Orders flow from your shop into your MemberArea. This article covers the other direction: when a member joins, finishes a course or cancels a subscription, your MemberArea can create the matching Shopify customer, add or remove a tag and write a customer field. Your shop then knows who is inside, and you can segment and email those customers in Shopify. It also covers the Shopify triggers you can use in your own automations.
Who can set this up
The Shopify page needs Update Platform Settings and Manage Integrations. Creating automations needs Manage Automations on top. Without it, the templates cannot be ticked and the page says "You are not allowed to create automations." with the hint "Ask the owner of this workspace for the permission to manage automations."
Start from the templates
- Open Settings, then Integrations, then Shopify. The page lives at
/admin/settings/integrations/shopify. - Open the Automations tab. It reads "Send your events back to Shopify" and "These automations are switched on right away. You can edit or delete each one later."
- Tick the templates you want. Nothing is ticked at first.
- Press Create automations. The button shows how many you ticked.
The ticked templates are created, published and switched on in one go, and "Created and switched on" appears next to the button. Each one now sits in your automations list under the name of its template.
The same four templates appear in the setup wizard, in the step Rules, under "Send your events back to Shopify". There, the ticked ones are created when you press Finish setup.
Creating needs a connected shop. If the connection has dropped, reconnect it first, see Connecting your Shopify shop.
The four templates
| Template | What it does in Shopify |
|---|---|
| New member: create the customer | When a new member account is created, the member gets a Shopify customer with the same email address, and the tag memberarea-member is added. |
| Course completed: tag the customer | When a member completes a course, the Shopify customer gets the tag course-completed. |
| Membership ended: remove the tag | When a subscription has really ended, the tag memberarea-member is removed and the customer field member_status is set to cancelled. |
| Subscription renewed: keep the status fresh | Each time a subscription renews, the customer field member_status is set to active. |
"Subscription" in these templates means a subscription sold in your MemberArea, not one in Shopify.
A few details follow from the triggers behind the templates:
- Course completed: tag the customer reacts to every course. To tag only one course, open the automation and pick the course in its trigger, as described in Triggers and actions.
- Membership ended: remove the tag runs when the subscription has really ended. A member who cancels at the end of the paid period keeps the tag until that date, just like their access in your MemberArea.
- The tags and the field value are fixed in the template. Open the automation in your automations list to change them.
Already set up
A template that already exists for this shop shows Already set up and cannot be ticked again. When all four exist, the tab says "Every suggested automation is already in place." If you archive or delete one of these automations, its template can be created again.
A template counts as set up when an automation has the same trigger and every Shopify step of the template, and those steps use this shop. An automation that only has some of the steps, or that writes to a different shop, does not block the template.
Which Shopify customer is changed
Every change is made on the Shopify customer that belongs to the member. Your MemberArea finds that customer in this order:
- The customer already linked to the member, for example from a Shopify order or from the customer import.
- Otherwise, a customer in your shop with exactly the same email address.
Only the action Create or update customer creates a customer when none is found. A customer that already exists is linked, and its first and last name are updated to the member's name. Its email address and tags stay as they are, and a member without a name leaves the Shopify name untouched. The actions that add a tag, remove a tag or set a field skip a member who has no Shopify customer yet. That is why New member: create the customer is the template to set up first.
Changes reach Shopify a few seconds after the event. Several changes for the same member within those seconds are sent together. If a tag is added and removed again in that time, only the last change counts.
While the shop is disconnected, changes for your members are not sent to Shopify, and they are not caught up after you reconnect. Members who joined or finished a course in that time miss their tag until the next event for them.
What your MemberArea sends to Shopify does not appear in the Webhook log. That tab only lists what Shopify sends to you. To check that a tag or field arrived, open the customer in your Shopify admin.
When a Shopify step has nothing it can send, the run in the automation's history shows the step as Completed with a yellow Note that names the reason, for example "The member has no customer in Shopify yet, so the change was skipped. Add the step "Create or update customer" before it." The same happens when the step has no shop, no tag or no field key, when the run has no member, or when the shop connection is not active. How to open a run is explained in Testing and run history.
A step without a note only means the change was handed over for sending. If Shopify turns the change down a few seconds later, the run still shows the step as completed and the reason is only kept in the server log. The customer in your Shopify admin shows whether it arrived.
Build your own automations
You can use Shopify in any automation, not only in the templates. In the automation editor, the Shopify triggers and actions sit in the library under Shopify and work once your shop is connected.
These triggers start an automation when something happens in your shop:
| Trigger | When it runs |
|---|---|
| Shopify Order Paid | A Shopify order is paid. |
| Shopify Refund | A Shopify order is refunded, also for a refund without items, such as a goodwill amount, and for a refund in another currency. |
| Shopify Order Cancelled | A Shopify order is cancelled. |
Both run whether or not Revoke access on refund or Revoke access on cancellation is switched on, and each runs once per refund or cancellation, even when Shopify sends the same message twice.
These actions change the Shopify customer of the member the automation runs for. Each one asks which shop to use:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Create or update customer | Makes sure the member exists as a customer in your shop, and updates the name of a customer who already exists. |
| Add customer tag | Adds the tag you enter to the customer. |
| Remove customer tag | Removes the tag you enter from the customer. |
| Set customer field | Writes a value into a field on the customer. |
Set customer field asks for a field name and a value. Shopify keeps the
field as a customer metafield in the namespace memberarea, so a field named
member_status shows up as memberarea.member_status. The field name is
stored in lowercase, with every character other than letters, digits and
underscores turned into an underscore. The value is plain text, cut off after
255 characters.
A Shopify trigger runs with the buyer as its member when the order carried an email address. Without a member, the customer actions in that automation do nothing.
How triggers, actions, fields and filters work in general is covered in Triggers and actions.
A test run from the automation editor really executes its actions. A test run of an automation with a Shopify action changes the customer in your shop.