Shopify marketing agency: what to hire for at each stage, and six worth calling

A Shopify marketing agency grows a Shopify store through paid acquisition, conversion work, SEO or retention. The right hire depends on stage. Before traffic is steady, fix acquisition. Once it is steady, retention usually returns more, because email and SMS flows sell to buyers you already paid for. Six agencies below, each described from its own site.

The four jobs a Shopify marketing agency can do

Most agencies that call themselves Shopify marketing agencies lead with one of four jobs and sell the others around it. Knowing which job an agency actually leads with tells you more than its partner badge.

What to hire for at each stage

The stage most Shopify brands sit in longer than they should is the second one. Paid keeps working, so the brand keeps paying for it, while the buyers it already acquired leave after one order. Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks across more than 183,000 accounts show automated flows produce nearly 41% of email revenue from 5.3% of sends, and nearly 48% of flow revenue comes from new buyers against 16% for campaigns. Omnisend's January 2026 report puts it in dollars: $2.87 in revenue per automated email against $0.18 per campaign email.

Six Shopify marketing agencies, from their own sites

Each entry below states the job the agency leads with on its own site, so you can match it to the stage table above. Partner tiers and client counts are each agency's own claims, read in October 2026.

1. BMO Media: retention for Shopify brands

BMO Media is a lifecycle marketing agency for DTC brands and a Klaviyo partner. We run the Klaviyo flows, campaigns, SMS, loyalty, reviews and subscriptions connected to your Shopify store as one program. The work starts with the plumbing most Shopify brands never check. When Kinetic Kings, an apparel brand, came to us on basic Klaviyo flows and generic templates, we found a broken pop-up that stopped new subscribers from receiving their first discount code. We fixed it, rebuilt the welcome series around the brand's story, added a post-purchase automation for repeat orders, and overall email revenue rose 105% year over year.

The same model holds across our Shopify clients. For Darc Sport, which came to us from Mailchimp, rebuilt Klaviyo automations now carry 30% of total email revenue and an SMS program on Attentive reached 41,000 subscribers within two months. For Birdy Grey, a wedding apparel brand, flow optimization and segmentation by wedding timeline produced a 60% year-over-year increase in flow revenue. If Klaviyo is your platform, our Klaviyo partner agency page covers audits, builds and migrations.

2. UM

UM describes itself as a Shopify agency trusted by more than 200 brands, running data-driven paid ads, retention and creative, with case studies that report return on ad spend. Its lead job is paid acquisition with retention alongside, which fits stores in the first stage.

3. Netalico

Netalico describes itself as a Shopify marketing agency for SEO, conversion rate optimization, paid acquisition and Klaviyo retention, and lists itself as a Shopify Plus Premier Partner and a Klaviyo Gold Partner. The fit is brands that want organic growth and conversion work from one team.

4. Barrel

Barrel describes itself as a CPG commerce agency and Shopify Platinum Partner that designs, launches, migrates and grows Shopify sites connected to email, SMS, SEO, marketplaces and retail. Hire it when the store itself needs rebuilding.

5. Front Row

Front Row describes itself as a growth partner for marketplaces and commerce, with Shopify and Shopify Plus development, lifecycle retention and marketplace work, including an Amazon case study, among its solutions. The fit is brands selling on Shopify and Amazon at the same time.

6. The AD Leaf

The AD Leaf runs a Shopify advertising practice covering marketing and advertising strategy for Shopify stores. Its lead job is paid media, which fits a store that has not yet found its acquisition engine.

What a retention program on Shopify should include

If retention is the job you are hiring for, these are the pieces to ask about by name. The Shopify and Klaviyo integration syncing orders, products and customer tags correctly. A pop-up that actually delivers the code it promises, tested on mobile. A welcome series, abandoned checkout, browse abandonment and post-purchase flow, each filtered so buyers never get a reminder after they have bought. SMS on Klaviyo, Attentive or Postscript with suppression shared with email. A review request timed to delivery. And, for consumable products, replenishment and subscriptions. Our customer retention strategies post covers the program in more depth.

Signs your Shopify store needs retention more than traffic

• More than four in five orders each month come from first-time buyers, and the share is not falling.

• Paid acquisition is profitable on the first order only when nothing goes wrong, so every cost increase becomes a crisis.

• The Klaviyo account has a welcome and an abandoned checkout flow and little else, or the flows have not been opened since launch.

• Campaigns go to the whole list, and the unsubscribe rate climbs every quarter.

• Nobody can say what a customer is worth after 12 months, so nobody can say what to pay to acquire one.

If three or more of those describe your store, a retention hire will usually return more in its first quarter than another increase in paid spend, because it works on customers you already own. Our customer lifetime value guide shows how to put a number on the last point before you brief any agency.

The first 90 days with a retention agency on Shopify

Weeks one and two should be an audit, not a launch. A good agency reads the Shopify and Klaviyo integration, every live flow and its filters, the pop-up on mobile and desktop, the sending domain and authentication, the SMS consent records, and the last six months of campaigns. The output is a ranked list of what is costing money now, with an estimate for each. For Kinetic Kings, the top item was a pop-up that never delivered its code, which no amount of new creative would have fixed.

Weeks three to eight rebuild the core flows in order of revenue: abandoned checkout and welcome first, then browse abandonment and post-purchase, then win-back. Each launches with its filters and a holdout or a before-and-after read. Campaigns move to a calendar built on segments, with SMS reserved for the moments that justify a text. Weeks nine to twelve add the program that fits the catalog: replenishment and subscriptions for consumables, loyalty and reviews for repeat categories, and a reporting rhythm that shows flow revenue per recipient, repeat purchase rate by cohort and opt-out rate by send.

How to read a Shopify agency proposal

Proposals tend to look alike, so read them for four things. First, whether the scope names specific flows, channels and deliverables or only outcomes; outcomes without inputs are impossible to hold anyone to. Second, whether the first month is an audit or a launch; a launch before an audit means the plan was written before anyone looked at your store. Third, how success is measured and against what baseline, and whether any of the measures are incremental rather than attributed. Fourth, what happens to your accounts, templates and data if you leave; they should stay with you.

When an agency is the wrong hire

An agency is the wrong answer when the product has not found repeat buyers on its own, when the store converts so poorly that more traffic or more emails only magnify the leak, or when nobody inside the business can approve creative and offers within a week. In those cases the money is better spent on the product, the store or one internal owner first. Say so to any agency you interview; a good one will tell you when it is not the right hire yet.

What Shopify marketing agencies cost

None of the six publish a rate card on the pages read for this list. Paid agencies usually bill a retainer plus a share of ad spend; conversion and SEO agencies bill a retainer or a project; build agencies quote by project; retention agencies bill a monthly retainer sized to the flows, campaigns and channels in scope. Our guide to what email marketing agencies charge breaks down the retention models, and our post on hiring an agency versus building in-house runs the comparison.

Five questions to ask before you sign

• Which job do you lead with, and which do you subcontract? An agency that sells all four usually does one of them very well.

• What did you find in the last store you audited that the brand did not know about? The answer tells you whether they check the plumbing.

• Who owns the Shopify, Klaviyo and ad accounts? They should be in your name, with the agency invited as a user.

• What will you report, and how will you prove it is incremental? Cost per new customer for paid, revenue per recipient by flow for retention.

• Which Shopify brands like ours are you working with now, and what changed for them?

Request a free retention audit.