Newsletter Marketing

A newsletter can be offered to customers and interested parties for information and commitment. Intershop Commerce Management provides the Newsletter Subscription Service, which enables both logged-in customers and visitors to the storefront to subscribe to or unsubscribe from newsletters. Shop managers can then confirm or unconfirm the subscriptions as well as export the registered e-mail addresses and hand them over to an external newsletter tool.

Note: The Newsletter Subscription Service tool included with the Online Marketing section becomes operational after properly setting the newsletter marketing preferences, see Configuring E-Mail Marketing.

Logged-in customers can enable or disable the newsletter subscription in their My Account area under Profile Settings | Edit your profile. When the corresponding checkbox is enabled in the storefront, the customer's e-mail address becomes visible in Intershop Commerce Management at channel level under Marketing | Newsletter with the status "unconfirmed". When the customer disables the checkbox, the entry is deleted in the database. Customers cannot view their newsletter acceptance status.

Unregistered storefront visitors can subscribe anonymously by entering their e-mail address in the respective field. After a syntactic check of the e-mail address a confirmation dialog is shown. With this form of registration, storefront visitors are not able to remove their entries on their own, but have to contact the customer service representative via e-mail or phone. The customer service representative then has to remove the data manually.

Shop managers can view and manage all newsletter subscriptions in Intershop Commerce Management at channel level under Marketing | Newsletter. Subscriptions can be confirmed or unconfirmed here. Confirmed e-mail addresses can be exported and handed over to an external newsletter tool. With this export the possible legal requirement of double opt-in is considered. For more information, see Newsletter Management.

The Subscriptions tab displays a table with registered e-mail addresses. Shop managers can select e-mail addresses here in order to subscribe customers to or unsubscribe them from newsletters or other marketing e-mails. The following information is shown in the table:

E-mail Address

This column shows the e-mail addresses of customers who subscribed to the newsletter.
Date of Registration

In this column the newsletter registration date of the respective customer is displayed.
Confirmed

This column is shown if the E-mail Confirmed setting is enabled. New registrations are initially unconfirmed. By clicking the status icon, the recipient status can be changed from confirmed () to unconfirmed (), or vice versa.
Last Modified Date

By default the most recent registrations are displayed on top. The order can be changed by clicking on the column header.
Editor

This column shows the username of the shop manager who recently edited the information related to the newsletter subscription of the corresponding e-mail address.
Actions

By clicking on the trash icon, selected users can be deleted from the list.

One or more e-mail addresses can be selected and then confirmed, revoked or deleted by clicking on the respective buttons. The function of the Export button depends on the E-mail Confirmed setting:

If E-mail Confirmed is enabled, only confirmed recipient e-mail addresses are exported.
If E-mail Confirmed is disabled, all recipient e-mail addresses are exported by clicking the Export All button.

For more information on how to confirm or unconfirm subscriptions see Confirming/Unconfirming Newsletter Subscriptions. For details on the export procedure, see Exporting Confirmed E-Mail Addresses.

In the Settings tab, E-mail Confirmed can be enabled or disabled. E-mail Confirmed is necessary if newsletter subscriptions need to be confirmed by a verification e-mail. Whether a confirmation procedure (e.g., double opt-in) is required or not, depends on the legal requirements of the respective country.

Note: For a complete double opt-in procedure, the validity of the registered e-mail address must be checked and a confirmation of the subscriber must be requested, e.g., clicking on a link or answering directly to the e-mail. The e-mail address may only be confirmed after the shop manager received the confirmation. Depending on which action should be performed by the subscriber, the e-mail to request confirmation has to be adapted accordingly. The e-mail can be sent directly from the list in the Subscriptions tab. Checking and administrating of confirmation e-mails must take place separately. For more information, see Sending Verification E-Mails for Newsletter Subscriptions.