A practical guide: How does Shopify help with AI marketing in 2025

Let’s be honest, for most people running a Shopify store, "AI" feels like a buzzword thrown around by tech companies. You hear about amazing new tools, but when you look closer, they often seem like complicated solutions in search of a problem, just adding another thing to your to-do list.

Meanwhile, you’re stuck in the weeds, spending way too much of your day on tasks that feel like a grind: writing what feels like the thousandth product description, tweaking photos, and answering the same customer questions on repeat.

This guide is here to cut through that noise. We’ll walk you through how Shopify helps with AI marketing in a practical way. We’ll start with the tools already built into your store and then move on to the more advanced stuff that can actually help you grow your business without burning out.

What you’ll need to get started

Before we jump in, let’s do a quick check to make sure you’re set up for success. This isn’t about having a computer science degree; it’s just about having the right pieces in place so these AI tools can do their job.

You should have:

• An active Shopify store with your products listed.

• A good sense of your biggest time-sinks. Is it creating content, handling customer service, or trying to whip up ads?

• Access to your store’s data on products, customers, and sales.

• An open mind to trying out a few new tools and letting them automate some of your workflow.

A step-by-step guide to using AI with Shopify

Alright, let’s get into the good stuff. Here’s how you can start weaving AI into your Shopify store, moving from the simple first steps to the more powerful strategies.

Step 1: Start with the basics using Shopify’s built-in AI tools

The best place to begin is with the AI features Shopify has already included in its platform, which they call Shopify Magic. These are great because they don’t cost anything extra and there’s no complicated setup. You can start using them today to get some time back in your schedule.

Let Shopify Magic write your content

First up, content. We’ve all been there, staring at a blank screen trying to write a compelling product description. With Shopify Magic, you just need to pop in a few keywords and key features, and it will generate SEO-friendly copy for you. This is a huge time-saver and helps keep your brand voice consistent across your whole site. You can also use it to get a first draft of a blog post or an email campaign, which is often enough to get you past that initial writer’s block.

Clean up your product photos in a click

Great product photos are non-negotiable, but getting them professionally edited can be a drag on your time and budget. Shopify’s AI image editor can automatically remove the background from your product shots or even generate a new one. It’s a simple way to give your store a clean, professional look without needing to be a Photoshop whiz or hiring a designer.

Answer simple customer questions faster

Shopify Inbox has a feature that uses AI to suggest replies to common questions you get in customer chats. Think of it as a first line of defense for speeding up your response times on simple queries about shipping or returns. It’s helpful for keeping customers happy in the moment, but as we’ll get into later, it does have its limits when things get more complicated.

Step 2: Bring in specialized apps to scale your marketing

Once you’ve streamlined the content on your site, the next move is to use AI to find new customers and keep your existing ones coming back. This is where you bring in some specialized third-party apps that can take your marketing to the next level.

Create ads without the headache

Instead of spending days creating visuals for your ad campaigns, tools like Zeely AI can generate high-quality video and static ads using just a product URL. This means you can get a social media campaign up and running in a few minutes, not a few weeks, which leaves you more time to think about strategy instead of being stuck in production.

Send emails that actually get opened

Platforms like Klaviyo use AI to look at customer behavior and figure out the perfect time to send an email. This is incredibly useful for automating things like abandoned cart reminders, win-back campaigns, or personalized offers that people actually act on. It’s all about sending the right message at the right moment, without you having to lift a finger.

Create a more personal shopping experience

Other apps use AI for things like interactive product quizzes (check out Octane AI) or smarter "you might also like" recommendations. These tools can give your average order value a nice bump by helping shoppers find products they’ll love, making their whole experience feel more tailored to them.

To help you decide where you might want to start, here’s a quick breakdown of the types of tools out there:

Tool Category	Example(s)	What the AI Does	How It Helps You
Ad Creatives	Zeely AI	Makes video and static ads from a product link.	Launch campaigns in minutes, not days.
Email Marketing	Klaviyo AI	Analyzes customer behavior to send automated emails.	Encourage repeat purchases and build loyalty.
Product Quizzes	Octane AI	Uses interactive quizzes to guide shoppers to the right product.	Improve conversion rates and learn about your customers.

