There’s nothing like building customer loyalty to ensure the longevity of an e-commerce site.
The key is to encourage customers and prospects to return regularly to the online store and turn these visits into sales.
One of the most effective tools for this is undoubtedly the newsletter.
We’ll look at the benefits of setting up a newsletter on your site, how to do it with Prestashop and the best practices to follow to make it an asset.
Why set up a newsletter with Prestashop?
For your e-commerce store to be a success, you need to attract visitors.
The higher the traffic, the greater your chances of converting visits into orders, and therefore sales.
As with any store, you need to present new products, organize events and offer promotions to attract customers.
An effective way to publicize all these activities is to promote them in a newsletter.
There are two main ways to subscribe to a newsletter:
- Visitor registration directly on the site.
- Customer registration when placing an order.
Whatever the case, registration must of course be voluntary, and the person must know exactly what he or she is committing to.
Don’t forget to include an unsubscribe procedure, which should be just as simple as the one for signing up.
Using the e-mail addresses you’ve collected, you can send out a regular newsletter, informing all your subscribers about your site, new products and promotions.
How do I set up a newsletter with Prestashop?
As is often the case, the easiest way to add functionality to Prestashop is to install a specialized module.
However, it is entirely possible to outsource newsletter management to a third-party service.
1- Use a Prestashop module
There are several advantages to using a Prestashop module to create, manage and send your site’s newsletter.
For a start, you’ll be familiar with the Prestashop management interface.
Using the module will therefore undoubtedly be simpler.
If you opt for an external service, you’ll need to learn how to use it before your newsletter is fully operational.
If you opt for an internal Prestashop solution, you’ll be working directly on your customer base.
There’s no need to export a list of emails that you’ll then have to integrate into the chosen platform.
What’s more, any modification of a contact in Prestashop will have to be reflected without fail.
Finally, some modules offer additional services.
Complete management of your marketing policy, for example, or the ability to send SMS messages.
Some Prestashop newsletter management modules
There are many Prestashop modules for managing a newsletter.
We’ll just mention two here.
Newsletter Pro
Newsletter Pro is a comprehensive newsletter management module.
It includes a wizard for writing emails, as well as a large number of templates for formatting them.
So you can easily display site news or focus on promotions, for example.
The installation and configuration guide is comprehensive.
The Newsletter Pro module costs around 120 euros for the first year, followed by a subscription fee of around 40 euros per year.
Newsletter Wizard Pro
The interface of the Newsletter Wizard Pro module is particularly well thought-out, especially for the construction of marketing emails.
Formatting and adding elements to the newsletter is a simple drag-and-drop operation.
This module is both easy to use and highly effective.
It costs around 80 euros for the first year, with a subscription fee of 25 euros per year thereafter.
2- Use a third-party service
Prestashop modules have the advantage of being easy to use and perfectly integrated.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for advanced or more advanced features to manage your newsletter, you might be better off turning to a specialized service.
This doesn’t mean that everything will happen outside Prestashop either.
Most newsletter services offer a dedicated module for Prestashop.
This allows you to manage everything from your back office, even if some of the data and processing will be outsourced.
Here are the two best-known newsletter services.
MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the biggest email marketing platforms, if not the biggest.
MailChimp lets you create personalized newsletters and automate their delivery.
The platform is particularly easy to use and has a long track record of success.
SendInBlue
SendInBlue is more than just an emailing platform.
It’s a true marketing tool that can interface perfectly with Prestashop.
Thanks to its data synchronization tools, SendInBlue can, for example, automatically retrieve baskets that have been created but not validated, so that you can send a reminder email to the customers concerned.
Best practices for an effective Prestashop newsletter
The first quality of a newsletter is its regularity.
If you send out a newsletter with varying frequency, there’s every chance that it will end up in the trash without even being read.
By sending out your newsletter regularly, you’ll create a habit among your customers, who will expect it to arrive at the same time every year.
It’s also a good way of making sure it doesn’t end up in the spam folder.
You also need to fight spam.
The form used to subscribe to the newsletter must be protected against spam and prevent false users from signing up.
You can use a captcha in the registration form, or a patch or module to block certain manipulations of the form.
Newsletter registration should only be possible if the user selects the appropriate checkbox.
Registration must be conscious and voluntary: there’s no question of registering someone without their knowledge.
You’d only reap their displeasure and damage your image.
Similarly, unsubscribing from your newsletter should be as simple as subscribing.
A simple link on the site and in all newsletters should allow you to unsubscribe.
To conclude on the Prestashop newsletter
Setting up a Prestashop newsletter takes a bit of work and sometimes requires some technical knowledge.
Don’t hesitate to contact me!
With my extensive experience in e-commerce and Prestashop in particular, I’m ready to help you set up your Prestashop newsletter.
