Set email and SMS marketing consent for a customer in Shopify
Marketing consent is per channel. A customer can agree to email and refuse SMS, or agree to both, or agree to neither, and each answer lives in its own field on the profile. This tutorial sets consent for one customer, then checks the counts across a store of 214 customers, where the four groups must add to the whole list.
Written · Shopify admin, desktop steps · 4 minutes read
The worked example
| Customers in the store | 214 |
| Agreed to email | 96 |
| Agreed to SMS | 41 |
| Agreed to both | 28 |
| Email only | 68 |
| SMS only | 13 |
| Agreed to neither | 105 |
Download the consent audit: marketing-consent-audit.csv (86 bytes, md5 259cc850b36930be9755beecce56be50).
An audit of marketing consent across the store: email only, SMS only, both channels, and neither. The four groups add to 214 customers.
1Open the customer profile
From your Shopify admin, go to Customers, then click the customer name.
2Open the marketing settings
In the Customer overview section, click Manage, then Edit marketing settings. Email, SMS, and WhatsApp each have their own setting.
3Set each channel on its own
Set email marketing, SMS marketing, and WhatsApp marketing separately, matching what the customer actually agreed to. An email opt-out does not remove a contact's SMS consent, and an SMS opt-in does not add email consent.
4Save, then check the profile
Click Save. The profile shows the updated consent for each channel. A customer who agreed to email shows as subscribed for email only.
5Set consent for many customers at once
To change consent across a list, select the customers on the Customers page, click Edit customers, and edit the Accepts email marketing and Accepts SMS marketing columns in the bulk editor. On a fresh import, the same two fields are columns in the customer CSV, taking yes or no.
The arithmetic
The store has 214 customers, split by what they agreed to.
| Group | Customers | Share of the store |
|---|---|---|
| Email only | 68 | 31.78% |
| SMS only | 13 | 6.07% |
| Both email and SMS | 28 | 13.08% |
| Neither | 105 | 49.07% |
| All customers | 214 | 100.00% |
68 plus 13 plus 28 plus 105 equals 214. The email total is 68 plus 28, which is 96, and the SMS total is 13 plus 28, which is 41. The four shares add to 100.00%.
Held at the counter
Consent is per channel. An email opt-out does not remove SMS or WhatsApp consent, so set each channel from that channel's own history. Marking every channel yes because the customer agreed to one of them is how spam complaints start.
Only mark agreed when the customer agreed. Importing contacts as subscribers after they opted out, or never opted in, can cause spam complaints and bounces that damage your sender reputation. Carry an opt-out over as no.
WhatsApp is a third channel. The profile carries an Accepts WhatsApp Marketing field alongside email and SMS. A customer who agreed to WhatsApp messages still needs a separate yes for email.
Sources
- Managing customers — Shopify's help pages: the Edit marketing settings steps and the bulk editor fields for email and SMS marketing.
- Importing and exporting customer lists — Shopify's help pages: the CSV consent columns, the yes-or-no rule, and the warning about importing opted-out contacts as subscribers.