole page, it wasn’t too intrusive.

5. Get new leads with a referral program.

Leesa founder David Wolfe wanted people to get better quality sleep without having to buy an expensive bed. Enter: the direct to consumer Leesa mattress.

The bed-in-a-box business model isn’t new. However, Leesa’s innovative product design has made the brand one of the leading online mattress brands. From its flagship mattress, Leesa has expanded its product line to include two other mattress models and bedroom fixtures like pillows and sheet sets.

When your business is competing with dozens or hundreds of others, it’s on you to find something that makes you unique or better than the rest. For Leesa, that something was a combination of mattress design and social impact. A portion of the brand’s profits goes to donating mattresses to children in need.

Source: Leesa      

Another campaign that helps increase profits is a referral program, which Leesa does very well. The referral marketing they do gives a clear referrer reward. The action required is simple: email list signup.

Wrap up

Companies of all types use Shopify stores to sell their merchandise, from solo entrepreneurs to international brands.

The user-friendly ecommerce platform has quietly become one of the most trusted and reliable third-party solutions for retail businesses looking to set up their online stores.

Here are some lessons from some of the most well-known brands powered by Shopify stores:

• Use social media to your advantage, like Fashion Nova.
• Leverage your personal brand to grow your business as Kylie Jenner does for Kylie Cosmetics.
• Be brave like Red Bull Shop US and do some offline marketing.
• Add function to form by segmenting your email list, like Taylor Stitch.
• Get new leads the way Leesa does: with a referral program.

Digital marketers executing multichannel campaigns for brands with Shopify stores need an email marketing product that supports seamless ecommerce platform integration.

Check out Campaign Monitor’s new email marketing solution for ecommerce. Start your free CM Commerce trial today.

The post 5 Sites You’ll Be Surprised To Know Are Shopify Stores appeared first on Campaign Monitor.