The Power of Personalization: How to Connect with Your Customers in a Meaningful Way

How can you sell to your customers if you don’t know who they are? 

Okay, we’re being a bit dramatic, a tad hyperbolic—but trends of the past few years have made it increasingly difficult to understand customers like we used to. 

For a long time, third-party cookies were a key source of intel for personalized content in marketing. But third-party data is increasingly less reliable—and today’s customers value privacy. There’s been a sizable shift toward private browsing and explicit opt-in consent. As a result, online retailers recognize fewer of their website viewers and marketing personalization can feel like an ever-growing challenge. 

The good news: first-party data has emerged as the ideal source for customer engagement. More than just a replacement for cookies, first-party data carries exciting growth opportunities for marketing technology. It’s the best way to craft personalized messaging and cater to the specific needs of any segment of your audience. It’s the best way to build loyalty programs and foster customer retention. It’s your north star toward the ultimate customer experience. 

In this blog, we’ll explain how to use first-person data toward the ultimate goal of ecommerce in 2025: personalized marketing. Customer relationship management is becoming increasingly personal—let’s explore how to leave a great impression. 

The foundation: first-party data

The best data out there is the data you own. Simply put, first-party data is the data collected from customers on your own channels. It differs from third-party data in that it’s obtained from direct interactions with your customers, rather than trawled from their browsing histories throughout the internet. It’s the foundation of effective personalized marketing strategy. 

Shopify’s first-party data stack delivers all the functionalities to help you maximize ad and email performance.—and drive conversion. 

Let’s take a closer look at the personalization tools Shopify offers:

• A unified data platform that connects buyer touchpoints across channels, devices, and sessions. You don’t have to integrate lots of third-party tools, because the unified customer data model is the base upon which everything else is built. It can be extended with metafields that integrate with any app in your marketing stack. 
• Pixels that transfer data both client-side and server-side so Google, Meta, Klaviyo, and other trusted marketing partners can use customer behavior data reliably while preserving buyer privacy choices.
• Attribution and ROAS reports that provide an accurate, detailed look at where traffic and orders are coming from, and how much you’re spending to get them.

A unified consumer data model is essential for omnichannel personalization.If a potential buyer signs up for your newsletter on their desktop, receives confirmation on their phone, and then taps the link in their email app, Shopify ensures you don’t have to worry about losing them. We connect the dots, so you can identify and target each potential buyer with personalized messaging. 

These personalization efforts resonate. Fifty percent of customers say personalized offers and promotions from brands they’ve interacted with improve their shopping experience—and as for B2B buyers, 100% want to self-serve all or part of their buying journey. 

Creating personalized experiences

Successful personalization strategy starts with building the best possible checkout experience. Checkout is a high-leverage spot for retailers to get to know their customers. Meanwhile, customers value personalization at every touchpoint and expect checkout to be seamless. 

Shop Pay is the best option to bolster your checkout: it’s proven to convert as much as 50% better than a typical guest checkout and outperforms other accelerated checkout solutions by up to 10%. The Shop app is trusted by over 150 million shoppers worldwide and has over 500,000 five-star reviews. It’s your connection to a network of expert shoppers who value quality, relevance, and a smooth experience. 

Beyond the world’s best checkout, Shopify provides personalized shopping pages—essential for converting visitors to buyers. An effective personalized storefront manifests each buyer’s unique shopping habits: a reminder of a past purchase for which they’re likely to need a refill, or a special deal based on a product they’ve enjoyed before. Saved carts and secure customer accounts keep sales from slipping away, and give you the opportunity to engage customers with product discounts, recommendations, and other personalization tactics after they’ve left the virtual checkout aisle. 

Here’s some inspiration for how Shopify could hypercharge your checkout:

The gourmet lobster company Maine Lobster Now enjoyed early success in their business model: shipping fresh Maine lobsters directly to their customers’ doors. It was an ambitious undertaking, and they were among the first companies of their kind. But as business increased, their old platform, Magento (now Adobe Commerce), couldn't support their myriad customization needs, and soon turned into a money pit. Enter Shopify, and its dynamic checkout capabilities. Since switching to Shopify, Maine Lobster Now increased their conversion rate by 69%—and by 97% on mobile—with a totally customized checkout. And with the security of Shop Pay, they reduced fraud-based chargebacks by 93%.

If Shopify can mastermind checkouts for customers ordering live lobsters, think of what we could build for you. Let’s dig deeper.

