Shopper Automations upgrades your core automation flows with 1:1 messages. Instead of sending the same template to everyone, Shopper decides the next best message for each individual subscriber (what to say, when to send it, and which offer to include) based on what they've done and what they've told you.
You stay in control of the ramp. You choose how much of your audience Shopper Automations handles, your existing flows keep running for everyone else, and built-in reporting shows you the results against your own baseline.
IMPORTANT! Turning on Shopper Automations automatically disables any active ITA flows; the two can't run at the same time.
Before you activate, you'll see an in-app list naming every ITA flow that's about to be turned off. You'll need to manually rebuild your best-performing ITA flows as standard automation flows for your control group.
Setting up Shopper Automations takes four steps. This article walks through each one so you know exactly what to expect.
Step 1: Fill Out Your Brand Center
Brand Center is where Shopper learns your voice, offers, and product knowledge — it's the context every automation message is built from. If you're already live on Shopper Responses, you've done most of this work. Before turning on Shopper Automations, give each area a review:
Brand Guidelines — Controls how Shopper sounds. For detailed instructions, see Setting Up Your Brand Guidelines.
Content Library — Shopper's knowledge base for policies, FAQs, and product education. For detailed instructions, see Content Library Overview.
Product Catalog — Controls which products Shopper can recommend. For detailed instructions, see Managing Your Product Catalog.
Offers — A centralized place to manage all of your available offers. For detailed instructions, see Create and Manage Offers.
💡 Tip: The more complete your Brand Center, the better every Shopper Automations message performs. This is the single highest-leverage input you control.
Step 2: Turn On Shopper Responses
Shopper Responses is required for Shopper Automations. When Shopper Automations wants to learn more about a subscriber, it opens a conversation and Shopper Responses is what picks up and handles that conversation. In turn, Shopper Automations learns from the zero-party data you collect with Shopper Responses to better tailor the journey for each individual subscriber.
If you're not live on Responses yet, start with How to Set Up Shopper (Quick-Start Checklist).
Step 3: Set Your Audience Split
During the exploration phase, you're required to start at a 50/50 split so the experiment can reach statistical significance as quickly as possible. This maximizes both what Shopper learns and how quickly you can trust the lift number.
Once the experiment reaches the optimizing phase (confidence ≥ 80%), you can adjust anywhere in the 20–80% range based on how the results are looking.
Step 4: Review Sample Messages
Before you go live, you'll review sample messages: directional examples of the kinds of messages Shopper will send for each primary trigger (Subscriber Created, Subscriber Viewed Product, Product Added to Cart, Checkout Started, and Link Click).
A few things to know about them:
They're directional, not literal — Real messages are shaped by the actual subscriber's browsing history, past purchases, and conversation history.
They're shaped by Brand Center — Everything you configured there flows into these examples.
They're interactive — You can regenerate any example you don't like, thumbs-down a message, and leave specific feedback on what didn't look or feel right.
What Happens Next
After you activate, Shopper watches for the same automation triggers you'd normally build flows around (opt-ins, browse, cart adds, and checkout) and sends each test-group subscriber an individually written message instead of a templated flow.
For how Shopper decides what to send, see How Shopper Automations Works. For how to read your results and when to scale your split, see Understanding Your Shopper Automations Results.
Things to Know
Shopper Responses is required — Shopper Automations can't run without it.
Send volume stays predictable — Shopper is seeded with your historical automation data and targets similar volume to your existing program.
Shopper Automations covers your core automation flows — Campaigns, flows from third-party integrations, and transactional messages are unaffected, and continue sending to both your test and control groups.
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