Collecting customer contact information

You can use email and SMS 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 contact information from customers

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 in your theme's language editor.

Consider using the forms app to engage with your online store customers and grow your email list.

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

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Checkout.
  2. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the Email marketing section, check Show an option to subscribe at checkout.
  3. Optional: Check Preselect the option to check the email marketing sign-up check box 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 checked for customers who have opted out of email marketing or who aren't on your email subscription list.
  4. 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 enabled in your Settings. Refer to Set up your customer's SMS notifications for detailed instructions.

Steps:

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Checkout.
  2. To add a sign-up checkbox to your checkout, in the SMS marketing section, check Show an option to subscribe at checkout.
  3. 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.

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, 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 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, 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 need to have the Online Store sales channel installed to enable 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 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 > the ... button > Edit default theme content. Depending on your theme, the field is labeled either Confirmation under the Newsletter form section, or Post success under the Sign up 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
  • 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
Ready to start selling with Shopify?Try it free