Shopify Email Marketing in Germany: Messaging vs. Klaviyo & Opt-in

Shopify email marketing is the cheapest sales channel you have: the addresses belong to you, and each email costs a fraction of a cent. In this article, you'll learn which tool fits the size of your store, how to build a list that complies with German law, and which automations pay off first. It is part of our overview Shopify marketing: how to get your first sales.

Shopify email marketing: Messaging, Klaviyo or Brevo?

Start with Shopify Messaging while your list is small and you mainly need newsletters and a handful of standard automations. Switch to a specialized tool when you want segments based on purchase behavior, A/B tests across entire flows, or SMS at scale.

Important for context: Shopify has renamed its email app. What many tutorials still call "Shopify Email" is now listed in the App Store as Shopify Messaging, and it handles SMS and WhatsApp in addition to email.

Prices according to the Shopify Help Center, the Klaviyo pricing page and the Brevo pricing page, as of October 2026. Klaviyo and Shopify bill in dollars, so the euro amount depends on the exchange rate.

Example: what does a newsletter to 3,000 contacts cost?

You send four newsletters a month to 3,000 contacts. That's 12,000 emails. With Shopify Messaging, 10,000 are free and the remaining 2,000 cost $2. Automations count toward the total, but according to Shopify, abandoned checkout emails do not. With Klaviyo, 3,000 profiles already put you on a much more expensive plan, because Klaviyo bills by number of contacts. The calculator on the Klaviyo pricing page shows you the exact price.

Our rule of thumb: if you get a few orders a day and don't yet know any clear customer segments, you lose nothing with Shopify Messaging. Switching to Klaviyo pays off when you have concrete ideas that Shopify Messaging can't handle, such as different flows for first-time and repeat customers or for individual product categories.

What is allowed in Germany: consent, double opt-in, existing customers

In Germany, advertising emails to consumers require prior express consent (§ 7(2) UWG, the German Act Against Unfair Competition). Without it, the email counts as an unreasonable nuisance, and you risk formal warning letters (Abmahnungen). On top of that comes the GDPR (DSGVO): you must be able to prove consent.

Is double opt-in mandatory?

The law doesn't use the term. In practice, though, there's no way around it. With double opt-in, the person receives a confirmation email after signing up and has to click a link. Only then are they added to the list. This proves that the actual owner of the address agreed and that nobody entered someone else's address. Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has accepted this procedure as sufficient protection against false entries for email advertising (BGH, I ZR 164/09 (German)). Without double opt-in, you have very little to go on in a dispute.

In Shopify, you turn it on under Settings > Notifications > Customer notifications in the marketing double opt-in section. According to the Shopify Help Center, stores based in Germany also have the option to require customers to confirm their subscription. The confirmation email itself must not contain any advertising. Also adjust the text shown after your signup form is submitted, for example: "Almost done! Please confirm your signup in the email we just sent you."

The exception for existing customers

Without consent, you may only email customers if all four conditions of § 7(3) UWG are met:

1. You obtained the address in connection with an actual sale.
2. You are advertising your own similar goods.
3. The customer has not objected.
4. When collecting the address and in every single email, you clearly state that they can object at any time free of charge.

The exception is narrow. Someone who bought a T-shirt may receive an email about your new T-shirt collection, but not a general newsletter about anything and everything. If you want to be safe, get consent at checkout via a checkbox that is not pre-ticked.

Abandoned cart emails: in Germany only with consent

Reminder emails to visitors who abandoned their purchase count as advertising in Germany. Without consent, they are not permitted. This is not a fringe view: the State Commissioner for Data Protection of North Rhine-Westphalia (LDI NRW) assessed exactly such a case in her activity report for 2025. A merchant had sent three reminders and defended them as "service communication". The authority disagreed: anyone who leaves the store without buying ends the pre-contractual relationship, and the emails serve to make a sale (report on Haufe, July 2026 (German)).

