How to Find the Decision Makers at a Shopify Brand

To find the decision maker at a Shopify brand, first work out which role decides on what you sell, because the answer changes with the brand's size. At a small store it's usually the founder. At a mid-size brand it's the head of ecommerce, the marketing lead or operations, depending on your product. Then find the person: the store's About page, LinkedIn and the company's people data will give you names and titles. Reveal a work email only for the one or two people you actually plan to write to.

Who decides, by store size

Think in three bands. The sales and traffic figures you'll see for a store are estimates (see how to estimate a Shopify store's sales), but they're accurate enough to put a store in the right band.

Then match the role to what you sell:

• Marketing apps and agency services (email, reviews, ads, SEO): marketing or growth lead.
• Site and conversion work (themes, speed, checkout, search): head of ecommerce or the digital lead.
• Operations tools (inventory, shipping, returns, ERP): operations or supply chain lead.
• Anything at a small store: the founder.

What you need

• The store's domain, ideally already qualified as a fit. Building that list is covered in [how to get a list of Shopify stores by country and category](/blog/list-shopify-stores-by-country-category).
• A LinkedIn account.
• Optional: a ShopLens API key to pull people and contacts with code or from an AI assistant.

Steps

1. Read the store's About page and footer for founder names.
2. Find the company on LinkedIn and list people with ecommerce, marketing or operations titles.
3. Pull the people list for the store from a data source to fill gaps.
4. Pick one or two people based on the table above.
5. Reveal the work email for those people only.
6. Write to them with something specific about their store.

Step 1: start with the store itself

Small brands often tell their story on an About or Our Story page, with the founder's name and sometimes a photo. Check the footer and the press page too. Interviews on podcasts and in trade press often name the founder and sometimes the first hires. This step is free and it gives you context you can use in your first message.

Step 2: search LinkedIn

Search the brand's name on LinkedIn, open the company page and look at the People tab. Filter by titles such as "ecommerce", "digital", "marketing", "growth" and "operations". Small brands sometimes don't have a company page, so search for people whose headline mentions the brand.

Watch for two traps. Agencies and freelancers often list a client brand in their headline, so check that the person works at the brand. And people move on: a profile that still lists the brand might be out of date.

Step 3: pull the people list

A data source saves you the LinkedIn crawl when you're working through many stores. ShopLens lists the people working at a store's company with their first name, a masked last name, their job title, and whether an email or direct phone is available. Contacts are never included in the list.

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $SHOPLENS_API_KEY" \
  "https://data.shoplens.dev/api/v1/shops/example-store.com/people?limit=20"

{
  "total": 38,
  "people": [
    {
      "id": "p_8f2c1a",
      "firstName": "Alex",
      "lastName": "Ri***s",
      "title": "Head of Ecommerce",
      "hasEmail": true,
      "hasPhone": false
    }
  ],
  "hasNextPage": true,
  "nextCursor": "eyJvIjoyMH0"
}

The values above are an example. A page of people costs 5 credits. The endpoint only works for stores ShopLens already has, so look the store up with GET /shops/{domain} first.

Step 4: pick the right person

Use the table at the top of this article. At a brand with 38 people, the head of ecommerce in the example is a better first contact for a conversion tool than the CEO. If two people could own the decision, start with the more junior one, who is more likely to read a cold email and can bring in their manager.

Step 5: reveal one contact at a time

Revealing a contact returns the person's work email and LinkedIn URL, and optionally their phone. It's meant to be a deliberate action on one person: do it for the people you'll actually write to, not for everyone on the list.

curl -s -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $SHOPLENS_API_KEY" \
  https://data.shoplens.dev/api/v1/shops/example-store.com/people/p_8f2c1a/reveal

A reveal costs 25 credits, or 150 with phone=true. If the people list says hasPhone is false, asking for the phone answers 422. The contact is stored, so revealing the same person again returns it without a new lookup. All the details are in the API docs.

If you work from Claude or ChatGPT, the same two steps are available as the get_shop_people and reveal_shop_person tools on the MCP server; see how to connect Claude or ChatGPT to Shopify store data.

Step 6: write a specific first message

The contact is only worth the credits if the message earns a reply. Mention something you saw on their store this month: a new collection, a price change, a sale, a new ad campaign. Then connect it to what you offer in one or two sentences. Generic messages that could go to any brand get ignored.

Before you send, check the rules that apply to you. Data protection and email marketing laws differ by country (the GDPR in the EU and the UK, CAN-SPAM in the US, for example), and they set rules on how you may contact people at work and what you must include in the message.

When nobody is listed

Small stores sometimes have no people listed anywhere. The founder may run the store under a different name, or not use LinkedIn at all. In that case, use the store's own channels: the contact email in the footer or on the contact page, which is often read by the founder at small brands, and the store's social accounts. Keep the message short and specific, as above.

Common mistakes

• Always going to the founder. At a 50-person brand the founder is rarely the buyer for a single tool, and they get the most cold email.
• Revealing everyone. It costs credits and fills your CRM with people you'll never contact.
• Trusting old titles. Confirm on LinkedIn that the person still works there before you write.
• Skipping the research. A two-minute look at the store makes the first line of your email.

How to check it worked

Track replies by role for your first 30 to 50 contacts. If founders of mid-size brands don't reply but ecommerce leads do, adjust the table for your market. The right role is the one that answers and says yes, and that can differ from what an org chart suggests.