Get Started with Square Marketing
Square Email Marketing helps you connect with your customers with customized email and social media campaigns to promote your business.
This guide will help you design custom emails, set up automated campaigns and see how your marketing efforts affect your bottom line – right from your Square Dashboard.
Targeted email marketing is an effective way to reach your customers and drive sales. Read more about email marketing best practices.
Sign Up
If you haven’t done so already, sign up for Square Marketing to start sending newsletters, announcements, event invitations, coupons and more to your customers.
Square Marketing comes with a 30-day free trial. After the free trial, Square Marketing pricing is based on the number of subscribed customers you have in your Customer Directory.
This subscribed customer list combines:
Customers you may have imported or added via customer information collection tools.
Customers who’ve opted in and are reachable contacts to receive marketing emails.
Number of Subscribed Customers |
Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
Up to 500 |
$20 |
501 - 1,000 |
$30 |
1,001 - 2,000 |
$45 |
2,001+ |
Create an Email Marketing Campaign
You can easily set up and customize a campaign that targets your best customers and promotes sales and visits.
To get started:
Go to Customers > Marketing in your online Square Dashboard.
Click Create Campaign and select whether you’d like to send an Email campaign.
Under “Choose a campaign,” select your campaign objective. If you’re sending an email, you can choose a one-time blast campaign, or set up an ongoing automated campaign. If you choose to send a Facebook campaign, you can choose between different types of one-time campaigns.
Under the campaign objectives, you can also choose to target your best customers with different smart groups. Smart groups are recommended customer groups, such as top spenders, frequent visitors, active customers and loyal subscribers. If you subscribe to Square Loyalty, you can also announce a Square Loyalty promotion.
If your business has multiple locations, you can select a specific location. This will determine which address shows up at the bottom of your emails, and will limit where the coupon can be redeemed. If you want your coupon to be redeemable at all locations, leave the default All Locations selection. Select a pre-existing template from the theme library, or use the default template to customize your email to your marketing goal. If sending a Square Loyalty promotion campaign, you can choose from all your scheduled or currently active promotions, or you can create a new promotion. Note: If you’re including a coupon, be sure to include an offer amount and expiration date. Coupons can be redeemed in-store or via Square Online.
If your business has multiple locations, you can select a specific location. This will determine which address shows up at the bottom of your emails, and will limit where the coupon can be redeemed. Note: If you want your coupon to be redeemable at all locations, leave the default All Locations selection.
Select a pre-existing template from the theme library, or use the default template to customize your email to your marketing goal. Note: If you’re including a coupon, be sure to include an offer amount and expiration date. Coupons can be redeemed in-store or via Square Online.
Customize your Square Marketing template. Choose your default campaign colours, layout, global styles, font size, button size, email header styles and more. You can also add images, new text fields and Items from your library, and re-order these blocks of content so the email matches exactly what you’re looking for. With Square Marketing, you have access to a searchable image gallery with over 850,000 free stock photos.
Select your recipients. Choose all customers or select a custom set of customers. If you chose a smart group when selecting your campaign objective, you can adjust the group recipients by clicking Modify. Learn more about your customer directory and smart groups.
Review your campaign, then click Schedule or Send Now. Learn more about scheduling marketing campaigns.
Note: Only send marketing communications to customers who have consented to receive marketing emails from your business. You are responsible for ensuring the customers on your list have given explicit permission to contact them and for complying with all applicable laws. Review our terms for additional information.
Learn more about customizing your marketing campaign.
Reminder Emails
When creating a one-time (blast) campaign with Square Marketing, the option to send a reminder email to recipients who haven’t opened your message is disabled by default. If you want to send reminder emails, this setting can be switched on from the Review & Send step of the campaign creation process.
Reminder emails are sent five days after the original delivery date. Campaigns with coupons or discounts are sent again to those who haven’t opened your message seven days before the coupon is set to expire. By default, a coupon expires two months after the campaign is sent, unless you’ve set it to expire on a different date.
Note: Reminder emails can’t be disabled once the campaign has been sent.
Set up Automations
Square Marketing allows you to set up automated campaigns. These are emails and/or text messages sent to customers on an ongoing basis following a one-time setup. The messages are only sent to customers that meet the specific criteria for each type of campaign. The messages will continue to be sent until the campaign is turned off. Learn more about automated campaigns.
Collect Google Reviews
Set up Google Business Profile with your Square account and create automated email and text message campaigns requesting Google Reviews from your regulars. Google Reviews help you drive new customer acquisition and sales.
