Need to identify IRL POS transaction to trigger email flows for those customers

[SummerIndigo]

I sell a little bit online and a LOT in the real world using the Shopify POS.

My goal is to send an automated Welcome flow from Omnisend to all my IRL POS clients that is different from the Welcome flow online and form sign-ups get. I want to turn IRL clients into online clients.

I collect these emails in person after I have completed a sale and am sending them their receipt. The phone POS makes it easy to hand over the phone to the customer to enter their email, a slider right under this field allows for opt-in to emails/newsletter.

So far so good, after this is when the problems begin. 

Shopify does not identify these clients with any tags (they apparently did in the past from what I have been told) so there is nothing to trigger the flow in Omnised. The solution offered by Shopify of adding a 3rd party app to add the tag does not work because the tag is not added by the app instantly so by the time the app adds it, it is too late to trigger the flow.  Not to mention that these apps glitch a lot. 

Shopify does not offer a segmentation in their native email app either, nor a way to quickly identify and separate the POS customers (It only allows sorting that by orders, not customers). So the 99% of my clients who purchase from me already and are the bulk of my business cannot be targeted by automation. I have wasted hours and days sorting and manually tagging the contacts and editing the flows and triggers and re-triggers and it is simply not an acceptable way to do this. 

Are there ANY solutions to this? I do not understand whenShopify offers POS services for the real world and then ignores this segment entirely in terms of sorting, tagging, automation etc. An existing client in the real world should not be marketed to the same. And they are a higher value client than a random online sign-up who has not purchased or met me in person. Any solutions appreciated. 

[WorkGPT1]

Hello Summer,

Nice to meet you. This is Sandy from ShopFlex Automation.

Please correct me if I m wrong. These 2 workflows that you want to set up:

1. Automatically adds a tag to any new customer created in Shopify POS

2. Trigger the Omnisend Welcome flow dedicated for IRL POS clients

Happy to learn more your business and see how I can help 🙂

[SummerIndigo]

Yes indeed that is what I need.



I have been trying to fix this issue now for a long time and in the past gave up because it is so complicated.

I tried once again to use external apps to tag both the order and the customer, however, this past week that glitched in different ways than before on Omnisend.



Example: 5 Customers were auto-tagged by apps one day last week. Out of those only one triggered the flow, the other 4 triggered it but then immediately were removed because the order info came in a second after at Omnisend which caused Omnisend automation to believe they had placed an order and were exited from flow before it even started. We are talking milliseconds here between but enough to completely muck up the flows. So the bottom line is that the solution offered to me before by Shopify by using external apps simply does not work. Since Shopify when connected to Ebay tagged my customers as having come via ebay, why can't you just tag POS customers as such in your own ecosystem as well? This probably would address the problem once and for all.



I am eager to hear if you have a solution to this for me. I really want to pursue my existing real-world customers who live all across the country (and the world.) I sell in a tourist area so if they are to be return customers it has to be online and I need these flows to identify them.

[WorkGPT1]

I totally understand your feelings. Offline customers have higher value as they have shown interest in purchasing your products. Turning them into your online management pool would be of long-term value to your business.

I wonder if you are willinging to give a try with our platform and we will help to set up the workflows for you.

[divinelightcode]

I am in the same exact situation! Did you ever solve this issue? Here we are a year and a half later, and I still don't see a solution!