Mailing List Contacts - not opted in?

[qlinqjewellery]

Hello all,

I'm fairly new to selling with Square, selling jewellery.

My question is: From the dash, in Marketing>Mailing Lists I can see contacts who are under different categories (eg. Website Customers, Web Form - Subscription) and when I click into 'Web Form - Subscription' I can see a number of people that have provided their emails to be signed up to my subscription service. But to the right is the status of each contact stating that they each have 'Not Opted in'.

Does this mean I can or should not send marketing emails to these contacts?

Many thanks,

Suzi @ qlinq

[Sam_400º]

Hey @qlinqjewellery - unless your customer has expressly ‘opted in’ to receive marketing from you you shouldn’t send them any general emails. 

You can obviously contact them about their order etc. I’m not sure if it’s a legal requirement, but it’s good practice to have a privacy policy clearly visible on your site. 

[qlinqjewellery]

Hi 400º,

Thanks for your reply.

I agree wholeheartedly with you - no one wants to be contacted unless they explicitly state so!

But I'm still confused as to why these people have clearly entered their email address into the subscription form on my site and yet the status of these contacts in the Mailing List section of the Square dash states that they haven't opted in. 

One of these people is actually my Dad, and he confirmed that he did indeed sign up, so I'm just wondering whether this is a dashboard bug?

P.S. Good idea re: privacy policy. I'll get on that asap.

[Sam_400º]

Hmmm - yer, I’ve just had a look at the ‘collect email address’ pop up option & there’s no opt in button anywhere to be seen. 

This shows for me at the checkout, so when they place an order they can opt in to receive info (but they have to enter their email regardless). I would have expected on the email collection side it to automatically opt them in! 

@tranguyen can you shed any light as this has got me confused for sure! It’s not acting how we’d expect it to. 

[qlinqjewellery]

Hi 400º,

Yes, exactly. I can understand customers not wanting to get marketing emails and leaving the box unticked at checkout but the subscription sign up is in itself opting in to marketing emails.

Here's a screengrab of my side:

[tranguyen]

Hi @qlinqjewellery, that does sounds strange. I would like get another eye on this issue - can you send me a link to your website and let me know exactly where customers are entering their details for this mailing lis?

400º - if you are using a pop up to collect email addresses, there won't be an opt-in feature since with pop-up, people can dismiss it if they don't want to sign up so there is an assumption that if they entered their email address, they are opting in. The opt-in check box would only be there at checkout when customers are placing their orders or when they are making enquiries through the contact form. 

[qlinqjewellery]

Hi tranguyen,

My site is qlinq.co.uk and the email sign up form is at the footer of every page.

Cheers!

[tranguyen]

Thanks for the link @qlinqjewellery! I've gone ahead and raised a ticket with our engineering team so they can take a closer look into this. Once I have an update from them, I'll be sure to reach out and let you know immediately. 

[Sam_400º]

@tranguyen - that seems to be the issue though. Address collected via pop up but not identified as opted in. So there’s no way of telling those apart from the ones just from orders who haven’t clicked. 

[tranguyen]

Gotcha, thanks for that @Sam_400º! I'm going to added that to the existing ticket and ask the team to have a look at the pop-up behaviour as well. 

[rya1234]

Hi, could someone please look into mine too as i am experiencing the exact same thing 

[Breffni]

Hi @rya1234, welcome to the Seller Community. 

Thanks for your raising this. Can you give us a bit more detail about the issue you are experiencing? Taking a look at @Sam_400º and @tranguyen's previous comments on this thread 'unless your customer has expressly ‘opted in’ to receive marketing from you you shouldn’t send them any general emails' 

Your customers will not be automatically opted-in to receive Square Marketing communications from you when you upload their email addresses. If they have given you their consent to be opted-in outside of Square, and you have a record of it, then you can manually change their status. 

Can you let me know if this is the case, if it's something else I'm happy to take another look.  

[rya1234]

The customers opted in through the enter email address page I created. The issue is exactly the same as the other user. They entered their email address online there is no way I can prove this however on your end I’m sure you will see that the Customer entered the email address themselves using the enter email address field on web page *win a candle* 

[Breffni]

Thanks for letting me know @rya1234, could you send a link to the page you created (via DM if you prefer) or a link to your site here so I can take a look? 

[doc_choc]

Hi,

Was this issue ever resolved?

I'm trying to clean up my mailing list and was wondering if a status is assigned to a customer of 'unsubscribed' or 'not opted in' and they are selected to send an email, does the system automatically see this and not send an email to these addresses? ie does the system automatically send the email to opted in and double opt in statuses and spot and not send to unsubscribed and not opted in statuses? 

[qlinqjewellery]

@tranguyen did you hear back from your engineering team? 

[tranguyen]

My sincere apology for dropping the ball on this thread here @qlinqjewellery — I found the ticket I filed originally and the issue was completely resolved by our engineers. Anytime customers enter their email into any email subscription forms (in the footer, separate section, pop up) they will be opted in by default.

With regards to the status @doc_choc, if a customer is flagged as "unsubscribed" pr "not opted in" but are included in an email list, the system will not email these customers. Their statuses need to be opted in or subscribed in order for the email to be sent successfully. If you are noticing any discrepancy, please do let me know!

[doc_choc]

Hi Tra, thank you do much for getting back. This is much clearer, I was getting a little confused but all good now. Will keep an eye out for new sign ups to make sure they get automatically opted in.

Thanks again and have a great weekend 😀 

Rich

[doc_choc]

Hi, the new subscribers still do not appear to get opted in via the online newsletter subscription or a popup form. Still showing as no opted in.

Also the sign up to marketing communication at checkout is no longer visible (even though its selected in setup to be visible). I was told this was because we had loyalty activated. I paused the loyalty, but the was still no sign of the marketing communication signup and with loyalty paused, at checkout the loyalty signup is still visible, not sure if this should be hidden if loyalty is paused?

We really could do with the email signup sorting if possible. Many thanks 😊 

[Breffni]

Hi @maddy-b, thanks for your post. 

Do you use Square Online Checkout links? If customers inputted their information but never completed the payment on the checkout link, they would be saved in the system as third party. And checkout links wouldn't constitute as visiting your site. 

Alternatively, if you don't use Checkout links, when you place an order on a website and don't tick 'save my information for a faster checkout' or 'send me marketing updates' your profile is created in customer directory as Last Visited: Never and source :Third party.

I hope this helps. 

[doc_choc]

The send me marketing updates at checkout is not visible on my website, even though the optin is selected in the dashboard (under setting/ checkout/customer inputs/Opt-in to email marketing On). I think there must be a bug??