We’ve just released a bunch of new features, and this is the first of a series of blog entries to let you know about the changes.

As you’re probably aware, email marketing is an important part of  running an ecommerce site. At Spiffy Stores we’re always on the lookout to find new and better ways to help you run and promote your online store.

The first of these changes is a feature to help you create an email marketing mailing list. To recognize the importance of Email marketing, we’ve added a whole new section under “Marketing” in your store toolbox for the subject.

You now have the option of enabling an additional option to ask the customer whether they would like to be added to your mailing list at checkout time.  This option takes the form of a check box and a message that appears on the second checkout page of your online store.

You can enable this option and choose whether to have the option ticked or unticked by default. You can also change the default text that appears, and replace it with your own text.

If the customer agrees to accept email marketing, this fact will be recorded in a new customer record that we’ve created for email marketing purposes. If the customer places another order in your online store at a later date and doesn’t agree to accept email marketing, then their most recent choice will be recorded as the default for that customer.

Once you have some customers who have agreed, you will see a section in the side-bar of the “Email marketing” page where you can download a CSV file of all the customers who have agreed to receive email marketing. You can use this file to import into an email mailing list manager, such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor.

This marketing page also includes some well known Email marketing service providers, and we include links to their sites so that you can signup for an account if you’re interested.

Finally, at the bottom of the page is some information about Web Hooks, which is another of our new features.

Stay tuned for another blog entry on how to use Web Hooks to automate stuff and link to external services. We’ll also give you all the information you need to link up your Spiffy Store to MailChimp or Campaign Monitor and have new email addresses added to these services automatically.