Live Q&A: Ask Us Anything About Email & Text Message Marketing For the Holidays!

[Tom]

Hello Sellers!

On November 1, 2022 the Square Marketing team hosted a Q&A focused on helping sellers get the most out of Square Text Message and Email Marketing this holiday shopping season.

Our hosts were @kcapps (Product Manager) and @faiza (Product Marketing Manager) who are not only experts on Square Marketing products & services, they have extensive experience within the marketing field itself!

A few example questions:

• How do I set up automations with Square Text Message Marketing?
• What's the best way to build a list of potential customers for an email marketing campaign?
• If I could do "________" with either text message or email marketing, it would greatly improve my customers' experience.

[rtfulk]

This is not really a marketing question, but when someone unsubscribes from email marketing are they automatically taken off the email list? I just want to make sure if they are unsubscribed, they are not getting our marketing emails anymore.

[kcapps]

Thanks for the question! Yes, once a customer unsubscribes from email marketing, they will no longer receive any future email marketing messages. They are in effect “taken off the list”.

[ATBmemphis]

when is the ideal time to start marketing to potential customers, and how often should email marketing be advertised to the customer? i don't want my customers to feel like their being spammed. 

a second part to this question is what is an ideal coupon to issue out to clients, i want the customer to feel like they're getting a deal, however, i don't want to short my business.

[kcapps]

Great question. Best practice is to engage with a customer at the key stages of their customer lifecycle at your brand. For example, after they first opt-in to marketing (or make a purchase for the first time) you’ll want to welcome them to your brand. If they don’t come back to purchase again, you’ll want to incentivize a 2nd purchase to start building brand loyalty. If you have a customer that was a regular purchaser but stops visiting, you’ll want to send them a message to try to win them back. These are where campaigns like the Welcome Automation, Repeat Purchase Automation, and Lapsed Customer Automation come in handy. When activated, they will trigger relevant and timely messages to your customers when they reach these critical stages. The Birthday Automation, one of our most successful campaigns, adds another annual touch point to bring your brand top of mind for the customer. Outside of automated messages, sending manual campaigns (“blasts”) can be helpful to increase engagement by telling your customers about new products, promoting popular products, announcing specials or events, or sending coupons. The timing of these blasts depends on the type of business you run, and your customers. If you’ve never sent manual campaigns before, in addition to your automations, try starting with monthly blasts.

Regarding the coupon, this depends quite a bit on the business. A good rule of thumb is to consider your average purchase value (average ticket), and determine what kind of discount would make sense. You want to offer enough that it incentivizes a purchase, but not so much that you offset your net revenue. You may need to experiment with coupon types to see which one performs best with your customers.

[phillipsrw]

Square Marketing and Weebly Promote, both have great functionality, which one should I be using?

Is there a way to get emails collected through my Square Online website in to the customer directory emailer subscriber list easily without having to export and import the list, noting the status nomenclature of subscribers in Online vs Square Marketing are different (opted-in vs subscribed) and also that the list changes daily so impractical to continually import manually.

Are there plans to add the same Email address collect link as found in the Square Marketing setup, in Square Online, that allow email signup and loyalty signup with the data being held in Square Marketing, but doesn’t take you out of Square Online / website environment after signup so the customer keeps shopping after signup (perhaps with a link back to the shopping environment).

If a customer unsubscribes from email marketing for an email collected via Square Marketing, they can not resubscribe via the email sign up link. Can the status of the profile be changed to subscribed manually?

Are their plans to add the option of email signup at POS in conjunction with the current loyalty signup on the Square register. It’s a US function but would be nice to have in the UK. We miss a huge opportunity to sign up customers at POS, we have thousands of customers who are tourists and only visit our shop once. Once out the door they are lost unless we can signup to email at the the POS. It would be great to have with the forward facing screen of the register.

