Building a customer list for email marketing

This page was printed on Mar 21, 2019. For the current version, visit https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/create-marketing/customer-emails.

You can use email marketing to grow your business and build relationships with your customers. Sending newsletters to customers who sign up for your mailing list is a great way to let them know about new products and upcoming sales.

You can learn more about how to grow your business with email marketing on the Shopify blog.

Collect email addresses from customers

For legal and privacy reasons, make sure that you send promotional emails only to customers who have agreed to receive marketing from your online store. Customers can accept marketing by adding their email address to a newsletter signup on your online store, or by checking a checkbox in the checkout:

The checkout page for a store called John's Apparel. The checkout form shows a checkbox labeled 'Keep me up to date on exclusive offers'.

After a customer accepts marketing from your online store, their email address shows on the Customers page of your Shopify admin. Click Accepts Marketing to show only the customers who have agreed to receive promotional emails:

The Customers page in the admin. Different customer filters are shown on tabs, and the Accepts Marketing tab is highlighted.

Collect customer emails from the checkout:

You can collect customer emails from the checkout.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Checkout.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Under Store settings, tap Checkout.
  1. From the Shopify app, go to Store > Settings.
  2. Under Store settings, tap Checkout.

  1. In the Email marketing section, check Show a sign-up option at checkout. This adds a checkbox to your checkout.

  2. Optional: check Preselect the sign-up option. Customers who reach the checkout are added to your Accepts Marketing customer list unless they uncheck the checkbox.

  3. Click Save.

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 on the Accepts Marketing tab on the Customers page in the Shopify admin.

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

Set up an email marketing campaign

Follow these steps to set up an email marketing campaign:

  1. Collect email addresses from customers.

  2. Install an email marketing app from the Shopify App Store.

  3. Follow the email marketing app's instructions to sync it with your list of customers who add their emails to your newsletter signup section. If your theme doesn't have an email signup form, then use an email marketing app that can add one to your store.

  4. Use the email marketing app to create and send newsletters to your customers.

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