The Foundation of Shopify Growth: How to Improve Your List Building Strategy

In Shopify growth, CRM initiatives that leverage customer lists are essential. Unlike marketplaces such as Amazon, the ability to build deep relationships with customers through your list is the core of growing a business on a proprietary domain site like Shopify.

We have previously introduced several list building strategies for CRM.

In this article, we explain how to improve your list building strategy. If you are already running list building initiatives but are not sure how to optimize them, this guide is for you.

This article focuses specifically on list building. For a comprehensive overview of CRM on Shopify and how to use Klaviyo from the ground up, please refer to the article below.

StoreHero leverages its proprietary growth platform to support businesses with granular operations that manual workflows cannot achieve, as well as rapid execution of large volumes of initiatives. If you are struggling to grow sales on Shopify, feel free to reach out. =>Download our free service overview here

Break Down by Channel and Landing Page to Improve

Here we introduce a data-driven approach to improving your list building strategy.

Previously, we recommended monitoring the gap between targets and actuals for each list building initiative (see Shopify Growth: Key Challenges by Growth Stage - Launch Phase).

Once you have set up list building events in Google Analytics, you can monitor them. The setup method depends on your list building form, but for Klaviyo forms, you can configure tracking using Google Tag Manager. This article was a helpful reference: How to track Klaviyo signups in Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

Tools like Typeform can send event data directly to Google Analytics without using Google Tag Manager, which is convenient. However, some apps fail to capture the event correctly at form submission, so in those cases you may need to work around the issue by tracking when the submit button is clicked instead.

Once event tracking is in place in Google Analytics, you can see the gap between targets and actuals. From there, break down the gap and think about what actions to take.

By breaking down results by channel and LP (landing page), you can identify which channels and landing pages are most effective at driving email and LINE sign-ups. Scale up the channels with high conversion rates and investigate whether you can improve those with lower conversion rates.

Also Consider Post-Registration LTV When Making Decisions

You may be using paid advertising to collect list registrations. In that case, you need to determine how much advertising spend per registration is acceptable. Even without paid ads, there are labor costs involved, so the same judgment applies.

To make that judgment, it helps to understand the LTV (Lifetime Value) of customers after they register. Configure your system to apply a customer tag at the point of registration. Since the LTV will likely differ between a list collected via a coupon offer and one collected through a quiz or survey, set a customer tag or metafield value for each initiative so you can identify which strategy acquired each contact.

With Klaviyo, you can store which form a subscriber registered through in a Klaviyo field such as "source," and then sync that data to Shopify metafields.

You could aggregate total purchase value per customer tag, but initiatives that have been running longer naturally have more time for customers to accumulate purchases, making it difficult to fairly compare them with newer initiatives. Instead, try aggregating LTV by registration month cohort.

By calculating the average purchase value per customer at 1, 3, and 6 months after registration, you can evaluate each initiative on a fair basis. Knowing the LTV allows you to determine how much you can afford to spend on list acquisition, enabling you to pursue more aggressive strategies.

Below is an example of LTV results broken down by three different initiatives and by registration month cohort. In general, regardless of the acquisition initiative, customers who registered earlier tend to have higher LTV. For example, customers who registered in November 2022 had an average LTV of 30,000 to 45,000 yen as of November 2023, while those who registered in October 2023 had an LTV of approximately 15,000 yen.

Comparing LTV across the three initiatives, the blue initiative shows that in some months, more recently registered customers actually have higher LTV than those who registered a year ago. This can occur when improvements are made to the list building process or to CRM initiatives following registration.

Enrich List Data to Increase List Value

Simply growing the size of your list is not enough. Email and LINE messages perform better when personalized to customer attributes. The more useful information you collect for segmentation, the higher the LTV of your list becomes.

Surveys and quizzes are an efficient way to collect customer attribute data. PersonalizeHero is a free app that saves survey and quiz responses directly as Shopify customer tags. When used on a thank-you page or account page, it automatically links to Shopify customer data. When used as a quiz tool on pre-login pages, it can also be used for new list acquisition.

Try aggregating LTV by customer attribute. Once you know which customer attributes have the highest LTV, you can intentionally target high-LTV customers from the very first point of acquisition.

Once you accumulate a certain volume of high-LTV customer lists, you can use them as audience lists for Meta Ads and Google Ads. However, if the list is too small, it will not be very effective as an audience.

On the other hand, even with a small list, if you know which customer attributes have high LTV, you can still use that insight to inform ad targeting and creatives even before your list reaches a sufficient size. Enriching customer attribute data from the early launch phase gives you an advantage in new customer acquisition initiatives.

Should You Collect Email or LINE?

You may wonder whether it is better to collect email subscribers or LINE followers, but ideally you should collect both.

By deciding in advance which channel to prioritize based on the type of content you send, you can operationally avoid sending the same message twice to people who have registered for both, or send LINE messages only to those who have not opened your email.

Monitor subscriber counts across three categories: email-only, LINE-only, and email+LINE ID-linked. Customers who have linked both email and LINE ID are a particularly valuable segment, as Shopify customer data can then be used for targeting on LINE as well.

For email, apps such as Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Dotdigital enable attribute-based delivery. For LINE, CRM PLUS on LINE is the recommended solution.

CRM PLUS on LINE can integrate with apps like the back-in-stock notification app Back in Stock and the wishlist app Wishlist Plus to send LINE notifications instead of emails. It also supports delivery using Shopify customer segments. Enriching customer attribute data is just as important for LINE as it is for email.

Thorough CRM Execution with StoreHero

StoreHero supports Shopify merchants who are struggling to grow sales by helping them execute growth initiatives thoroughly.

For CRM initiatives as well, we leverage the StoreHero growth platform to enable granular operations that are impossible with manual workflows — including product recommendations and targeted offers via email, LINE, and account pages, powered by customer purchase history, attribute data, and product/SKU performance and inventory data. This supports continuous business growth through high-volume initiative execution.

We are currently offering a free store diagnostic. If you have challenges with CRM or growth initiatives in general, please feel free to contact us. Learn more about the free store diagnostic here

Summary

In this article, we explained how to operate and improve list building strategies on Shopify. At StoreHero, we don't stop at implementation — we use data to identify areas of high potential and continuously optimize. This article introduced our data-driven approach to ongoing improvement.

The richer and more extensive your list becomes, the greater your revenue potential. When growth starts to plateau, focusing on list building and its effective utilization can help you regain momentum.

We hope this article is a useful reference for those running list building initiatives on Shopify.

StoreHero can support you from the ground up in designing a store that drives sales. Feel free to reach out. =>View StoreHero's service overview