Your shop probably knows more people than your MemberArea does. The Import tab on the Shopify page brings those customers over as contacts, so you can write to the ones who agreed to hear from you. After that, new and changed customers keep arriving on their own, without another import.
Before you start
The shop has to be connected. See Connecting your Shopify shop.
Your role needs Update Platform Settings to open the settings and Manage Integrations to open the Shopify page and run the import.
Import your existing customers
- Open Settings, then Integrations.
- Press Add Integration and choose Shopify. This opens the Shopify
page at
/admin/settings/integrations/shopify. - Open the Import tab. It loads your shop customers right away, newest first, below the line "Bring your existing shop customers over".
- Check the ticks. Every customer that can be imported is ticked for you, up to 100. Untick anyone you want to leave out. Once 100 are ticked, the other rows cannot be ticked, and the line "You can import up to 100 customers at once. After the import the next ones are selected." appears. Untick a row to tick another one instead.
- If the list ends with Load more, press it to load the next customers. New customers that can be imported are ticked as well, as long as the selection stays at 100 or fewer.
- Press Import selected. The button shows how many customers are ticked.
Nothing is written before you press the button. When the run is done, a short line next to the button sums it up, for example "Imported: 42 · Skipped: 3", and the list loads again. The customers you just imported now show Already here.
One run takes up to 100 customers. To import more, wait until the list has loaded again from the top. The customers that show Can be imported are ticked for you, up to 100 again. If the first customers all show Already here, press Load more until the next ones appear. Then press Import selected again.
What the list shows
Each row shows the customer's name and email address and one status:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Can be imported | Nobody in your MemberArea uses this email address yet. The row can be ticked. |
| Already here | A member or a contact with this email address already exists. The row cannot be ticked. |
| No email address | The customer has no email address in Shopify, so there is nothing to create. The row cannot be ticked. |
If the shop has no customers at all, the tab says "No customer found in this shop."
What an import creates
Every imported customer becomes a contact. Open Audience, then Contacts to find them. The Source column shows API for them.
A contact is not a member. An import creates no account, sends no email and unlocks no course or other access. If a contact buys a mapped product in your shop later, the order creates the member account for that email address, the same way it does for any buyer. See Checking what a buyer gets.
What the contact can receive depends on the consent the customer gave in your shop:
| In Shopify | In your MemberArea |
|---|---|
| The customer agreed to receive marketing emails | The contact is subscribed, with the status Active. |
| The customer did not agree | The contact is kept, with the status No consent. Your emails do not reach them. |
If a customer has become a member between loading the list and pressing the button, the import does not create a contact. It links the Shopify customer to that member and counts the row as skipped.
The opt-in from Shopify counts as the consent; no confirmation email is sent. This also applies when double opt-in is switched on for your workspace.
New customers arrive on their own
You only import once. From then on, whenever a customer is created or changed in your shop, Shopify tells your MemberArea, and a customer without a member account becomes a contact or updates the contact that is already there. There is nothing to switch on.
A customer whose email address belongs to a member is only linked to that member. No contact is created for them.
Each of these messages shows up in the Webhook log tab as
customers/create or customers/update with the result Processed. The
note reads "Customer recorded, no member with this email yet." or "Customer
linked to an existing member." See
Reading the Shopify webhook log.
When consent changes later
Shopify keeps sending the customer's marketing consent with every change, and your MemberArea follows it.
- A customer who opts in later in your shop is subscribed. That does not happen if they unsubscribed through the link in one of your emails, if an email to their address bounced, if they marked one of your emails as spam, or if their consent was recorded somewhere else, for example by confirming a double opt-in email. In those cases the contact stays as it is.
- A contact who is already subscribed another way, for example through one of your forms, stays as it is. The opt-in from Shopify does not replace that subscription.
- A customer who opts out in Shopify is unsubscribed only if their consent was recorded from Shopify. A contact who subscribed another way stays subscribed.
When a customer is deleted in Shopify
When you delete a customer in your shop, only the link between that Shopify
customer and your MemberArea is removed. The member, the contact and their
orders stay. The Webhook log shows customers/delete with the note
"Customer link removed, the member itself stays untouched."
A data deletion request from a customer works the same way: it removes the link and the stored deliveries for that customer, and the member and the contact stay. How to handle such a request is explained in Disconnecting Shopify and deleting shop data.
When something goes wrong
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| "Reconnect the shop to use this." | The shop is no longer connected. Press Reconnect shop and approve the connection in Shopify, then open Import again. |
| "The customers could not be loaded from Shopify." | Shopify did not answer. Open the tab again in a moment. |
| "The import could not be finished." | Press Import selected again. An email address never becomes two contacts, so running it again is safe. |
| "You are not allowed to manage integrations." | Your role is missing Manage Integrations. Ask the owner of the workspace to add it. |