Knowledgebase: Marketing

How Do I Use My Shift4Shop Store's Newsletter Function?
 

The newsletter feature allows you to send information on your products or company to any customers, or potential customers you wish. You can choose to create your own email/newsletter from scratch or use one of the templates Shift4Shop has already created for you. Shift4Shop also allows you to track how many people open their emails, and the value of total sales from your email campaign.

Create a Mailing List Customer Group
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A mailing list customer group allows you to sort emails under specific groups so that you may target a particular group for email campaigns, For example: preferred customers, wholesale customers, etc.

To create a mailing list customer group, log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager and, using the left hand navigaiton menu:

  1. Go to Marketing >Newsletters
  2. Look to the top right of the page and click on the "Actions" button
  3. Select "Subscription Groups"

Within this page, you'll have the ability to create and manage different groups of newsletter subscribers for your various newsletters. To continue:

  1. Click the "+Add New" button at the top right of the page
  2. Type in the name of your mailing list group in the Group Name field.
  3. Click Save
  4. Once saved, you can add a description to the group and click Save again (optional).

Tip
The description for the group isn't seen by customers or subscribers. It's just available to help you identofy the group better when viewing it in the Online Store Manager.

Create a Mailing List
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A mailing list is bascially a list of email addresses that will be used for your newsletter messages. Here, we'll show you how to create your a mailing lists by manually adding a few subscribers.

  1. Go to Marketing >Newsletters
  2. Look to the top right of the page and click on the "Actions" button
  3. Select "Manage Subscribers"

Additional Information
What are subscribers?

Subscribers are basically your customers and site visitors that have subscribed to receive your newsletters:

  • Customers
    When a shopper orders from your store, they essentially create a customer record on your store's database. During the order process, the shopper can also elect to actively subscribe to your marketing newsletters, thereby marking them as a subscriber.
  • Visitor Subscribers
    Alongside customer records, regular site visitors can also elect to sign up for your newsletters right from your store's home page by adding their email address to subscribe (or unsubscribe) from your store's mailing list.
For the purposes of this article, we'll be going over the steps to manually add subscribers to your store.

To continue:

  1. Click the +Add Subscriber button located at the top right of the page
  2. In the Add New Subscriber section, type in the email address of the customer (or potential customer) you want to add in the Email field.
  3. Choose the Customer Group you would like to add them to in the Group field.
  4. Click Save.

The mailing list subscriber is now added. As an option, you can also import and export email addresses for your mailing lists using CSV. Here's how:

Exporting Mailing List

To export your mailing list emails, log into the Shift4Shop Online Store Manager and, using the left hand navigation:

  1. Go to Customers >Customer List
  2. Look to the top right of the page and click on "Export/Import"
  3. On the left hand side of the page, click on the +Icon for "Newsletter Emails"
  4. Next, click on "Export Data" to export your list of current mailing list subscribers.

Tip
You can also use the "Schedule Export" function to schedule automatic exports of the same list. Click here to learn more.

The steps outlined above will let you export a list of email addresses of people who are actively subscribed to your mailing list. You can also export a list of email addressed that have elected to unsubscribe from your mailing list as well. Just follow these steps instead:

  1. Go to Customers >Customer List
  2. Look to the top right of the page and click on "Export/Import"
  3. On the left hand side of the page, click on the +Icon for "Blacklist Emails"
  4. Next, click on "Export Data" to export your list of current unsubscribed emails.

Importing Mailing List

To import your mailing list emails, log into the Shift4Shop Online Store Manager and, using the left hand navigation:

  1. Go to Customers >Customer List
  2. Look to the top right of the page and click on "Export/Import"
  3. On the right hand side of the page, click on the +Icon for "Newsletter Emails"
  4. Click on the "Sample File" link to download a CSV template file for the import

The sample file will contain the following column headers that you can edit to compile your mailing list. The only ones that are absolutely necessary are the first two. The rest may be left blank if they are not available or needed.

