Tips for your store

More orders without a bigger ad budget: here's how

Every order that comes from an ad costs you the clicks it took to get it. Yet Shopify includes a lot that costs next to nothing: 10,000 emails a month, free Google listings, customer segments, ready-made automations. In many stores, much of it goes unused.

4 min read · September 28, 2026

List of tools that cost next to nothing: checkout reminder, Shopify Forms, 10,000 emails a month, Google listings, Shop app, marketplace

1 Turn on the checkout reminder

Anyone who entered their email at checkout and then left gets an automatic reminder through Shopify Messaging. According to Shopify, this automation is always free and doesn't count toward your free emails. Set it up once and it runs.

By default it goes only to customers who agreed to marketing emails, which is the safe setting in many markets.

2 Build a list with a form and a welcome series

Shopify Forms is free and adds a sign-up form as a popup or inline. You can attach a discount that shows after signing up. Messaging has ready-made templates for a welcome email or a whole welcome series with a discount.

How to set it up properly is in Newsletter sign-ups with a welcome discount.

3 Email your subscribers regularly

On the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, Shopify Messaging includes 10,000 free emails a month; after that, 1,000 emails cost $1. With 2,000 subscribers that covers several campaigns a month, though every automation except the checkout reminder counts toward it.

Automated emails do more than their share suggests. In an analysis by the email vendor Omnisend, they made up 2% of all sends but brought in 30% of email revenue.

Two bars: automated emails are 2 percent of all sends but bring in 30 percent of email revenue — Vendor study by Omnisend, 150,000 brands, 2025 data. For a single store it's a direction, not a promise.

4 Win back existing customers

Anyone who bought once knows you. Shopify automatically groups your customers by recency, frequency and spend, for example "at risk" or "almost lost", and has a ready template for win-back emails. How to pick the timing and the incentive is in Win back existing customers.

5 Use the free Google listings

Through the free Google & YouTube channel, Shopify syncs your products with Google Merchant Center. With free listings they can appear in the Shopping tab, Google Search, Images and Lens. There's no guarantee they'll be shown, but there's no cost either.

6 Collect reviews

Reviews are advertising you don't pay for. In Spiegel Research Center data, a product with five reviews had a 270% higher purchase likelihood than one with none. The data comes from US retailers in 2017, and the biggest jump comes with the first few reviews.

The Shop app asks buyers for a review after delivery automatically. To show reviews in your own store you need a reviews app. Ask neutrally and with nothing in return.

7 Also sell on a marketplace

Marketplaces carry a large share of online retail: in Germany, 56.7% of online sales ran through them in 2025, according to the retail federation HDE. With Shopify's Marketplace Connect app you sell your bestsellers on Amazon or eBay as well (Walmart and Target Plus in the US) and manage the orders in the same admin. The first 50 synced orders a month carry no app fee; the marketplace's own fees still apply.

8 Measure what works

Add a parameter like utm_campaign to every link in emails and posts. Shopify attributes visits with it to marketing and shows in its marketing reports what each channel brought in. The default model is last non-direct click, with a 30-day lookback.

After a month you'll see which of the routes above pays off for your store and which doesn't.

Sources

Common questions

How many emails can I send for free with Shopify?

10,000 a month on the Basic, Grow, Advanced and Plus plans, and unused emails don't carry over. After that, 1,000 emails cost $1. The abandoned checkout automation doesn't count; all other automations do.

Does email marketing really return 36 or 42 times what you spend?

Those figures come from surveys of UK marketers estimating their own returns, or from vendors without a disclosed method. They say little about your store. Measure your email revenue yourself with UTM links.

Is the Shop app listing free?

According to Shopify, eligible stores are listed in Shop automatically, in countries where Shopify Payments is supported. Shopify's page lists no fee for the listing itself; Shop Campaigns are a separate, paid format.