Collecting customer contact information

You can use email and SMS marketing to grow your business and build relationships with your customers. Consider using the Shopify Forms app to grow your subscriber list. After your customers sign up for marketing, you can use an email marketing app such as Shopify Email to send newsletters to customers and let them know about new products and upcoming sales.

Grow your business

Learn more about how to grow your business with email marketing on the Shopify blog.

Collect contact information from customers

Note

For more information about how Shopify collects, uses, and stores personal information, refer to the Shopify Privacy Policy.

For legal and privacy reasons, make sure that you send promotional content only to customers who have agreed to receive marketing from your online store. Customers can subscribe to marketing content by adding their contact information to a newsletter sign-up on your online store, or by checking a checkbox in the checkout. You can then have them receive a confirmation message for subscription by modifying your checkout settings for email or checkout settings for SMS.

If your shop is set up to send abandoned cart reminders, then you need to change the information that displays next to the consent checkbox. You can change the information for the email and SMS marketing opt-in by using your theme's language editor.

Note

If your store is located in Germany and your SMS and email marketing setup require you to send confirmation messages to your customers, then your customers must respond to these messages to be included in any marketing that you send. Enabling double opt-in can help you to meet GDPR compliance requirements], and to create a list of engaged subscribers.

After a customer accepts marketing from your online store, their email address or phone number is displayed on the Customers page of your Shopify admin. To list only the customers who agreed to receive promotional content through email, you can click the default Email subscribers segment, or you can create a new customer segment to list specific types of customers who accepted email marketing.

Collect customer emails from the checkout

If you activate this option, then for the customer's subscription preference to be saved, the customer needs to complete the checkout.

Note

If your store is located in Germany, then you need to add additional customer subscription status information.

Steps:

Desktop

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Checkout.

2. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the Marketing options section, check Email.

3. Optional: Check Preselected so that the email marketing sign-up check box is preselected at the checkout by default for customers without an account or customers who are on your email subscription list. The email marketing sign-up check box isn't preselected for customers who have opted out of email marketing or who aren't on your email subscription list.

4. Click Save.

iPhone

1. From the Shopify app, tap the … button, and then tap Settings.
2. In the Store settings section, tap Checkout.
3. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the Marketing options section, check **Email*.
4. Optional: Check Preselected so that the email marketing sign-up check box is preselected at the checkout by default for customers without an account or customers who are on your email subscription list. The email marketing sign-up check box isn't preselected for customers who have opted out of email marketing or who aren't on your email subscription list.
5. Click Save.

Android

1. From the Shopify app, tap the … button, and then tap Settings.
2. In the Store settings section, tap Checkout.
3. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the Marketing options section, check Email.
4. Check Preselected so that the email marketing sign-up check box is preselected at the checkout by default for customers without an account or customers who are on your email subscription list. The email marketing sign-up check box isn't preselected for customers who have opted out of email marketing or who aren't on your email subscription list.
5. Click Save.

Collect customer phone numbers from the checkout

To collect customer phone numbers from the checkout, you need to make sure you have the SMS checkout option activated in your Settings. Refer to Set up your customer's SMS notifications for detailed instructions.

Note

If your store is located in Germany, then you need to add additional customer subscription status information.

Steps:

Desktop

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Checkout.

2. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the Marketing options section, check SMS.

3. In the Customer information section, select whether it should be optional or required to add a phone number at checkout. If your payment provider or shipping carrier requires that the customer provides a phone number to complete the checkout, then set the phone number to Required.

4. Click Save.

iPhone

1. From the Shopify app, tap the … button, and then tap Settings.
2. In the Store settings section, tap Checkout.
3. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the Marketing options section, check SMS.
4. In the Customer information section, select whether it should be optional or required to add a phone number at checkout. If your payment provider or shipping carrier requires that the customer provides a phone number to complete the checkout, then set the phone number to Required.
5. Click Save.

