Collecting customer emails from the checkout

In Ecwid you can collect customer emails from the checkout to further send marketing emails. Your customers can accept to receive marketing from your online store by checking a checkbox in the checkout. Based on the information received, you can form a list of opted-in customers and send out targeted promo emails using third-party services like Mailchimp.

You can use promo emails as an effective marketing tool to encourage repeat purchases. It is a good practice to ask for customer’s consent to receive marketing emails – this way you send promo emails only to those who agreed to that. If your business is based in Europe or you sell goods and services to the EU clients, you should get such permission from your store visitors by law. Learn more about GDPR.

Adding the sign-up checkbox

You can add the sign-up checkbox to the checkout in your store following these steps:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Marketing → Newsletters.
2. Scroll down to Settings section.
3. Enable the Request customers' approval for your marketing emails at checkout option:

Once it’s enabled, the “Keep me up to date on news and exclusive offers” checkbox will appear above the Checkout button in your store:

By default, this box is unchecked. Customers should tick the box to opt in.

You can also set up the sign-up option in your Ecwid admin via Settings → General → Cart & Checkout tab using the same settings. Or you can turn it on in the Settings → Legal page, in the Customer's Consent section.

Customizing the sign-up option

You might want to customize the appearance of the sign-up checkbox in your store. For example, you can change the text to get a customer consent for both email and SMS marketing. 

Change the text

You can change the text shown next to the box if you wish:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Marketing → Newsletters page.
2. Scroll down to Settings.
3. Click Edit.
4. Enter a custom text in the Text Label field:

4. Click Save or press Ctrl + S to save the changes.

Preselect the option

In case of need, you can show the checkbox as ticked:

If you enable this setting, the sign-up box will be shown with a checkmark within it. Your customers will need to untick this box if they are not interested in receiving promo emails.

Checking if a buyer opted in

You can check whether a buyer wants to receive promo emails or not in the following sections of the control panel

In order details

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to My Sales → Orders page.
2. Click on necessary order to view its details.
3. Scroll down to Additional Information section in order details:

In the customer’s profile

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to My Sales → Customers.
2. Search for the necessary customer profile.
3. Check if there is the Subscribed to marketing emails notice next to the customer name:

Getting a list of opted-in customers

You can use special services like Mailchimp to send out all sorts of marketing newsletters. To form the list of customers that want to receive your promo emails and use that list with an email marketing service, follow these steps:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Marketing → Newsletters page.
2. Scroll down to Create a mailing list manually.
3. Click Export Contacts:

4. A CSV file will be downloaded to your computer. You can open this file in a text editor or import it into a spreadsheet:

Buyers that unticked the “Keep me up to date on news and exclusive offers” box are automatically excluded from the contacts list exported in this section.

Alternatively, you can get a list of customers that allowed to send them promo emails in this way:

1. From your Ecwid admin, go to My Sales → Customers section.
2. Click Filter in the left upper corner to use filters, then choose Subscribed in the Email Marketing Status block.
3. Tick all the filtered customers and click Mass Update → Export → Export Selected.
4. In the export settings dialog, select the delimiter for your file and the columns that you want to export (by clicking them). Make sure you check the Consent for email marketing column:
   
5. Click Download CSV file.

As a result, a CSV file will be downloaded to your computer. You can use email addresses from the exported file with the newsletter service of your choice.

Related articles

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Ecwid stores
Requesting additional information from customers
Sending newsletters from your Ecwid store