Do your WooCommerce emails look typical and lifeless? If yes, you need to start customizing WooCommerce emails to make your emails engaging to your customers.
Transactional emails in WooCommerce often have open rates of 40-50% and click rates at around 10-20% – more than any typical marketing email you send.
Even though the importance it holds, many of the merchants fail to customize WooCommerce email templates and witness plummeting conversion rates as a result.
In this blog, we will learn about how to customize WooCommerce emails using the default editor and a plugin. At the end of the blog, you will be able to create custom email templates for WooCommerce.
Automate all your WooCommerce email campaigns with Retainful’s pre-built workflows and templates in minutes.
What are WooCommerce emails?
WooCommerce emails are transactional emails sent to customers and store administrators to update them on the status of orders, payments, and other events in your online store.
A good WooCommerce email marketing has this – sending relevant messages that align with the stage that the customers are in the buyer’s journey.
A good WooCommerce Email Marketing has this – sending relevant messages that align with the stage that the customers are in the buyer’s journey.
The different stages and their examples are below:
- Onboarding – Welcoming and familiarizing the new users with the product.
Example: Welcome emails, first purchase emails. - Nurturing – Educating the customers about the product.
Example: Newsletters, emails with “How to” guides. - Sales/Promotional – Promoting sales, discounts, or coupons.
Example: Offer emails, product launch emails. - Transactional – Communicating about the orders and purchasing process.
Example: Order confirmation emails, order tracking emails. - Behavioral – Sending emails based on user action with the website.
Example: Cart abandonment emails, feedback emails.
Default WooCommerce Transactional Emails
WooCommerce comes with a number of default email templates that you can customize to match your branding and personalize the emails to an extent.
Most of the emails are transactional emails that are sent after the customer has made an action in the sore.
Here are the default WooCommerce transactional emails:
- New Order – Notifies the store admin that a new order has been placed on the website.
- Cancelled Order – Notifies the store admin of an order that has been canceled.
- Failed Order – Notifies the store admin of a failed order.
- Order On-Hold – Sent to the customer when the order status is changed to “On-Hold”.
- Order Processing – Sent to the customer when the order status is changed to “Order Processing”.
- Order Completed – Sent to the customer when the order status is changed to “Order Complete”.
- Order Refunded – Sent to the customer when the payment of the order is refunded.
- Customer Invoice – Sent to the customer and contains order information and payment links.
- Customer Note – Sent to a customer when a store owner adds a note to the order.
- Password Reset – Sent to a customer when they request a new password on the store.
- New Account – Sent to a customer when they create a new account on the store.
- Back-in-stock notification – Sent to a customer when a product they searched for is back in stock.
You can see that every email in WooCommerce is sent when an action triggers it. Therefore, you will need to make sure you enable the emails in the list.
Why is customizing WooCommerce emails important?
If you own a WooCommerce store, sending customized WooCommerce emails is the most effective way to shape the customer experience, engage customers, and increase sales.
Nobody likes a boring, typical template. Even if your email gets opened, it won’t inspire the recipient to take action. Customizing WooCommerce email templates to have a unique style, color palette, tone, and brand messaging will impress the customer and prompt them to take the desired action.
Customizing WooCommerce email templates allows you to craft specific messages for different segments of your audience. You can send personalized offers, recommendations, or reminders based on customers’ preferences, behavior, or life-cycle stage.
How to Customize WooCommerce Emails using Global Settings?
WooCommerce has global settings that allow you to customize some elements of your WooCommerce emails like – the sender name, email address, and subject line.
Let’s see how to customize WooCommerce email templates using Default Settings.
Step 1: Enabling the emails in WooCommerce
To customize WooCommerce emails, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails. You will see a list of default WooCommerce transactional emails.
You can see that every email in WooCommerce is sent when an action triggers it. Therefore, you will need to make sure you enable the emails in the list.
Step 2: Edit WooCommerce email content
Click the ‘Manage’ button to edit the content in the WooCommerce transactional email templates, like the subject line, heading, and body.
The image below is an example of how you can edit the WooCommerce order confirmation email template.
Let’s learn about every field in detail:
- Enable/Disable checkbox lets you enable or disable this specific email notification.
- Subject is where you enter the subject line. You can also add placeholders in this field, like
- {site_title}
- {site_address}
- {site_url}
- {order_date}
- {order_number}
- Email heading – You have to specify the heading of the email.
- Additional content – The text you add here will be visible in the email body. You can use the placeholders here as well.
- Email type – You can specify the format of the email, like
- Plain text – Emails sent with no formatting and no graphics.
- HTML – Emails sent with simple graphics.
- Multipart – Both formats are sent.
Step 3: Edit WooCommerce email template elements
If you scroll below the list of email templates in Settings → Emails, you’ll see more customization options. Changes you make here will be updated to all of your email templates at once.
You can change the header image, footer text, base color, background color, body background color, and body text color.
You can click on the preview to see how your custom WooCommerce email template looks.
You can see that the options available are very minimal in the default WooCommerce email template customization option.
How to Customize WooCommerce Email Templates with a Plugin?
