automate emails to customers for delayed delivery times (backlogged)

[John_Walter]

Hi, 

I just got a huge boost in sales beginning a few months ago and really blowing up in October (I know, tough problem!).  My usual delivery time of 1-3 weeks is now backlogged to 6-8 weeks.  Is there any way to automate a message to all unfulfilled customers telling them their status?  Ideally even with some ability to tell them their place in the queue?  

thanks

John 

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

There's not a way to do this within Shopify, but I have a couple ideas for you:

A) Contact your email marketing software first, if you're using something powerful like Klaviyo they may have this ability to track that, and you can then create an email template.

B1) If your email marketing software doesn't have that ability, you could possible still automate it if your email software is able to take action on orders that get tagged.

If you can do this, then you can have a staff member log in each day and filter by unfulfilled orders in a data range, and then tag those orders, and then that tag would trigger the automated email with your marketing software. You could automate the staff checking / tagging orders using Order Automator (there's a Monitor feature that can identify orders X days old and unfulfilled and either tag the order or notify staff).

B2) If your email software doesn't have the ability to send an email when orders get tagged, the other way you could do it is the same tagging of orders I mentioned in step 2, then export those orders each day (or week, whatever time frame you want to do), put the customer email addresses in a csv, then upload to your email marketing software and have that action trigger an email template to each of those customers (most email marketing software I've seen can trigger an email based on when you upload a list with a certain tag or in a certain list).

[John_Walter]

Hi Joe, 

thanks for the info.  I am still using Mailchimp after they broke with Shopify, and unfortunately the customer lists are not being maintained automatically (not sure if the alternative solution they offered at the time would do that), but I can see how i could export a csv file and do it within MailChimp.  I know how to manipulate data so I could code it for the additional elements, but heck, way to busy to even think about it.  

just glad i didn't miss something within Shopify that I could have used before I put time into this, manually or via code.  maybe a suggestion for them?

thanks!

[Ming_Sendif]

Hey John

How did you end up solving this problem? I work with a lot of prescription eyewear stores, and they often face unexpected delays when partner optical labs take a little longer to make lenses. 

I think this app could solve your exact problem: https://apps.shopify.com/ultimate-order-status

Thanks,

Ming

[John_Walter]

HI, i ended up exporting my unfulfilled list to an external Access database, then created the appropriate mail message with the number of days til shipping (based on how many i was making in the week), then manually cut and paste them into the shopify email link on each customer's order.    the important part was to get the right number of days/weeks, but i still wasnt able to automate sending out 100 emails each with custom messaging.  I also didnt want to trigger a spam flag for sending out a bunch of emails quickly.