Android

1. From the Shopify app, tap the … button, and then tap Settings.
2. In the Store settings section, tap Checkout.
3. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the Marketing options section, check SMS.
4. In the Customer information section, select whether it should be optional or required to add a phone number at checkout. If your payment provider or shipping carrier requires that the customer provides a phone number to complete the checkout, then set the phone number to Required.
5. Click Save.

Note

For the customer's SMS marketing subscription preference to be saved, the customer needs to complete the checkout.

Collect customer emails in Germany

If your store is located in Germany, then there is an additional Require customers to confirm their subscription check box on the Email marketing section of the Notifications settings page. Letting customers opt in to receive marketing emails helps you create a more engaged subscriber list by preventing uninterested or incorrect email addresses from being added to your subscriber's list.

Collect customer emails from your home page

To collect customer emails from your home page, add a newsletter signup section to your online store. With a newsletter signup, you collect email addresses from your customers and store them in the Email subscribers customer segment on the Customers page in the Shopify admin.

For help with adding a newsletter section to your online store, refer to your theme documentation.

Activate double opt-in for subscribers

Double opt-in requires customers to click a link in an email to confirm that they want to receive email and SMS marketing from you. The confirmation email is sent automatically when someone enters their email address and subscribes in your online store. In some countries, double opt-in is required by law, but in general it's also a best practice for acquiring more engaged subscribers. Customers who subscribe to your mailing before you activate double opt-in aren't required to confirm their status.

You need to have the Online Store sales channel installed to activate double opt-in.

You can customize your double opt-in email by clicking Settings > Notifications in your Shopify admin. For legal reasons, this email should not contain any marketing.

If you activate double opt-in, then you should update the newsletter form's confirmation message in your online store so that customers know to check their email for a follow-up confirmation. Updating the confirmation message can help ensure more opt-ins. For example, your confirmation message could say something such as “Check your email to confirm your subscription!”.

You can edit the confirmation message in your Shopify admin by going to Online Store > Themes. In the section for your active theme, click the ... button, and then click Edit default theme content. This field might be displayed differently depending on your theme, but in general the field is labeled either Confirmation under the Newsletter form section or Post success under the Sign up section.

Note

If you activate double opt-in for your Shopify store and use a subscription app, then you need to update the double opt-in settings in the app. If the app doesn’t have a double opt-in option, then any customers who sign up are marked as a subscriber on the Customers page.

Steps:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Notifications.

2. Click Customer notifications.

3. In the Marketing double opt-in section, check Customer marketing confirmation.

Email marketing glossary

When you're researching or preparing email marketing, you might encounter some of the following terminology:

• A/B test - an experiment where two or more versions of an email are sent to determine which version performs better
• Abandoned checkout email - automated email reminders sent to a customer who begins checkout, but doesn't complete the purchase
• Customer relationship management (CRM) - software used for managing interactions with customers and potential customers
• Call to action (CTA) - a button or piece of text prompting a visitor to take a specific action, such as a Subscribe button in a newsletter sign-up form
• Click-through rate - the number of people who click a link compared to the total number of people who view the link
• Email campaign - an email or sequence of emails with a specific theme
• Email service provider (ESP) - a company that provides email marketing software
• Google Analytics (GA) - a tool created by Google that's used for measuring traffic and conversions on your website
• Lifecycle marketing - emails sent to a customer based on their progress in the customer journey, such as an email containing a VIP discount for customers who make a high number of purchases
• Open rate - the percentage of emails opened by recipients compared to the total number of recipients
• Opt-in - a specific call to action for joining a mailing list or agreeing to a service
• Subscriber - people who have agreed to be contacted by you or receive marketing from you
• Recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) analysis - data that you collect to understand the recency (how recently the customer made a purchase), frequency (how often the customer makes a purchase), and monetary value (how much money the customer spends on purchases) associated with each of your email subscribers
• Return on investment (ROI) - the ratio of the gain from an investment relative to its cost
• Segment or segmentation - using criteria to separate customers into smaller groups, which you can use to create more targeted email content
• Targeting - breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts by sending tailored content
• Welcome email - an automated email that's used to start building a relationship with a potential customer who signs up to your mailing list