AlpacaRelay + Shopify: Quality-Scored Emails, Connected

Start by signing up for AlpacaRelay at no cost—no credit card required. Visit alpacarelay.com and click 'Get Started.' You'll create an account with your email and password. Once verified, you'll land in the AlpacaRelay dashboard. This is your control center for all email campaigns, quality scoring, and integrations. The free tier includes full access to the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework and allows you to connect your first platform integration immediately. You can upgrade to a paid plan only when you're ready to scale—setup itself is completely free.

From your AlpacaRelay dashboard, go to Settings in the left sidebar, then select Integrations. You'll see a list of supported platforms; find and click on Shopify. AlpacaRelay will prompt you to authorize the connection. You'll be redirected to your Shopify admin (you must be logged in as a store owner or have admin permissions). Shopify will request permission for AlpacaRelay to access: customer contact information, order history, product catalog, and cart abandonment data. These are read-only permissions—AlpacaRelay cannot modify your Shopify store. Click 'Install App' in Shopify to confirm. You'll be redirected back to AlpacaRelay within seconds to confirm the connection is live.

Once authorization is complete, AlpacaRelay will automatically detect your Shopify data. You'll see a mapping preview showing: customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, purchase history, product preferences, and cart data. AlpacaRelay uses real-time webhooks to sync new orders, customer signups, and cart abandonment events as they happen in Shopify. Historical data (your existing customer list and past orders) syncs in the background—this typically takes 5-15 minutes depending on your store size. You can monitor sync progress in the Integration Status panel. Once syncing is complete, all your Shopify customers are available in AlpacaRelay as a unified contact list, ready for segmentation and campaign creation.

In the AlpacaRelay dashboard, click 'Create Campaign' and select 'Email.' Choose your campaign type—Abandoned Cart, Post-Purchase, Browse Abandonment, Product Recommendation, or Welcome Series. AlpacaRelay's AI will auto-generate subject lines, body copy, and CTAs based on your Shopify data and your brand voice. You'll see a draft instantly. Edit any text, adjust the send time, and select your target audience (e.g., 'customers who abandoned carts in the last 24 hours'). Before you send, AlpacaRelay automatically scores your email against the 8-Dimension Email Quality Framework: Deliverability, Mobile Render, CTA Clarity, Personalization Depth, Visual Hierarchy, Copy Effectiveness, Brand Consistency, and Structural Compliance. Your Email Quality Score (EQS) appears at the top—aim for 8/10 or higher. The score guides you to specific improvements. Once satisfied, approve the campaign and send live.

After your first manual campaign, AlpacaRelay will offer to activate Tier 1 automation flows: Welcome emails for new subscribers, Win-Back campaigns for inactive customers, and Post-Purchase sequences for recent buyers. These auto-activations ensure every triggered email is quality-scored before delivery. You can review and customize each automation's schedule, messaging, and segmentation rules, but they're ready to run immediately. Each email in the automation is scored for quality and only sent if it meets your threshold (default is EQS 7+/10). In the Analytics dashboard, you'll see real-time performance: open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue attributed to each campaign. For abandoned cart emails, track cart recovery rate and average order value. For post-purchase sequences, monitor engagement lift and repeat purchase rate. Quality-scored emails consistently outperform unscored benchmarks—abandoned cart campaigns with EQS 8+/10 recover 14-18% of carts versus the 10-15% industry average. Review your quality scores weekly to identify patterns and refine future campaigns.