After you set up the Google Reviews, the automation will trigger, or send, when a customer becomes a “regular” (makes three purchases in the last year), or when a customer leaves positive feedback.
To get started:
From your online Square Dashboard, go to Customers > Marketing > Google Reviews.
Click Get Started and sign into your Google Business Profile.
From the Google Reviews tab under Recommended automations, click “Get more Google reviews.”
Customize the design of the template and activate your campaign.
Track your Google Reviews directly from your Square Dashboard.
Schedule Marketing Campaigns
You can draft your marketing campaigns ahead of time, so they’ll be sent automatically.
To do so, click Schedule at the end of the campaign preparation flow to assign a date and time for your next promotion to be sent.
Schedule Recurring Marketing Campaigns
Set up recurring blast campaigns to automatically send weekly or monthly coupons, reminders and invitations from your online Square Dashboard.
To do so:
Go to Customers > Marketing in your online Square Dashboard > Create Campaign.
Select a blast campaign, create a custom design and select your audience.
From the Review & Send screen, click Schedule in the upper-right corner.
Set when you’d like to start sending the campaign > enable Repeat this campaign option.
Select if you’d like this recurring campaign indefinitely, sent a specific number of times or send it for one last time on a set date.
Note: Recurring campaigns can’t be used with seasonal themes.
Share Promotions via Digital Receipts
When creating a coupon campaign with Square Marketing, you have the option to include the coupon on your digital receipts. By doing this, customers who are subscribed to your mailing list can receive promotions via digital receipt.
To include your coupon in your digital receipts:
Go to Customers > Marketing in your online Square Dashboard > Create Campaign.
Select Receipt and enter your campaign name > Continue.
Customize your campaign’s theme, edit coupon details and add content > Continue.
Finish reviewing your campaign > Schedule or Send Now.
If you’re subscribed to Square Marketing, you have access to unlimited monthly emails at no additional cost and will skip the payment entry window.
When a customer receives your marketing email and is ready to make a purchase, you can apply their reward at checkout. Learn more applying rewards at checkout.
Assign Marketing Permissions
You are able to assign designated team members to send and manage Square Marketing campaigns. To do so:
Go to Staff > Team >Permissions in your online Square Dashboard.
Tap on Create Permission Set > Enter the permission set name.
Toggle on Marketing > Continue.
Select the access points the team member can use their permissions at.
Select Save.
Learn more about assigning permissions to your team members.
Manage Subscribed Customers
To manage the number of subscribed customers in your directory, you can do the following:
Visit your Customer Directory and resolve any duplicate contacts that may exist by clicking Resolve Duplicates.
Review your directory for any old, empty or unused customer records, and delete them.
When sending marketing campaigns, a customer is “subscribed” if they have a visible email address in your Customer Directory, and they have not manually unsubscribed or their email has not bounced. If a customer unsubscribes or the email bounces, their email address will be removed from your Marketing filters and smart groups, but it will remain in your Customer Directory.
You can use the Marketing Subscribers filter in your Directory to view subscribed customers.
View Campaign Reports
Get real-time reports wherever and whenever you want. Use our email marketing software to see how many people opened your email, how many clicked to learn more, as well as how many made purchases as a result of your campaign.
To view reporting on a marketing campaign:
Navigate to Customers > Marketing in your online Square Dashboard.
Select Campaigns. By default, all your campaigns will be shown. To filter by campaign type, click Campaign Type.
Click the campaign to view an individual report.
For answers to common Square Marketing questions, review Square Marketing FAQ.
Create and Send Vanity Code Coupons
With the vanity code coupon builder, you can create coupons to promote your existing social media channels without subscribing to email marketing campaigns. To get started:
From your online Square Dashboard, go to Customers > Marketing.
Click Coupons > Create Coupon.
From the design screen, you can create a custom code, choose a coupon type, choose when the coupon applies and add a description and an expiration date.
Click Activate.
You can view all of the vanity code coupons you created in the coupon builder in your online Square Dashboard by going to Marketing > Coupons. There, you can see the runtime, total discounts, total redeemed coupons and the vanity code coupon status.
Note: If you created a coupon from the email builder, it will not display in the list of all coupons in the vanity code coupon builder.
To share your promo code across social media and other places online:
From your Square Dashboard, go to Customers > Marketing > Coupons.
Select the coupon and click (···) > Preview .
Click Copy Code.