Segmentation: the key to targeted messaging

A good business is always learning from its customers. For marketing personalization, this principle is especially crucial. The best way to utilize it is through customer segmentation.

Segmentation is the foundation of personalized marketing. It lets you reach out to specific sectors of your customer base with offers that are most relevant to them. It could target customers in a certain demographic, with a certain purchase history… or with just about any behavioral data you can think of. Perhaps your company partnered with an influencer and you’d like to send follow-up offers to customers who used the influencer’s referral code. 

Shopify makes all this easy. Our segmentation is deeply integrated throughout the platform and app ecosystem. ShopifyQL creates segments so that you can query customer lists and find specific customer groups. You get the ability to offer exclusive discounts, create automated marketing journeys, personalize ad campaigns, and much more. 

Segmentation is in our DNA. Along with your unique customer data, Shopify’s segmentation capabilities empower you to treat each of your customers like a VIP.

Outreach and engagement 

Now that you’ve gotten to know your customers better, let’s increase customer engagement.

First-party data is key to personalized outreach campaigns. You can personalize emails using customer behavior data, such as search history, chat interactions, and social media engagement. For instance, if a customer asks a chatbot about a particular item, that item could be a great topic for personalized emails. 

Marketing automation can be used to engage customers at every stage of their journey—even post-purchase. Loyalty programs are an extremely effective method of turning first-time customers into regular buyers. Ninety percent of loyalty program owners report a positive return on investment (ROI), with an average ROI of 4.8x. 

Shopify gives you access to marketing automations that are always on, and the ability to plug other customer tools into your tech stack. We’re built on adaptability, ready to spring into action and engage buyers across the marketing funnel.

Acquisition: finding the right customers

Once you’ve personalized marketing experiences, focus on buyers you want to target. This selection is important: you could spend a great deal of your customer acquisition budget on attracting new customers, but if they’re low on AOV and CTV, that’s hardly a win. 

Shopify provides tools to maximize your advertising and marketing budget by reaching out to your most ideal customers. 

Shopify Audiences uses the collective power of participating brands to improve ad performance. Brands opt in to send data to the Audiences co-op. From there, Shopify Audiences algorithms generate billions of buyer behavior insights, which provide you with an optimized list of potential customers. No other business can see another retailer’s customer data, but all businesses benefit from the co-op. While many of us are wary of a future walled with consumer data silos, Shopify Audiences offers a timely, collaborative alternative. 

Shopify Audiences provides four uniquely-tailored lists to power your acquisition:

• Retargeting Boost audience highlights potential customers who have engaged with your brand, but have not yet purchased from your store. 
• Existing Customer audience turbo-charges your remarketing campaigns, with 40% more existing customers on average versus standard ad platform lists. 
• Prospecting audience provides potential new customers that Shopify Audiences’ algorithms predict will want to engage with your brand. 
• Lookalike audience sources an even larger list of potential customers, ideal for awareness campaigns. 

Here’s an example of Shopify Audiences in action: 

Like many companies, the luxury women’s apparel brand Mac Duggal sought to boost their ad performance as recent privacy regulations made finding high-level buyers more difficult. Since moving to Shopify Audiences, Mac Duggal has enjoyed a 2.3 times larger retargeting audience size, a 3.6x lower cost per purchase with retargeting ad set, and a 2x return on ad spend. 

And as customer acquisition evolves, we’re excited about connecting you with new prospects outside the conventional advertising space.

Shopify Collabs is your ticket to leveraging affiliate marketing, a consistently high-performing ad channel in terms of AOV, as found in our Ecommerce Growth Guide. A considerable 74% of consumers have been influenced to buy because of an influencer’s recommendation. Shopify Collabs helps you seize this potential by facilitating the entire process, managing everything from influencer referral codes and programs to payouts.

Shopify Collective streamlines brand partnerships for the personalization age. Within Shopify’s ecosystem, Shopify Collective lets you seamlessly connect with brands you trust so you can offer your products in their stores. Our automations assure smooth checkouts for customers with multiple brands in their carts, as well as hassle-free direct payout for your brand, based on the revenue-sharing terms you’ve agreed to. You can sell in new places and multiply brand awareness, all while lowering customer acquisition costs. 

Unleash your company’s personalization potential 

You’ve probably valued personalized marketing for a while—even back when everyone relied on cookies. We’ve anticipated the first-party revolution, too, and we’ve tailored our software to be ready.

A unified customer data model is essential for effective personalization, and Shopify has you covered. We win when our customers win. 

Get our Ecommerce Growth Guide to read about our best practices for mastering personalization.