How to Customize WooCommerce Emails? – A step-by-step guide

Do your emails look typical and lifeless? If yes, you need to customize WooCommerce emails to make your emails on-brand and 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.

What are WooCommerce transactional 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 strategy has this: sending relevant messages that align with the stage in which 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. 

Types of 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 order 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 customers. You can send personalized offers, recommendations, or reminders based on customers’ preferences, behavior, or life-cycle stage.

How to Customize WooCommerce Emails?

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 emails using Default Settings.

Step 1: Enable the transactional emails in WooCommerce

To customize WooCommerce emails, go to WooCommerce -> Settings -> Emails.

You will see a list of default WooCommerce order emails under the Emails section.

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

To customize WooCommerce email content, click the ‘Manage’ button beside the type of order notification email you want to edit.

The image below is an example of how you can edit WooCommerce order confirmation email content.

Let’s learn about every field in detail:

• Enable/Disable checkbox lets you enable or disable this specific email notification.
• The 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 body of the email. 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.

To include the custom field in the WooCommerce email, you can edit the code in the theme’s functions.php file or use a WooCommerce email customizer plugin to customize with zero complexity.

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 WooCommerce order 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 add custom email notifications to WooCommerce and send highly branded WooCommerce emails, you should 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 WordPress email marketing plugin – Retainful.

Step 1: Install the Retainful Plugin

To customize WooCommerce email templates with zero complexity, go to your WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add new. Search for the ‘Retainful’ plugin.

Click “Install Now” to install and activate it. After installation, connect your WooCommerce store with Retainful to create custom email templates in WooCommerce.

Step 2: Choose the order follow-up email automation

Retainful allows you to send many WooCommerce transactional emails like order confirmation, order cancellation, order pending, abandoned cart recovery, welcome emails, thank you emails, and more. 

To customize WooCommerce email templates, go to Retainful Dashboard -> Automation and select a type of automated WooCommerce email. 

Let’s take a WooCommerce order confirmation email as an example and see how you can customize it. 

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 3: Change subject line and preview text in WooCommerce emails

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 4: Customize the layout of the WooCommerce email template

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 “Element” section, you can add and change elements of the WooCommerce 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. 

You can also change the WooCommerce email template by clicking ‘Change template’ and choose a suitable one from Retainful’s ready-made template library.

Step 5: Change the WooCommerce email content

To edit the WooCommerce email template 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. 

You can add a custom field to my WooCommerce email, like the Upsell block here, and edit the padding, border styles, dimensions, and background color. 

After the editing of the email content, you can save it as a template for future use.

Step 6: Preview and send test email

As a final step, preview and test the customized WooCommerce email templates, and you are good to go. 

Wrapping up!!

By using WooCommerce customizer plugins like Retainful and code customizations, you can customize WooCommerce emails that are both branded and personalized, ensuring they resonate with your customers.

Customizing WooCommerce email templates doesn’t just enhance the user experience – it helps reinforce your brand identity and drive more conversions. With the right tool, your WooCommerce emails can become a great marketing asset rather than an afterthought.

Read these blogs to learn more about Email Marketing in WooCommerce.

1. How to use images in your email campaigns – Complete Guide
2. 10 Best Thank You Email Templates and Examples to Delight Your eCommerce Customers
3. How to Set the Perfect Abandoned Cart Email Template