Creating marketing campaigns

From the Marketing page in Shopify, you can create and manage marketing campaigns for promotions. The Marketing page also includes recommendations to improve your marketing strategy.

Understanding marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns and automations can each help you grow your customer base in different ways, but you can consider using both in your overall marketing strategy.

Marketing campaigns include one or more marketing activities, such as content marketing or advertising. Marketing campaigns are usually directed at a specific promotion, because you can publish activities within a set timeframe. For example, you might run a Facebook ad to promote a sale on a product, or you might create a post on a social media platform to let your followers know about a new product. When you create a marketing activity in Shopify, you have the option to save it as a draft and publish it when it's ready, so that you can prepare your marketing activities in advance. For important events, such as Black Friday, you can group marketing activities together to work toward a specific campaign objective.

You need to have a marketing app installed and your store needs to be on the Basic Shopify plan or higher to create marketing activities. Many marketing apps require you to sell by using a Shopify online store.

Create a marketing activity

Pre-made templates have been created for some common marketing activities. The details that you need to add depend on the activity that you're creating.

You need the Marketing permission, and if you're marketing using an app or a channel, then you also need the App and channel access permission to create a marketing campaign.

When you create a marketing activity or automation in Shopify, you have the option to save it as a draft and publish it when it's ready, so that you can prepare your marketing in advance.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Marketing.

  2. To view the options for marketing activities or automations:

    • To create an automation, go to Automations, and then click Create automation.
    • To create a marketing activity, go to Marketing, and then click Create campaign.
  3. Select the activity or automation.

  4. Enter a name.

  5. Add the required details. You can preview marketing activities and automations before you save or publish.

  6. Save a draft or publish:

    • To save a draft, click Finish later.
    • To publish an activity or automation, click Publish activity.

Add a marketing activity to an existing campaign

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Marketing.

  2. Under an existing campaign, click Add activity.

  3. Select the activity type.

  4. Add the activity's details.

  5. Save a draft or publish the activity:

    • To save a draft, click Finish later.
    • To publish the activity, click Publish.

Editing, viewing, pausing, or deleting a marketing activity

You can edit, pause, or delete draft and published marketing activities or automations from Shopify. To view marketing campaigns that you've already created, in your Shopify admin, click Marketing, and then click Campaigns.

When you edit a draft marketing activity or automation, you can save your changes or publish it. Draft marketing activities are listed on the Marketing page and draft automations are listed on the Marketing > Automations page.

To delete a marketing activity that you created in Shopify, go to the Marketing section of your Shopify admin, and then click Campaigns. Select the marketing activity that you want to delete, click Delete activity, and then click Delete activity again to confirm your choice.

When you delete a marketing activity or automation in Shopify, you won't be billed for it anymore. Shopify syncs to the related service to update your account with any changes that you make. While the activity or automation is in the process of being deleted outside of Shopify, it has a Being deleted status in Shopify. After the activity is fully deleted outside of Shopify, it's removed from the list in Shopify. Deleting a marketing activity or automation is permanent.

Marketing activities created outside of Shopify need to be deleted from the service where they were created.

Archive a marketing campaign

You can archive marketing campaigns in Shopify that match any of the following conditions:

  • There are no marketing activities in the campaign
  • All of the marketing activities in the campaign are paused
  • All of the marketing activities in the campaign have failed to sync

You can't add any marketing activities to an archived campaign, but you can unarchive it at any time and then add activities. To view archived campaigns, click the link on the Marketing page.

You can archive a marketing campaign from its details page.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Marketing.

  2. Click an existing marketing campaign

  3. Click Archive campaign

Delete a marketing campaign

If a marketing campaign has activities with one of the following statuses, then you can delete the marketing campaign:

  • Deleted
  • Deleted externally
  • Draft

This means that the campaign has to either have no activities in it, all of the activities are deleted, or has only draft activities in it.

Steps:

  1. In your Shopify admin, click Marketing.
  2. Click the campaign that you want to delete, click the More actions drop down menu, and then select Delete campaign.
  3. Click Delete campaign again to confirm your choice.

Delete an archived marketing campaign

  1. In your Shopify admin, click Marketing.
  2. Click the archived campaign that you want to delete, click the More actions drop down menu, and then select Delete campaign.
  3. Click Delete campaign again to confirm your choice.

Learn more about marketing

The Learn more about marketing section includes short videos and resources from our Shopify Academy experts to help you create more successful marketing campaigns and strategies. Resources will be continually added here specific to your business as your business evolves. Use the < and > to change to the previous or next Shopify Learn recommendation. If a specific recommendation isn't helpful or relevant to you, then click ... > Dismiss.

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