Every day, Shopify merchants ship orders to customers they know almost nothing about.
They know the name. The address. What was purchased. Maybe an email open rate.
What they do not know: whether that customer is a founder building a company in their space. A VC who just invested in a direct competitor. A YouTuber with 800,000 subscribers who covers exactly their product category. A celebrity whose fan base is their target demographic.
That information exists. It is sitting inside the email address your customer used at checkout. Until today, most merchants had no way to surface it automatically.
That is what SonarID does.
What SonarID Is
SonarID is a Shopify app that identifies your high-value customers — influencers, celebrities, founders, executives, investors, and media professionals — from your order data.
When someone places an order, SonarID enriches their email in the background, calculates a VIP score based on their professional and social identity, and sends you a Slack alert if they qualify as a notable buyer.
You do not need to check a dashboard. You do not need to manually Google your customer list. You find out the moment it matters — when their order is fresh, their attention is on your brand, and there is a real reason to reach out. Learn more about how VIP detection works.
The Problem We Are Solving
Most Shopify merchants have a VIP discovery problem they have never named.
You hear about it in hindsight: *"Oh, that influencer bought from us? We had no idea. She mentioned our competitor instead."* Or: *"The investor in our seed round? He had been a customer for two years before we met him at a conference."*
These are not rare occurrences. At any meaningful order volume, notable people are buying from your store regularly. The question is not whether they are there — it is whether you have a system for finding them when it counts.
Traditional customer analytics does not solve this. Segment and Klaviyo are built around behavioral data — what people do, not who they are. High-spend customers get flagged, but an influencer who places a single $79 order is invisible. LTV models do not capture influence.
SonarID is the missing layer: identity data on top of transaction data.
How It Works
1. Connect your Shopify store. SonarID installs like any other Shopify app and connects to your order webhooks.
2. Connect Slack. When a VIP is detected, SonarID sends an alert to a channel of your choice — instantly.
3. Orders get enriched automatically. Every new order triggers a background enrichment job. SonarID checks the customer's email against professional and social data sources to build a profile.
4. VIP scoring runs on every profile. SonarID evaluates signals: job titles (founder, CEO, partner), social following (10K+ on LinkedIn or Twitter), investment background (VC, angel, fund partner), media roles (journalist, editor, podcaster), creator status (YouTuber, newsletter writer).
5. You get a Slack alert for matches. The alert includes the customer's name, what they ordered, their VIP category, and the key signals that triggered it — so you have everything you need to decide how to respond.
Who SonarID Detects
SonarID identifies customers across six VIP categories:
Additional signals boost scores: elite university backgrounds, FAANG or unicorn company affiliations, Forbes 30 Under 30, YC alumni, and similar markers.
Why Now
The DTC landscape has changed. Paid acquisition is expensive and getting more competitive. Organic growth through community, press, and creator partnerships matters more than ever. And the brands winning at organic growth are not just lucky — they are systematic about spotting opportunities and acting on them.
An influencer who buys from you organically and then gets a thoughtful personal note from the founder converts to a collaborator at a rate no paid partnership can match. A journalist who orders your product and then hears from your PR team within 24 hours is a warm lead, not a cold pitch. An investor who bought your product twice is not the same as a cold LP outreach email.
SonarID makes these moments visible. Discover what your checkout data intelligence can reveal.
Pricing
Every plan includes real-time Slack alerts, full VIP scoring, and automatic order enrichment.
Get Started
SonarID is available now on the Shopify App Store.
Install it, connect your store, connect Slack, and see who has already been buying from you that you did not know about. The answers are usually surprising.
[Start detecting VIP customers →](/signup)
*Built for Shopify merchants who want to know more than what their customers bought — they want to know who their customers are.*