Both email and text signup of customers is really important, you have it nailed with the Square Marketing collect link especially with the follow up question, ‘do you want to sign up to loyalty’ (with optional points incentive). If you can Add this to Square Online linking to the customer database in the POS and also offering this at the POS outside of the US, using Square Marketing we then have a fully joined up thinking, consistent, system. 

it would be nice to be able to add a unique code and scannable barcode which can be emailed to the subscribers which has a discount associated so customers can bring in to store, scan at pos and allow the discount to be applied to items purchased or used online. With the new online discounts about to enter beta, this would enable customers to choose whether to use discount in store or online as part of the omni channel experience.

Text gifting - https://www.hotelchocolat.com/uk/gift-by-text-faq.html

Great idea for last minute gifts, especially on the run up to Xmas when shipping is no longer an option.   Maybe something for the future consideration?

Can the unique codes generated by Square Marketing be downloaded for use in traditional hard copy printed marketing materials?

[kcapps]

There's a lot to unpack here! Let me break down my responses into sections.

1) We recommend using Square Marketing instead of Weebly Promote. Weebly Promote is considered a legacy product that is no longer being supported, meaning Square is maintaining this service for existing users, but is not building new features or integrations for it. We will be migrating Weebly Promote services to Square Marketing in late 2023.

2) In Square “subscribed” and “opted-in” mean the same thing. Both mean that the customer has consented to receive promotional messages from Square Email or Text Message Marketing (depending on if the email address or phone number was provided). There are a few ways to collect opt-ins from Square Online. 1) During Square Online Checkout, the buyer will see options to consent to receive email marketing and/or text message marketing. If you also have a Loyalty program set up through Square, customers opt-in to Text Message Marketing when they join your Loyalty program.

Other ways to collect opt-ins on Square Online are via the website contact forms which can be found in your Square Online dashboard in Website > Form Submissions and Communications > Pop-Ups > Collect Emails

3) A customer can re-subscribe via any of the email collection forms. A seller cannot manually subscribe a customer in Customer Directory, but they can manually unsubscribe a customer.

4) Yes, we do eventually plan to expand onPOS email opt-in to non-US countries. We will be expanding to CA and AU in 2023. Timing for UK, and other GDPR countries is TBD. We do not have plans to expand Text Message Marketing outside of the US at this time.

5) This is great product feedback regarding both the scannable coupon code and Text gifting, thank you!

6) We do not have a way to export a bank of single use auto-generated codes at this time, however this is a common use case, and we have some solutions we’ll be investigating in 2023. Delivery timing TBD for now.

[carololechyah]

I love Square but now here is my comment - whenever I see marketing suggestions from you, you always attach a coupon to the ad.  In my opinion that's the easy way out to get sales and over time lowers the price of your product because people get conditioned to seeing a coupon and will only purchase with a coupon.  I would like to see a strategy from you, one that motivates a customer to make a purchase.  What needs to be in that ad or series of ads?  What would that look like?

[kcapps]

I would recommend checking out our new “Drive Repeat Purchase” automation in Square Marketing, just launched this October, that incentivizes customers to come back and purchase again by showing them their previous/favorite past purchases and asking them to come back to purchase again. It does not include a coupon by default.

A coupon strategy is very specific to each different business. Note: the coupon in any one-time or automated campaign template is completely optional and can be removed at any time. If you’d like to activate a Welcome or Lapsed Customer Automation without the coupon, you can delete it and add your own customized messaging. Other ways to motivate customers is to connect them to your brand with product announcements, compelling product images, brand stories, and so on.

[iluvskn]

Am i able to make customized automated emails or texts to fit my business? I see templates but I haven’t figured out how to create my own. Very few of the templates work for me. 

Thank you! 

[kcapps]

Yes! You can absolutely edit any email or text campaign template to customize the design and messaging to your brand. To do this, you would start by picking your campaign objective (what is your goal?) then, when you get to the Design step, you can customize the template however you’d like. You can change logos, colors, images, add a coupon (or remove it if it’s already included by default), images, and so on. Once you create a design that fits your business, you can duplicate this campaign template for future uses.

In 2023, we will be exploring ways to make it easier for sellers to create template layouts customized to their business that are quick to find and reuse, irrespective of the campaign objective. This would bypass the need to duplicate past campaigns. Timing for this improvement is TBD, but we realize its importance.