The existing-customer exception doesn't help either. It requires a completed sale, and that is exactly what's missing when someone abandons checkout (IT-Recht Kanzlei (German)).

That doesn't mean you have to give up this automation. But you may only send it to people who previously consented to email advertising and confirmed it via double opt-in. Here's how to set it up:

1. Offer a checkbox for newsletter signup at checkout that is not pre-ticked, and mention there that you also send reminders about incomplete orders.
2. Turn on double opt-in as described above.
3. Set up the automation. According to the Shopify Help Center, you'll find it in Shopify Messaging under Apps > Messaging > Automations ("Abandoned checkout emails"). Under "Send to", choose the recipient group; under "Send after", the delay.
4. Check the recipient selection carefully so that only people with marketing consent are emailed. In Klaviyo, you do this with a flow filter on consent status.

Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned if it remains incomplete for more than ten minutes after the email address has been entered. For a plain "abandoned cart" without an email address, there naturally can't be an email.

Building a list when you have no customers yet

A purchased list is not an option in Germany: the people on it never gave consent to you. You build your list from your own traffic. Here's how:

• Signup form in the footer and on a dedicated page. Shopify themes include a newsletter section for this.
• Pop-up with a clear benefit. For example 10% off the first order, free shipping, or a free download such as a size guide. State clearly that the person is subscribing to your newsletter in return. You can build the pop-up itself without code using the free Shopify app Shopify Forms: it supports signup, discount and exit-intent pop-ups, can also ask for a phone number for SMS if you want, and works directly with Shopify Messaging. Klaviyo and Brevo come with their own forms, in which case you don't need Shopify Forms.
• Code only after confirmation. Don't show the discount code directly in the pop-up; send it in the welcome email after the confirmation link has been clicked. That way only real addresses get the code, and throwaway addresses are pointless.
• Social media and content. People who follow you on Instagram or TikTok are good candidates. Link to your signup page there. More on this in the article on first sales without an ad budget.

How to create discount codes that can be used only once per person is explained in our guide to discount codes, bundles and upsells in Shopify.

The four automations that pay off first

Automations run without any input from you, which is why they deliver the most per hour of work. Start with these four, in this order:

Be careful with review requests: in 2018, the BGH ruled that even a request for a review in an invoice email is advertising (BGH, VI ZR 225/17 (German)). How to still collect reviews in a legally sound way is covered in the article on reviews and trust in your store.

Order confirmations and shipping emails are not advertising

Order confirmations, shipping confirmations and invoices are transactional emails. You may send them without consent as long as they contain no advertising. Shopify sends them automatically. You edit the templates under Settings > Notifications > Customer notifications.

With dropshipping, the shipping email is often forgotten: it only goes out once the order is marked as fulfilled in Shopify, ideally with a tracking number. Dropshipping apps usually transfer the tracking number automatically. So don't turn off the shipping confirmation; make sure the number arrives instead. How this works is explained in the article on the dropshipping order process.

Customizing the order confirmation and attaching an invoice

You can open and edit each customer notification individually under Settings > Notifications. You set colors and logo centrally; you change texts and additional fields in the template code (Liquid). Send yourself a test email after every change. The test email uses sample data, so also check taxes and prices with a real test order.

Many tutorials still recommend the app "Order Printer Emailer" for attaching invoices. It is no longer available in the App Store. Shopify's own free app Shopify Order Printer creates invoices, packing slips and delivery notes with your own layout, but according to its listing it is meant for printing and exporting, not for sending automatically. If you want to email the invoice automatically, you need an invoicing app. Which mandatory details belong on the invoice and which other tools exist is covered in the article on invoices and bookkeeping in a Shopify store.

For yourself, there are staff notifications, also under Settings > Notifications. There you specify which addresses Shopify notifies about new orders. This doesn't have to be the sender address your customers see. If you aren't receiving order emails, this recipient is usually what's missing.

