BRANDEE DUDENHOEFEr
CONTENT DESIGNER | SILLY GOOSE
Scaling Shopify Commerce+ from exclusive event to global digital experience
How I helped build the end-to-end content experience that opened Commerce+ to growing brands worldwide—driving 90K+ registrations, 34K new-to-Shopify leads, and 557 free trials.
ROLE
Lead Content Designer
SCOPE
Content strategy · Campaign messaging · Digital experience · Acquisition
CHANNELS
Web · Email · Paid social · Search · Internal communications
IMPACT
90K+ registrants
34K new leads · 557 free trials
The challenge
Reimagine Commerce+ for brands at every stage
Since 2018, Commerce+ had been a space for some of the fastest-growing brands to connect, share insights, and explore what was next in commerce.
In 2021, the pandemic accelerated Commerce+’s shift to a global digital experience, creating an opportunity to open the once-exclusive event to aspiring and growing businesses around the world.
That meant rethinking not just where Commerce+ happened, but who it was for, how we communicated its value, and how a one-day event could become a global campaign experience.
Three shifts shaped the work
A broader audience
Commerce+ was expanding beyond its established audience of high-growth brands. The experience needed to resonate with aspiring and growing businesses while maintaining the ambition and expertise that had defined the event.
A global digital experience
Without the intimacy or built-in exclusivity of an in-person event, we had to create that value differently, using content and storytelling to build excitement, communicate what attendees would gain, and give a much broader audience a reason to register.
A journey across channels
Commerce+ wasn't a single event page. The experience stretched across landing pages, email, paid social, search, internal communications, and post-event touchpoints. Each channel had a different job, but together they needed to tell one connected story.
Our approach
Build the campaign around one idea
As lead content designer, I worked across Design, Brand, Marketing, and cross-functional teams to shape the Commerce+ experience from first impression through event-day engagement. At the center was a simple idea:
Commerce is changing. Commerce+ brings together the people defining what comes next.
01 — POSITION
Opening Commerce+ to a broader audience meant giving people more than a list of speakers and sessions. We positioned the event around the conversations shaping what commerce would become—and the people already challenging its conventions.
That idea came to life in messaging like “Defining commerce. Defying convention.”, “Conversations that change everything.”, and “Industry makers and rule breakers.”
The landing experience brought that positioning together in one place—establishing the event proposition, introducing the conversations shaping commerce, spotlighting speakers, and giving visitors a clear reason to register.
02 — CONNECT
Carry the idea across every channel
I led content across the Commerce+ landing experience, email, organic and paid social, search, internal communications, and event-day content.
Rather than repeating the same message everywhere, we adapted the central idea to each format—introducing speakers, teasing conversations, asking provocative questions, driving registration, and building anticipation for the event.
03 — NURTURE
Keep the experience going
When the livestream ended, the experience didn't. We flipped the Commerce+ site from acquisition to retention—replacing registration with on-demand content and an email subscription path designed to keep the new audience connected to Shopify.
Email and social extended that lifecycle, bringing people back to event content and continuing the conversations Commerce+ had started.
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Impact
90k
Total registrants
Just shy of the 100K goal.
34k
New-to-Shopify leads
Against a target of 10K
3.4× goal
557
Free trials
211% of the original goal
Commerce+ reinforced something that has carried into my product work: content doesn't stop at the boundary between brand and product.
A strong idea can earn attention, but the experience around it has to give people somewhere to go next.
For Commerce+, that meant connecting campaign storytelling with registration, participation, and continued engagement with Shopify.