How to send bulk account invite on Shopify for free

Planning a migration to Shopify? When you import customers to Shopify, the platform will create disabled accounts. These disabled accounts need of a customer action to to create passwords and activate. So you may get stuck finding a convenient way to enable those accounts so you can resume marketing with your customers or take advantage of the many perks that apps that integrate with classic accounts can provide.

This guide explains how to send bulk account invitation emails for free so your imported customers can activate their accounts with passwords. Please note that this is somehow a technical method and it is challenging at some extent. It also requires your customers' prior consent to receive emails from you. We recommend reading the entire article, including the questions at the bottom. For an easier way to send the invitations, jump to the app section. The guide also includes notes on customizable email templates, import customer data, and instructions for sending individual account invitations in Shopify.

How to send bulk account invite in Shopify (no paid apps)

To use this method, you'll need to have Classic Customer Accounts enabled, the Shopify Email app installed, and having your Sender Email in Shopify verified. Customers will receive two emails to activate their accounts: first one to trigger the activation and second one to create a password. So make sure you have received their prior consent to receive emails from you.

It consists of three steps:

• Create an Invitation page
• Create the Email Automation and Template
• Test and Import customers

Create an Invitation page

In this step, you will create a form with an auto-submit script. When the customer clicks the link in the first email, this form will be submitted automatically to trigger a second email to activate the account.

1. Go to your Shopify Admin > Online Store > Pages, click Add Page
2. Give the page the following title: Account Invitation (Note: Keep this title, as the page handle depends on it and you will use it later.)
3. Now click the HTML editor switch, and paste the code below
4. Save the page

Create the Email Automation and Template

Now you will create the template for the first email and its automation, which will run after a customer is created (or imported). This email should be informative and contain a link with a URL parameter to automatically submit the form we created in the previous step.

1. Navigate to your Shopify Admin > Marketing > Automations > Create automation, and click Create custom automation
2. Give the automation a name, such as Invitation Flow with the input on top. then choose Customer Created as the Trigger
3. Click the Plus sign and then Action. Choose Send Marketing Email as an Action inside Shopify Email (make sure Shopify Email is installed so you can see it)
4. In the workflow, click on the Action, then click Select Template on the right-hand panel

5. We are now taken to the Shopify Email Templates to choose a template. For this example, we will start from scratch in a Blank template, but you can choose another predefined template too. Select the template to open the template editor.
6. In the editor, make sure that the body contains the correct informative message and the correct link with the URL parameter. For example, in the case below, we are simply informing the customer with a text section ("...we recently migrated...") and then adding a button "Click to continue" with the link. The button is the tricky part, as we need to enter the link with a variable. To build the button, add a Custom Liquid section and enter the quoted code below, which contains a link with the URL parameter email. Fill in the subject line and Save the template. Then, back in the automation panel, Turn On the Flow

Import customer data

Download the customer CSV template and fill it with your customers data or build your own CSV file following Shopify instructions. There are many online guides with more details about this if you need them. If you are migrating from another platform, you can search for more specific articles online to learn how to export and import your customers. For example, here is an article on how to migrate customers from WordPress to Shopify.

In the CSV file, make sure the Accepts Email Marketing column is set to yes for each customer so that they can receive emails from Shopify Email. We also recommend that you start the import with a test, such as a CSV file with only one or two test accounts that you have access to. This will help you test that the flow is working correctly.

To import your customers:

1. Go to Shopify admin > Customers
2. Click Import. Then Add file, and then select your customer CSV file
3. Optionally, if you want to tag the customers from the list, check the box next to Add tags to customers in this CSV and use these tags to create a segment.
4. This tag can also be used in the workflow. For more information, see Creating a tag-specific flow in the Related Questions section below
5. Click Import customers

If everything went well customers should now receive the first email. After clicking the link in it they should be taking to the website and then receive a second email to Activate the account and create the password on the website.

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If this method seems too challenging, you can use an app to automate the process. This will save you time and effort, and it will also ease the activation for your customers, as they will only need to open and click one email to create their passwords, instead of two.

Froonze Customer Accounts provides a Bulk Invite feature that you can use after importing your customers. There are also a few other apps that offer bulk invite functionality in the Shopify App Store.

Migrating additional customer data

Shopify is limited in regard to the fields that can be imported along the customer records, so you may have difficulty migrating additional information beyond what is allowed in the spreadsheet. In this case, you may need to use more specific apps to migrate more of your customer data from the previous platform. Like Wishlist apps to migrate lists of favorite products, or Loyalty apps to migrate redeemable points.

You may also want to learn about the possibilities of Shopify customer metafields, which can be used to collect additional information from your customers. An app like Matrixify can import metafields. Our Custom Forms plugin also allows you to create custom forms to collect additional customer data that customers can fill in during or after registration as Profile forms. The forms can contain custom fields to collect any additional information you want from your customers, such as birthdays, tax IDs, favorite colors, or files. All custom data is saved in metafields.

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Related Questions

‍Can I migrate customer passwords from another platform to Shopify, or import activated customer accounts?

No, it's not possible. Shopify only allows a certain number of fields to be imported, and passwords are encrypted data in Shopify. So you can only import customer records, not the accounts.

Can you use the Shopify New Accounts Dashboard to activate the accounts?

No, you cannot use the Shopify New Accounts Dashboard to activate accounts. However, there is no need to do so, as New Accounts provides a type of login called passwordless login, which only requires customers to confirm access with a code sent to their email. So why not use New Accounts instead of activated password classic accounts?

Shopify actually doesn't allow apps integrate with New Accounts and that means that you could be missing a lot of features. Classic Accounts offer a more customizable experience and are compatible with most third-party apps that collect, analyze and manage customer data: rewards, subscriptions, wishlist, surveys. For more information, see this comparison.

Can I manually send an account invitation email from Shopify? How do I resend an account invitation in Shopify?

Yes, you can manually send an account invitation email from Shopify. To do this, go to the Customers panel and click on the customer whose account is disabled. In the top right corner, click More Actions and then Send Account Invite. If the customer has been invited before, you will see a Resend Account Invite option instead. This is also how you resend account invitation in Shopify. However, you can only do this customer by customer, not as a bulk action.

How do I export and download Shopify customer data?

To export and download Shopify customer data, go to the Customers panel and click the Export button in the top right corner. You can download a spreadsheet with all your customers or select the ones you want to include in the file by ticking and filtering.

Can I customize the customer account invitation template in Shopify?

Yes, you can customize the customer account invitation template in Shopify. To do this, go to Shopify > Notifications > Customer account invite.

Is there a limit to how many customer account invitations I can send in Shopify?

Yes, Shopify has a limit of 5 invitations per 10 minutes. If customers receive an error after clicking the first email, they may need to try again some minutes later. Shopify Email, in its free version, has a monthly limit of 10,000 emails.

Adjustment 1: Disable protection Google reCaptcha challenge

To make it easier for customers to go through the double email process, you may want to disable Google reCAPTCHA protection. To do this follow these instructions.

Adjustment 2: Removing error message after clicking first link

After clicking the link in the first email, your customers may see an error message above the message "an account activation email has been sent". This is actually fine. But if you're concerned about this message, you can hide it with a script that is only applied after a submission on the Account Invitation page. Contact us for more information.

Adjustment 3: Creating a tag-specific flow

Using a Customer Created trigger in your workflow may be not entirely precise if your shop is signing up new customers while you are migrating the old ones. Since Shopify allows you to tag and segment the customers that you are importing, you can use this option while importing and also make the workflow specific to these tagged customers with a customer.tag conditional. This will ensure that only the customers you are importing are targeted by the workflow.