Sender address and deliverability: making sure your emails arrive

If Shopify emails land in spam or don't arrive at all, the sender address is almost always the cause. Since February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo require domain authentication and a DMARC record for senders using their own domain. If both are missing, Shopify rewrites your sender address to something like store+123@shopifyemail.com. The emails still go out, but not under your name.

Here's how to set it up according to the Shopify Help Center:

1. Under Settings > Notifications, in the "Sender email" section, set an address on your domain, such as info@yourstore.de. Avoid "noreply"; some mail servers reject such addresses.
2. Click domain authentication there. With IONOS, GoDaddy and Cloudflare this happens automatically; otherwise, you add the CNAME records shown to you at your domain provider. This can take up to 48 hours.
3. Also create a DMARC record: a TXT record under _dmarc with the value v=DMARC1; p=none;. There may be only one DMARC record per domain.

Domains you bought directly from Shopify are authenticated automatically. Incidentally, you can set the DNS records for authentication even before moving to Shopify: they only affect sending email, not the address where your old website can be reached.

Business email address: mailbox or forwarding?

Shopify doesn't host mailboxes. With a domain bought through Shopify, according to the Shopify Help Center, you can create as many addresses like info@yourstore.de as you want that forward to an existing mailbox, such as Gmail. However, you can't reply from that address; the customer will then see your Gmail address. For a real mailbox that sends and receives, you need an email provider such as IONOS, Strato, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Depending on the provider, this costs a few euros per month per mailbox, and the domain can still stay with Shopify. How to connect an external domain properly is shown in our guide connecting a domain to Shopify.

You don't need multiple Shopify logins for multiple stores: one account can manage several stores. It's worth having a separate sender and contact address on the respective domain for each store, though, so customers immediately see which store an email comes from.

Deliverability also depends on your list. If you only email confirmed addresses and remove inactive ones after a few months, you get fewer spam complaints. That's another reason for double opt-in.

FAQ

Can I use Klaviyo instead of the Shopify automations?

Yes. Klaviyo connects to Shopify via an app and imports customers, orders and checkout events. Then turn off the same automations in Shopify Messaging, otherwise customers get duplicate emails, such as two reminders for the same checkout. You can keep having Shopify send transactional emails such as order confirmations.

Which email address should I use for Shopify, personal or business?

For your Shopify account, you can use any address, and you can manage multiple stores with it. As the sender for customer emails, use an address on your store domain, such as info@yourstore.de. It looks more professional, and only with your own authenticated domain will your emails reliably arrive under your name.

Do customers see my personal email address?

Customers don't see the address you use to log in to Shopify. What they see is the sender address of your store emails and the contact address you list in the store and in your imprint (Impressum). In Germany, an email address has to be in the imprint anyway. Create a separate address on your store domain for this, and your personal address stays completely out of it.

Will my existing contacts be transferred to a new tool?

Usually, yes. Klaviyo, Brevo and similar tools import your existing customers via their Shopify integration. After the import, check whether the consent status was transferred correctly. Customers without marketing consent may not be used for newsletters in the new tool either; otherwise you end up with two lists with different rules.

How often should I send a newsletter?

There's no fixed rule. For most small stores, one to four emails a month work well. Content matters more than frequency: new arrivals, useful tips and genuine promotions rather than constant discounts. If unsubscribes rise noticeably after an email, it was too promotional or came too often.

Why isn't Shopify sending emails?

First check whether the sender address is authenticated and whether there is only one DMARC record. Then look in the spam folder and in the notification settings to see whether the email in question is turned on. Marketing emails only go to customers with marketing consent, not to all customers.

How much does Shopify Messaging cost?

The app itself is free. All plans include 10,000 free emails per month; unused ones expire at the end of the month. After that, each additional 1,000 emails cost $1, less for very large volumes. According to Shopify, abandoned checkout emails don't count toward the allowance. Billing is via your Shopify bill.

Last updated: October 2026. Prices and features of the tools may change. This article is not legal advice.