This video explores several AI tools that can help you grow your Shopify store exponentially.

Step 3: Automate sales and support with a smart AI chatbot

This final step is where you can see the biggest impact: creating a 24/7 customer experience that doesn’t just solve problems but actively helps you make sales. While Shopify’s built-in tools are good for simple replies, a dedicated AI agent can handle the entire customer journey, from their first question all the way to checkout.

Give your AI a brain (a.k.a. all your business info)

For an AI agent to be genuinely useful, it needs to know your business inside and out. This is where a tool like eesel AI is different. You can connect it directly to your Shopify product catalog, past support tickets from help desks like Zendesk or Gorgias, and even internal documents in Google Docs. That deep connection means the AI can give specific, accurate answers instead of the generic, "I’m sorry, I can’t help with that" responses that drive customers crazy.

This infographic explains how an AI agent uses integrated knowledge from Shopify, help desks, and internal docs to provide accurate support, answering the question of how does Shopify help with AI marketing.

Make your bot sound like you, not a robot

Your chatbot shouldn’t have the personality of a toaster. With eesel AI’s straightforward prompt editor, you can set your AI’s tone of voice so it aligns with your brand. Even better, you can create custom actions. This lets the AI do real tasks, like looking up an order status, checking if a product is in stock, or passing a tricky issue to a human agent with all the conversation history attached. It’s not just answering questions; it’s actually getting things done for your customers.

Go live without the anxiety

One of the biggest worries for any store owner is launching a "bad bot" that just annoys everyone and creates more work. eesel AI helps you avoid this with a simulation mode. You can test your AI on thousands of your past customer conversations to see exactly how it will perform. You’ll know what it can answer, what your automation rate will look like, and where you might need to add more information, all before a single customer talks to it. It’s a risk-free way to make sure everything is running smoothly before you flip the switch.

This screenshot shows the simulation mode in eesel AI, a key feature for anyone asking how does Shopify help with AI marketing by allowing risk-free testing of their chatbot.

Here’s a quick look at how that might work:

1. A customer opens the chat on your site and asks, "Where is my order?"

2. The eesel AI chatbot, which is connected to your Shopify store, uses a custom action to look up the order details.

3. It replies instantly with a specific update: "Your order #1234 has shipped and should arrive tomorrow."

4. If a customer has a tougher question, the AI doesn’t just give up. It automatically escalates the chat to a human agent and creates a ticket in your help desk with the full conversation history.

Tips for getting the most from your AI tools

• Start small, then build. Don’t try to automate your entire business on day one. Pick one big headache, like answering the same five questions all day. Find a tool to solve that, see how it goes, and then figure out what’s next.

• Keep a human in the loop. Think of AI as an assistant, not a replacement for your team. Let it handle the 80% of repetitive work so your people can focus on the complex, high-value conversations that build real relationships with customers.

• Choose tools that respect your time. You’re busy. Avoid platforms that make you sit through a mandatory demo and a long sales call just to try them out. Modern tools like eesel AI are built to be self-serve, so you can sign up and get started in minutes, not months.

How Shopify helps with AI marketing

To circle back to the main question: how does Shopify help with AI marketing? It gives you a great starting point with built-in tools like Shopify Magic to help you create content more efficiently. From there, you can tap into a huge ecosystem of apps that let you scale up your advertising and email marketing.

See how Shopify's new built-in AI assistant, Sidekick, is changing the game for store owners.

But if you want to build a store that feels like it’s running itself and delivering a great experience 24/7, that’s where advanced AI agents like eesel AI come in. They pull together all of your business knowledge to automate support and guide customers, driving both sales and loyalty. The goal isn’t to replace you; it’s to give you back the time to focus on what you’re best at: growing your brand.

Ready to let an AI handle the busywork?

If you’re ready to automate your customer support and turn more of those chats into sales, give eesel AI a look. It connects directly with your Shopify store and help desk to provide instant, accurate answers that help you grow. You can start a free trial today and see how it works for yourself.