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WooCommerce Email Templates: How to Design Beautiful Custom Emails

Editorial Team
July 12, 2024
WooCommerce Email Templates: How to Design Beautiful Custom Emails

Customizing pre-designed WooCommerce email templates is the real deal when it comes to designing attractive emails for your users.

One crucial aspect of running a successful WooCommerce store is effective communication with your customers.

Imagine your customer’s delight when they receive a beautifully crafted email with order confirmation or asking about their shopping experience, perfectly reflecting your brand’s identity.

It paves the way for building relationships, boosting engagement, and driving sales.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore everything about WooCommerce email templates, uncovering the techniques for customizing, styling, and optimizing them according to your business needs.

Furthermore, you’ll also learn how to create custom email templates that can be used again for future campaigns.

Let’s get started.

What are WooCommerce Email Templates?

WooCommerce email templates are pre-designed layouts and styles that help format your emails, which WooCommerce sends to customers and store administrators.

These templates are an essential part of WooCommerce as it handles different email notifications based on your store’s operations.

You can customize your emails as per the different stages of email marketing.

Here are the different stages:

  • Onboarding - Introducing new users to your products. For example, welcome emails, first-order emails, etc.
  • Nurturing - Educating customers about your products through newsletters, “How to” guide emails, etc.
  • Sales or promotional - Promoting sales, discounts, or special offers, such as product launch emails or discount offer emails.
  • Transactional - Providing information about orders and purchases. For example, order confirmation emails, shipment tracking emails, etc.
  • Behavioral - Sending emails based on user actions on your WooCommerce store. For example, cart abandonment emails, feedback emails, etc.

By default, WooCommerce only sends transactional emails to customers. Let’s look at some common types of default WooCommerce emails:

  • New order
  • Cancelled order
  • Failed order
  • Order on-hold
  • Processing order
  • Completed order
  • Refunded order
  • Customer note
  • Password reset
  • New account

WooCommerce doesn’t offer enough customization options - you can’t edit emails as per your brand or add any images. 

In addition, the default WooCommerce options do not allow you to send other crucial emails, such as cart abandonment emails, post-purchase emails, product recommendation emails, review request emails, etc.

These additional emails can only be sent and customized with the help of plugins (which we will discuss later in this post).

👉 Here is a detailed guide to understanding these WooCommerce order statuses in your store.

Why Do You Need WooCommerce Email Templates?

Statista says the average email reading time has fallen to just 10 seconds.

Out of all the opened emails, users skim through a majority of them.

That’s why it's important to pay proper attention to the emails you send to your subscribers.

Using professional and aesthetically designed emails gives your users a better experience and converts better than plain text emails.

But if you look at the default transactional email that WooCommerce sends, you’ll notice it’s too dull and boring.
Here’s an example of the WooCommerce order confirmation email:

Default woocommerce order confirmation email

You cannot add images, change fonts, insert images, or add backgrounds.

That’s where WooCommerce email templates can be quite effective for you.

Here are the key reasons why custom email templates are your best bet:

  • Customer engagement - It helps ensure that all communication with customers is professional and consistent by reinforcing your brand identity.
  • Professional communication - Well-crafted email templates can enhance customer engagement and build stronger bonds by keeping customers informed and involved.
  • Improved user experience - Clear and attractive emails improve the user experience, making it easier for customers to read them and navigate their interactions with your store.
  • Personalization - Email templates can be customized to add personalized elements like their name, order summary, custom fields, etc., making customers feel valued and increasing the probability of repeat business.
  • Increased sales - Promotional email templates boost sales by informing customers about special offers, new product launches, and other marketing campaigns.
  • Efficiency - Pre-designed templates help save time by quickly transforming into beautiful, on-brand emails with simple customization.

Overall, WooCommerce email templates are vital for maintaining effective communication, improving customer satisfaction, and driving sales growth.

3 Best WooCommerce Email Templates Customizer Plugins

Over the past month, our experts have used various email template customizers to enhance communication with contacts.

Here are the top 3 plugins:

1. FunnelKit Automations

FunnelKit Automations is the most powerful automation and marketing broadcast CRM for WordPress and WooCommerce.

It lets you automate and design all kinds of emails that you can think of; be it cart abandonment, winback emails, follow-up emails, welcome emails, and many more.