To customize and produce a highly personalized email that converts more, you can use a WooCommerce email customizer plugin.
Retainful is an all-in-one WooCommerce email marketing plugin that simplifies how you customize and send emails by:
- Pre-designed template library
- Drag-and-drop email editor
- Easy-to-setup email automation
Here is how you can customize WooCommerce email templates using a multi-purpose email marketing platform – Retainful.
Step 1: Install the Retainful Plugin
First, go to your WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add new. Search for the ‘Retainful’ plugin. Click “Install Now” to install and activate it.
WooCommerce stores using Retainful are recovering an average of 30% of abandoned carts. Yours could be next.
Step 2: Connecting your store with Retainful API
After installation, connect your WooCommerce store with Retainful to create custom email templates in WooCommerce.
To connect your store, you have to get the API Keys from the Retainful Dashboard. Go to Settings -> General. Copy your App ID and secret key.
With the App ID and secret key in your hand, go to WordPress Dashboard → Retainful. Under the Connection tab, enter the keys in the respective field and click “Connect.” You’ll see a successful connection message once the connection is established.
Step 3: Choose the type of email campaign
Retainful allows the launching of various WooCommerce transactional emails like order confirmation emails, abandoned cart recovery, welcome emails, win-back emails, Thank you emails, and more.
To see the options, go to Retainful Dashboard -> Automation.
Let’s take a WooCommerce order confirmation email as an example and see how you can customize that email template.
Select “Order Follow-up Emails,” and you will be asked to enter the name of the campaign. Enter the name and click “Create Flow”.
Step 4: Customize the subject line and preview text
You will see an automation workflow containing triggers, wait time, and email. Click the ‘Order summary and Upsell” and a tab will appear on the right side.
You can edit WooCommerce email template elements like email title, subject line, and preview text of your choice in the respective fields.
Step 5: Customize the structure of email
You have to create your custom email templates for WooCommerce with the structure of your emails in mind, like the location of images, text blocks, CTAs, and their size.
Click on “Edit Email Content” on the same tab to edit the structure. You will be taken to an email editor like the image below.
This is where you can explore options to customize every element of your WooCommerce email templates.
In the ‘Section’ option, you can include sections in terms of columns.
In the “Element” section, you can add and change elements of the WooCommerce order confirmation email template, like text, buttons, images, social media icons, and more.
In the below image, you can see the various types of buttons you can add as your Call-To-Actions.
Click on “Store Element” to add discount coupons, unsubscribe option, address, and summary. These are some of the staple elements your custom email templates in WooCommerce should have.
Step 6: Choose the email template
Click on “Change template” to explore various email templates in Retainful’s template library or the custom email templates you have created and saved before.
You can select a template you like and edit WooCommerce email template elements, color, logo, and email content as you like.
Step 7: Customizing the email content
To edit the WooCommerce order confirmation email content, click on the blocks you want to edit. You will see a tab appearing on the right where you can set the dimensions and other settings related to the content.
For example, for the logo block, you can change the dimensions, background color, and border style.
For the images, you can edit dimensions, background color, border style, and more.
For other content blocks you include in your emails, like the Upsell block here, you can edit the padding, border styles, dimensions, and background color.
For CTAs, you can edit the text, link, dimensions, typography, and background color.
Similarly, you can edit the footer and other blocks.
After the editing of the email content, you can save it as a template for future use.
As a final step, preview and test the WooCommerce email templates you have created, and you are good to go.
Use Retainful’s pre-designed email templates to craft compelling WooCommerce emails effortlessly.
Wrapping up!!
While customizing WooCommerce emails , increasing customer engagement should be your prime target, as only the engaged customers will take action. With a lot of options and plugins for customizing email templates, you can create a personalized email that achieves the best customer engagement.
Read these blogs to learn more about Email Marketing in WooCommerce.
- How to use images in your email campaigns – Complete Guide
- 10 Best Thank You Email Templates and Examples to Delight Your eCommerce Customers
- How to Set the Perfect Abandoned Cart Email Template
First, define your objective. Then, group your WooCommerce customers based on specific criteria like purchase history or interests to tailor your email content for higher relevance and engagement.
Utilize an email marketing platform compatible with WooCommerce to design responsive emails, incorporating compelling visuals, clear CTAs, and personalized content. Track the metrics and optimize.
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays tend to have the highest email open rates. Many companies also see success on Sundays, especially for B2C brands.
1. 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. – Works well as most people would have settled into their day.
2. 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. – People might be checking emails during or right after their lunch break.
3. 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. – After-work hours see another spike, as people might be checking emails casually during the evening.
Most email marketing platforms, like Mailchimp, SendinBlue, or Retainful, provide built-in analytics. These tools can give you insights into Open Rates, Click-Through Rates (CTR), Bounce Rates, and Unsubscribe Rates.
This can be done in four easy steps:
1. Be consistent in using the brand’s colors, fonts, and logos.
2. Ensure the template is responsive to display correctly across all devices.
3. Incorporate bold and distinct call-to-action buttons that guide users toward your intended action.
4. Use crisp product photos and relevant visuals to captivate and engage the customers.