[uniqueafrican]

Send the link

[Tom]

Hi @uniqueafrican — thanks for reaching out! To be sure we address your question, can you provide a bit more information on what you're looking for? Is this regarding a product feature or another question about marketing?

[iluvskn]

Thank you for your reply. I am asking if it’s possible to do a customized automated emails or text?  I would like to do an automated email and or text so that when my clients come in for an appointment it automatically sends them and email and or text about holiday gift cards. But I can’t figure out how to do it or if it’s even possible. 

Thank you 

[Tom]

Thank you @iluvskn! I'll make sure the product team sees this. Thanks for your patience — they'll be in touch next week!

[kcapps]

Thank you for your question. Currently, Appointment bookings are not connected to Square’s Customers Directory or Marketing products, which is why you could not find a way to create audience filters specific to appointments. In Q1 2023, we will be launching our first integration between Appointments and Square Marketing in the form of a “Win back Lapsed Bookers” Automation, similar to the existing Lapsed Customers automation, but specific to customers who have booked past appointments. Later in 2023 we will be building more filters in Customers Directory allowing you to create audiences and campaigns specific to your appointment customers, like the one you described.

[kcapps]

Is this perhaps in regards to sending links in marketing campaigns? If so, if you’d like to send a custom link to your customers in a campaign, start by choosing any campaign objective and add a button, then add your custom link URL to this button. Hope this helped!

[JUYBoutique20]

Why isn't Square marketing and Weebly marketing combined when you have a paid subscription?

[phillipsrw]

Just guessing here, nothing to back it up but I would imagine looking at the great work the Square team are doing behind the scenes bringing the Square and Weebly platforms together (not an easy job), this will be on the todo list. Fingers crossed.

[JUYBoutique20]

I hope so...Having two marketing subscriptions can get pricey!!!!

[faiza1]

I’m sorry you feel that two subscriptions are expensive and I assure you that is not the case 🙂 We believe that our Email and Text Message Marketing products are very competitively priced. We know that there are email marketing solutions out there that are free however we feel that we offer more value to our sellers relative to these solutions because we offer:

1. Free CRM - Square Customer Directory is a free customer relationship management (CRM) tool built into your Square Point of Sale that gives you a 360-degree view of your customers. No third party integration is needed to access this customer data so that your total cost of ownership (TCO) is lower. 
2. Ecosystem Data Integration - You can store customer information, view how they interact with your business, and create custom groups based on their purchasing habits — all in one place. Square Customer Directory integrates with Square Marketing and syncs sales across all channels and store locations, so you can track POS attributed sales and coupon redemption.
3. Pre-built Contact Lists - Email collection is built into Square Email Marketing. Customer email addresses are automatically added at POS checkout and sellers can easily upload pre-existing lists. 

We have also continued to invest in the Square Email and Text Message Marketing products over the last few years. The most recent value adds include 

• Google Reviews  - this is a complete FREE feature that other players charge a monthly subscription for. Google Reviews helps our sellers automatically collect reviews through Email and Text Message Marketing, rank higher on Google and convert prospective buyers into customers.  
• Automations Redesign -  We have redesigned the Automations page so that automations are easier to discover and manage for our sellers. Our data shows that automations drive significant ROI for our sellers. Today, 40% of current EM subscribers and 16% of current TMM have automations enabled. With a redesign of the Automations UI and net new automations, we believe we can significantly increase this percentage and help our Sellers use to better manage the relationship with their buyers throughout their customer journey. 
• Coupon Building Tools - We recently launched a vanity code builder to help sellers create promo codes that they can post on social media such as Facebook, Instragra, TikTok etc to promote trial and new customer acquisition. Vanity code builder will allow sellers to share customized coupons anywhere. This capability is also free of charge. 

Last but not least, unlike other products that start at a much higher price point, our Text Message Marketing product starts at $10/month SaaS fee. We incur a hard cost for SMS messages sent that we are passing onto our sellers. 

We highly recommend you to visit our website to learn more about Square Marketing products and the value we offer.