  • email
    The subscriber's email address
  • datereg
    The date that they signed up for the mailing list
    (format should be mm/dd/yyyy)
  • name
    (if available)
  • address
    (if available)
  • city
    (if available)
  • state
    (if available)
  • zip
    (if available)
  • country
    (if available)
  • additional_field1
    (if available)
  • additional_field2
    (if available)
  • additional_field3
    (if available)
  • group
    (if available)

 

Again, if any of the above fields are not available or necessary, you may leave them blank. They are only used if the subscriber is also a customer (with a customer record). Some subscribers may be merely site visitors that have not yet bought anything (they just subscribed the mailing list). For importing the file, only the email and datereg fields are needed.

After you've created your import file, proceed with the rest of these steps:

  1. Locate the CSV file that contains your newsletter emails.
  2. Next, click "Import Data" to have them added to your store.

The steps outlined above will let you import a list of email addresses of people who are actively subscribed to your mailing list. You can also Import a list of email addressed that have elected to unsubscribe from your mailing list as well. Just follow these steps instead:

  1. Go to Customers >Customer List
  2. Look to the top right of the page and click on "Export/Import"
  3. On the right hand side of the page, click on the +Icon for "Blacklist Emails"

Repeat the same steps as for importing your newsletter subscribers. Just remember that importing blacklist emails will remove them from your mailing list.

Create an Email/Newsletter
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Now that you have a mailing list subscriber group and email addresses in the mailing list, the time has come to create and send a newsletter.

To create an email/newsletter to send out:

  1. Go to Marketing >Newsletters
  2. Look to the top right of the page and click on the "+Add New" button
  3. Type the name of the email/newsletter in the Name field.
  4. Type the user for your email address in which you want the Newsletter to send from in the From field.
    (Tip: just enter the first part of your email. The @yourdomain portion is already added for you!)

Note
You must have your domain pointed to Shift4Shop to use the Newsletter feature. If your domain is not pointed to Shift4Shop (i.e. You are using *.s4shops.com or *3dcartstores.com), you will not be able to send out campaigns due to SPAM restrictions.

  1. Type the user of your email address where you would like to receive all replies to in the Reply To field. This is used if you would like the replies to go to a different email address than the one sending out the newsletter. If not, you can leave the field blank.
  2. Type in a subject for the email in the Subject field.
  3. If you would like to create your own email/newsletter, use the Message box to create your message. For information on the WYSIWYG tools, click here.
  4. If you would like to send your email in text (not HTML), type your message into the text message box.
  5. Click Save at the top right to create your newsletter message.

Send an Email/Newsletter
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  1. Go to Marketing >Newsletters
  2. Look for the Newsletter that you would like to send
    (Hint: Use the search bar at the top left of the list to help you find a specific newsletter)
  3. Look to the far right of the newsletter and click on its "Action >Send" button
  4. Choose the Customer Mailing Group you would like to send the newsletter to in the "Select a Group" field.
  5. If you would like to use an order specific Smart List group, click on Smart List.

Note
Smart Lists are dynamically generated newsletter groups which are populated by various order dynamics such as location, product orders and other possible factors. You can also create your own Smart Lists as needed, but this requires some knowledge of SQL to create the Smart List.

For more information on using Smart Lists, please click here.

  1. Click the "Continue to Step 2" button at the top right of the page.
  2. Type in an email address you would like to send a test message to in the Send test email to field.
  3. Click continue to step 3 to send the test email
  4. Click "Send Emails" at the top right once you have previewed the sent test email or click "Back" to reconfigure your settings if needed.

Check Status of Your Sent Email/Newsletter Campaign
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You may want to see the status of your newsletter campaign, such as how many emails were sent out, how many opened the email, and the value of sales you have made from the campaign.

  1. Go to Marketing>Mailing Manager
  2. Look towards the top right of the page and click on the Actions button
  3. Select "Report"
  4. Look at the statistics next to the name of the newsletter you would like to see a report on

The report will show you how many messages were sent for the newsletter, how many of these messages were opened, and how many sales were generated as a result of the newsletter via click through traffic.



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