2024-11-04
What is it? A way for Shopify app users to update their contacts to leverage the new language attribute “lang”.
Why do I need it? By doing this, you can now use language as a value split in automations when sending out welcome emails and transactional communication, giving you more flexibility.
Where can I see more? Read about how this works in the Shopify docs on developer.
2024-08-20
What is it? A new field on the Automation Overview page showing how long an automation is.
Why do I need it? It’s difficult to see how much time your contacts will remain in a complex automation. The new “Duration” field on the Automation Overview page tells you that directly, showing you the expected time as a span of days. This is useful, for example, as an overview, for troubleshooting, or when reporting or presenting what your automations are doing.
What was the duration of the longest cricket match ever? That would be England vs South Africa at Durban in 1939. The game was abandoned ten days in because the ship taking the England team home was leaving, a classic example of “It’s my ball and I’m taking it and going home”.
2024-06-28
What is it? A new menu option allowing you to change the “type” of a split or activity when reworking an automation.
Why do I need it? Up to now, doing this has required all underlying activities to be moved temporarily elsewhere in the flow and the split to be deleted and recreated, wasting time. With "Change split" and "Change activity", making such a change is now a painless one-step process.
How many flies are there in the fish market of Split, Croatia? Surprisingly, none, since the smell from the nearby sulphur baths keeps them away. You can, of course, bring your own flies to the market, but they will not be very happy and would probably just prefer to go get an ice cream.
2024-05-28
What is it? A new simplified navigation system for reports.
Why do I need it? This new system reduces clutter and confusion, making it easier to quickly find the exact report you need.
What was the most important invention for navigation? Arguably that was the maritime clock built by John Harrison, which kept perfect time even at sea, allowing ships to find their longitude and so work out where they were. Harrison made it to win £20,000 prize (£4 million in 2024 money), kind of a 1700s X-prize, which he never received.
What is it? A useful AI aid to help you compose your SMS send outs.
Why do I need it? If you know more or less what you want to say but can’t find the exact words, this handy AI-powered tool will give you several options. It will also consider any opt-out link and keep the SMS under the character limit.
Why are SMS messages limited to 160 characters? This is due to the tiny strips of paper used to send messages on carrier pigeons. Each strip can hold 80 characters, and since a pigeon has two feet, that totals 160. Non-standard pigeons can sometimes hold up to 200 characters.
2024-05-15
What is it? An expansion and improvement of the segmentation functionality in Engage.
Why do I need it? The new Targeting tool provides expanded profiling and targeting, improving your marketing and sales. It represents a paradigm shift in how targeting is approached in Engage and incorporates AI tools to improve and simplify targeting and segmentation.
Should I turn off my targeting computer? If you’re feeling strong with the force, then do it.
What is it? A new filter in the revenue attribution report for email and SMS marketing.
Why do I need it? With this filter you can group revenue in your reports by sales channel (either e-com or in-store), giving you a more detailed view of your revenue attribution and helping you optimize your marketing to these channels.
Who invented the filter? Housewife Melitta Bentz patented the paper coffee filter in 1908.
What is it? An easy way to get from the Email and SMS lists in the Automation Overview tab to the exact place in the automation workflow that triggered that particular send-out.
Why do I need it? The larger your automations becomes, the harder it can get to locate the place from where a particular email or SMS is sent. This functionality makes it as easy as pressing a button.
How deep can we go? That would be the Mariana trench at 10 980 meters, where the pressure is around 1000 atmospheres and the fish are very odd indeed.
What is it? The ability to stop the “Language” attribute from showing up in automation value splits when it’s not in use.
Why do I need it? This attribute previously came up in automation value splits even when not being used, which could cause problems. With this change, the “Language” attribute is only shown in value splits if it is searchable in attribute settings. Otherwise you won’t see it.
Who split the atom? Irish physicist Ernest Walton, of course, back in 1932. The atom he actually split was, unfortunately, lost.
What is it? Store now exists as an option when sending contacts into an automation started by the “New or updated order” trigger, or to use when performing a value split in an automation. The order trigger configuration UI was also improved.
Why do I need it? Sometimes you might need to personalize transactional communication based on the store in which the order was placed. With this new functionality for the Store attribute, you can now build an automation workflow to do that.