FunnelKit Automations - WooCommerce Email Templates Customizer Plugin

Features of FunnelKit Automations:

  • Pre-designed email templates - Import and customize pre-designed email templates and send beautiful emails to your users. You get access to a wide array of transactional and marketing WooCommerce email templates.
  • Easy drag-and-drop content blocks - Design beautiful emails with drag-and-drop content blocks, such as images, text, buttons, menus, etc. Get access to WooCommerce blocks, including the order summary, cart item, product, coupon, and more, to customize WooCommerce email templates.
  • Personalization merge tags - Personalize your emails by including merge tags. They add dynamic value to your email content, such as the user’s name, preferences, order data, data submitted on a form, and more.
  • Dynamic coupons - Create personalized dynamic discount coupon codes with limited-time offers to encourage users to shop from your online store. You can even set usage limits and restrictions for your coupons.
  • A/B split path testing - A/B test and optimize your marketing automations by split testing email subject lines, email content, email designs, discount coupons, delays between emails, etc. You can split-test a maximum of three paths to help you start making profits.

There are many other features, such as conditional displays, save custom layouts, pre-built recipes, rule-based automated workflows, and more.

Pricing:

FunnelKit Automations offers a free (lite) version. However, the visual email builder and templates are included in the premium version, which unlocks advanced features and starts at $99.50 a year.

Customer reviews:

Users have rated 5 out of 5 stars (206 reviews) with 20,000+ active installations on WordPress.org.

2. Email Template Customizer for WooCommerce

This email template customizer plugin by VillaTheme lets you build and customize email templates for WooCommerce.

It has different base elements, WooCommerce elements, and developmental tools to help you build a well-designed email.

Woocommerce email template customizer plugin

Features of Email Template Customizer for WooCommerce:

  • Design attractive WooCommerce emails - Create beautiful WooCommerce transactional emails with basic and WooCommerce elements using a simple drag-and-drop interface.
  • Customizable blocks - Create customizable blocks and add them to any email template you want. This saves you a lot of time when setting up your emails.
  • Responsive design - Its responsive point functionality helps you ensure your emails are compatible across multiple devices.

Besides this, it also offers preview and test emails, customer interaction reports, the ability to attach files to emails for sending, and more.

Pricing plan:

It has a free version with limited features available on the WordPress repository. The premium version unlocks its full functionalities, costing $32 with 6 months of support. You can extend its support to 12 months for $10.13.

Customer reviews:

4.7 out of 5 stars based on 103 reviews with 30,000+ active installations (WordPress.org).

3. Email Customizer for WooCommerce

Email Customizer for WooCommerce allows you to create professional emails for your customers.

You can design your email templates or customize any pre-designed ones for different transactional emails using drag-and-drop elements.

Email Customizer for WooCommerce plugin

Features of Email Customizer for WooCommerce:

  • Pre-designed email templates - This plugin offers 11 readymade email templates that you can customize and use for communication.
  • Easy customization - Customize your email design by configuring the style, header, footer, email hooks such as order meta, order table, etc. It offers 20+ essential elements to design your emails quickly.
  • General and basic WooCommerce elements - You get access to general elements like text, images, buttons, etc. and WooCommerce elements like customer details, order element, billing and shipping details, and more.

Pricing:

It has a free version available. Upgrade it to the Pro version for $39 annually to get its complete functionality on a single website.

Customer reviews:

4.3 out of 5 stars based on 103 customer reviews with 10,000+ active installations (WordPress.org).

Experts Verdict

We select FunnelKit Automations because it has value-for-money features. 

You can automate your entire business processes, like sending an order confirmation email when an order is purchased, sending abandoned cart emails when a user leaves in the middle, or sending winback emails when your customers are inactive.

Not just setting up automated workflows, you can design beautiful emails by customizing pre-designed email templates in WooCommerce.

In addition, you can create custom email templates and use them to send email broadcasts.

You can even offer personalized discount coupons to incentivize customers for their purchases.

You can achieve endless use cases with FunnelKit Automations.

How to Design Emails Using Pre-Designed WooCommerce Email Templates?

We’ll set up an automation to send automated emails when a specific event triggers.

