Newsletters and SMS

Collecting subscribers, sending through a mailing list service, text messages, and the consent rules that matter.

Two channels, both with the same underlying rule: people have to have agreed, and you have to be able to prove it.

Marketing, Newsletter Subscribers lists everybody who signed up through your shop, with when and from where.

A signup form can sit on the homepage, in the footer, or on a page of its own. Where confirmation is enabled, the subscriber gets an email and is not counted until they click it, which keeps mistyped and malicious addresses out of your list.

Sending to Them

Settings, Mailing List connects a mailing list service, and subscribers are pushed across as they sign up.

The shop collects and holds subscribers. It is not a campaign tool: writing, scheduling and reporting on newsletters happens in the service you connect.

Keep one list, not two

A shop that collects subscribers here and also collects them directly in a mailing service ends up with two lists that drift apart, and somebody unsubscribing from one stays on the other. Pick the shop as the collection point and let it feed the service.

Unsubscribing

Every newsletter must offer a way out, and the service you send through handles it. An unsubscribe there flows back so your shop does not keep sending somebody to it.

Never re-add somebody who unsubscribed because they bought something. Buying is not consent to marketing, and treating it as such is both unlawful in many places and the fastest way into a spam folder.

SMS

Settings, Customer SMS and Marketing, SMS Templates cover text messages to customers: order confirmations, shipping notices.

Settings, SMS Alerts covers texts to you: a new order, low stock, a security event. That is the more useful half for most shops, because a text gets read when an email does not.

Stricter than email nearly everywhere, and the penalties are real.

A customer must agree specifically to receive texts. Agreeing to an account, or to a newsletter, is not agreement to be texted. Keep the agreement recorded, make opting out obvious, and honour it immediately.

Transactional and marketing texts are not the same thing

Telling somebody their order has shipped is usually fine. Telling them about a sale is marketing and needs separate agreement. Mixing the two in one message makes the whole message marketing.

Costs

Texts cost money per message, unlike email. A shop that switches on SMS order updates for every status change can run up a surprising bill, so pick the one or two moments that genuinely help: shipped, and perhaps ready for collection.

What to Send, and What Not To

Send: a confirmation people want, a shipping notice, a genuine offer to people who asked for offers.

Do not send: the same message to everybody every week, anything that cannot be unsubscribed from in one step, or anything at a time of day you would not want to be woken by.