Email Marketing is one of the advertising channels for e-commerce: it groups all those actions of communication to the user through the use of e-mail.
Used from the beginning, through automatic messages or periodic newsletters, it is still used by many companies.
Prestashop and Newsletter
Prestashop provides a module dedicated to the Newsletter that only serves to collect the email addresses of users thanks to a newsletter subscription form to be displayed on the pages of the site.
With the same module it is possible to export the list of email addresses as a .csv file: this file can then be imported into any program for the creation of email marketing (newsletter sending).
Prestashop: installation of the Newsletter module
The Newsletter module is available for Prestashop 1.7 and 1.6
Prestashop 1.7
- Access your Prestashop ecommerce as administrator
- Go to Modules > Modules & Services
- If the Newsletter module does not appear in the “Installed modules” list, click on the “Selection” button
- Scroll through the list and install the Newsletter module
Prestashop 1.6
- Access your Prestashop ecommerce as administrator
- Go to Modules > Modules
- If the Newsletter module does not appear in the “Installed modules” list, scroll through the list and install the Newsletter module.
Exporting the list of subscribers to the site and/or the newsletter
Prestashop allows you to export different lists of users by filtering them by: nationality, registered or unregistered to the site, registered or unregistered to the newsletter.
- Once you have installed the Newsletter module through the Modules section, click the “Configure” button of the Newsletter module.
- After selecting the export filters according to your needs, click the “Export CSV file” button.
Prestashop will create a file in .csv format with the following columns:
- User ID
- Shop Name
- Gender (if user registered to the site)
- Last name (if user registered to the site)
- First name (if user registered to the site)
- Subscription status
- Registration date
Prestashop exports the fields of the .csv file by separating them with a semicolon.
What is phpList?
After successfully exporting subscribers to the Newsletter, it’s time to choose a service that will be used to create a true email campaign.
phpList is an open source software for managing mailing lists. It is designed for the dissemination of information, such as newsletters, news, advertising to the list of subscribers
You can download it from the official website and install it on your web space.
Editing the .csv file to use it in phpList
Unfortunately, the .csv file generated by Prestashop can not be used as it is; the following changes will be needed:
- Replace “;” with “,”
- Replace the field name for the column that contains email addresses with “Email”.
How to do? We suggest performing these operations manually using the “Find and Edit” feature of one of the Text Editor software like Notepad or better Notepad ++.
Other interventions may be needed on the .csv file, so we recommend that you read the official phpList documentation before importing the .csv file
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