Leverage in-store promotion to convert customers

When thinking about enriching newsletter contact lists, digital channels are key, but retailers should also keep face-to-face channels in mind. If you have physical retail stores, face-to-face channels are great ways to boost your marketing strategy by encouraging your customers to subscribe to your mailing list. Not only is it more personal – adding a human touch to the subscription process – but it’s also an opportunity to deliver a more convincing and comprehensive speech about your newsletter and its benefits.

To allow customers to subscribe in shops, you could have a landing page with your subscription form open on a smartphone, tablet or computer at checkout areas – promoting your marketing campaigns and offering them to subscribers at the time of payment – in order to provide a seamless in-store experience. 

For example, when a client buys a pair of jeans in a clothes shop, you could offer them the option of signing up to your mailing list to receive exclusive discounts and the latest catalogues. Also, leverage offering digital receipts to your customers: when asking them to share their email address in order to receive the transactional email with the receipt, advertise your newsletter and encourage people to sign up.

How to properly collect subscriptions via in-store promotion

No matter how you collect information from your customers, you must remember that they need to give their express consent – and that you have to store this consent. This is one of the main requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A few things to remember under GDPR: 

• Write a clear and concise consent message. The consent message needs to be easily understandable to individuals. Practices such as confusing or vague language are banned by the regulation.

• Store the consent, which should include: the person who gave the consent, when the consent was obtained (data and time stamp, for example), and the specific purpose for which the consent was given.

• Consider using privacy dashboards to make it easy for individuals to update their consent preference. Any consent withdrawal requests should be processed as soon as possible and records for withdrawals should be kept.