Collecting 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 subscribe to marketing emails by adding their email address 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 email for subscription by modifying your checkout settings.

Note

If your store is located in Germany and your email marketing setup requires you to send confirmation emails to your customers, your customers must respond to these emails to be included in any marketing that you send. Enabling double opt-in can help with GDPR compliance, and can create a more engaged subscriber list.

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

Collect customer emails from the checkout

You can collect customer emails from the checkout.

Note

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

Steps:

Desktop

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

iPhone

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

Android

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 sign-up checkbox to your checkout.

2. Optional: Check Preselect the sign-up option. This preselects the email marketing sign-up box at the checkout for customers without an account. It also preselects the box for customers with accounts who are in the Email subscribers customer list. The box isn't preselected at the checkout for customers with accounts who have opted out of email marketing and aren't on the Email subscribers customer list.

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

1. Click Save.

Collect customer emails in Germany

If your store is located in Germany, then there is an additional Ask for email confirmation check box on the Email marketing section of the Checkout 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 on the Email subscribers tab on the Customers page in the Shopify admin.

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

Enable 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 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, and it's also a best practice when it comes to acquiring more engaged subscribers. Customers who subscribe to your mailing before you enable double opt-in are not required to confirm their status.

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 enable 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 like “Check your email to confirm your subscription!”.

You edit the confirmation message in your Shopify admin by going to Online Store > Themes > Edit Languages. Depending on your theme, the field is labeled either Confirmation under the Newsletter form section, or Post success under the Sign up section.

Note

If you enable double opt-in in 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 customer who sign up are marked as a subscriber in your Customers section.

Steps:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Notifications.
2. In the Email double opt-in section, check Require customers to confirm their subscription.

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 where they are 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
• 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