What was the first recorded order? In 1750 BC, an order to buy copper was sent to the merchant Ea-nāṣir, but the copper was of such bad quality that the buyer sent an angry complaint on a clay tablet, which still exists. Making this also, possibly, the first recorded return.
What is it? A automatic block on any email address that produce 10 consecutive soft bounces within 90 days.
Why do I need it? With this you’ll have better delivery rates for email channel and better contact data quality. Fewer soft bounces may also increase your email reputation. This feature affects all tenants and contacts without any configuration needed. Contacts who get blocked will get unblocked if another email address is saved for them, or if the Engage user removes the block manually. The block reason will be added in the contact's change log.
Do my emails get read? Research shows that after 24 hours the chances of any email being opened drops to 1%. So be sure to make it eye-catching.
What is it? A new rule to block phone numbers from being used to send SMS after 5 consecutive soft bounces within a span of 90 days.
Why do I need it? This feature will increase deliverability for the SMS channel. It affects all tenants and contacts without any configuration. It leads to more of the SMS budget delivering value as the amount of soft bounces will decrease. Contacts that are blocked for SMS will get unblocked if another phone number is saved on the contact or if user manually removes the block. The block reason will be added in the contact's change log.
Why do we answer the phone with “Hello”? When the telephone was invented, a new all-purpose, time-zone independant greeting was needed, since ”Good evening” or “Good day” would not work. Thomas Edison preferred “Hello” whereas the telephone’s inventor Alexander Graham Bell wanted another greeting: “Ahoy hoy”. Edison’s “Hello” won and today “Ahoy hoy” is now only used by The Simpson’s Mister Burns.
What it is? A way to manually schedule voucher payouts.
Why do I need it? If you’re using vouchers, you now have a dynamic way to convert points to vouchers, on whatever schedule you want. For example, when a customer reaches X points, or when it’s the first of the month, a voucher can be automatically generated. In the Engage UI, this is called a Reward voucher generator.
What was the most unpopular voucher ever? In 1977, surprised by the huge success of Star Wars, the Kenner toy company realized they did not have anywhere near enough Star Wars toys to sell kids. So, for Christmas 1977, they sold empty toy boxes containing nothing but an Early Bird Certificate that could be exchanged for the toy at some unspecified time in the future. A great many kids had a terrible Christmas. But Kenner made millions.
2024-03-15
What is it? An improvement to the attribution model for SMS and email send-outs.
Why do I need it? With three attributions - last opened (SMS and Email), last received (SMS and Email) and last clicked (Email only) - you will now be able to better understand which interactions with which send-outs have led to a purchase. See more here.
What was the largest model train engine ever built? That would be the Thomas the Tank Engine character ‘James’ built by BBC Visual Effects for a tour. It weighed an impressive 1.5 tons.
What is it? New options for the Engage user to handle their own configuration.
Why do I need it? Contact attributes and custom triggers for your Engage environment can now be set up directly in the UI. This saves time and increases flexibility for the Engage user.
What was the first self-service store? Clarence Saunders opened his first Piggly-Wiggly self-service supermarket in 1916, allowing him to cut costs and offer lower prices. There were no actual pigs available for purchase (apart from the bacon, pork chops and sausages, which is sort of a build-it-yourself IKEA pig, when you think about it).
What is it? A makeover to the SMS workflow and UI with some improvements.
Why do I need it? The new character countdown allows you to see how many characters are used and how many remain, making it easier to keep an SMS under the character limit, while the distribution time improvement allows you to spread your send-outs over a larger timespan to ease the system load or to prevent all visitors from coming to your online store at the same time.
What was the fastest SMS ever written? Using a touch-screen mobile phone, Marcel Fernandes Filho wrote a 160 character message in 17.00 seconds in 2014. It is unclear if he got a reply.
What is it? The Shopify app for Engage now allows inventory sync and back-in-stock support.
Why do I need it? Back-in-stock is an in-demand feature in modern online retail. So don’t allow an item being temporarily out of stock on your e-com to kill a possible sale. Also, you can get deeper insights into what you should be stocking more of.
What is the sweetest inventory stockpile in the world? That would be the Canadian Maple Syrup Reserve, clocking in at over 10 million kilograms of maple syrup.
Comments
0 comments