From here, we’ll customize that email template to fit our brand using a simple drag-and-drop functionality.

And we’ll do all this using FunnelKit Automations - the best WooCommerce and WordPress CRM.

Let’s design the abandoned cart recovery email, which is important for eCommerce stores.

Step 1: Add an automation

Go to the FunnelKit ⇨ Automations section and hit the 'Create Automation' button.

Go to the automations section and click on the create automation button

You’ll see various pre-built automation recipes to help you set up automated workflows.

Click on the 'Abandoned Cart Reminder' recipe.

Select the abandoned cart reminder automation recipe

Next, hit the 'Import' button and enter the name of your automated recipe.

Import the recipe in which we will customize woocommerce email templates

Lastly, click on 'Create'. Now, your cart abandonment automation will be imported.

Step 2: Import your WooCommerce email template

Learn how to set up a complete cart abandonment recovery workflow.

We’ll directly go to the 'Send Email' action step.

Locate the send email action which we have to customize for woocommerce email templates

It’ll open up the email action window.

This is where you can edit the subject line and choose the template of your email.

As you can see, we’ve included the cart billing email and first name merge tags. You can personalize your subject line by clicking on {{..}}.

You have the option to choose the enhanced visual builder, rich text editor, raw HTML code and basic visual builder.

Select Visual Builder (New) and hit 'Edit' to customize your email.

Enter the subject line, select Visual Builder (New) and click on edit to customize the email template

You'll see various pre-designed WooCommerce email templates to choose from, such as:

  • New registration email templates
  • Abandoned cart email templates
  • Testimonial email templates
  • Product recommendation email templates
  • Declaration of sale email templates
  • New product launch email templates
  • Post-purchase education email templates
  • Flash sale and reminder email templates
  • Customer winback email templates
  • Webinar registration email templates
  • Course email templates
  • Event signup email templates

Just hover on the 'Abandoned Cart' email template and hit 'Preview'.

Preview the abandoned cart woocommerce email template

Here, you can see the complete preview of your selected email template.

If you’re satisfied with the design, hit the ‘Import Template’ button.

Import the woocommerce email template

It’ll import the WooCommerce email template into your workspace.

Step 3: Customize the WooCommerce email template

It’s time to customize your email template.

On the left, you’ll see various blocks, structures, and layout sections. On the right, you’ll see the email template you can edit in real time.

  • Add your business logo

Start by uploading your brand logo.

Click on the logo, hit the image icon, and click on the ‘Upload’ button.

Add your business logo - woocommerce email templates

Upload the file from your device or select an already uploaded one from the media library and click on ‘Select Image’.

Your business logo will be updated here.

  • Edit your header section

Select your header, and you’ll see different customization options on the left.

You can customize the font, alignment, line height, padding, show on desktop toggle, or set display condition for this section.

Double-click on the text and edit it.

Edit the header in your email template
  • Customize your call to action button

Next, edit the call to action button.

You can use the cart link block available for cart abandonment email sequences.

It already has the cart recovery link where abandoned users can redirect to their cart to make the purchase.

Customize the cta button and enter the recovery cart url

You can even auto-apply coupons in cart recovery URLs using merge tags to incentivize users to complete their purchases.

Auto apply coupon codes in cart recovery url for woocommerce email templates

In addition, you can customize the button's position, font, border style, border radius, padding, container padding, etc.

  • Update the shopping cart layout

Click on the WooCommerce cart items block.

Here, define the layout you want to offer in your email: Cart items or product.

Enable or disable the product images, titles, attributes, quantities, prices of a cart.

Update the shopping cart layout for woocommerce email templates

You can even configure the image widths, separator style, separator color, padding, and more.

  • Edit the benefits section

As you can see, this section has three columns. For that, set the heading, image and text for your benefits section.

Edit the benefits section with images, text and headings to customize your woocommerce email template
  • Customize the frequently asked question section

Customize your brand’s FAQ section in the email. This will help build trust with new users.

Customize the frequently asked question section
  • Add social media icons

Drag and drop the ‘Social’ block to your email workspace.

Click on the plus (+) icon and select all the social media icons of your business.

Set the style, size, and gap of your social media icons.

Hit the ‘Save’ button when done.

See the full preview of your emails and click on save when done

Make sure to check the responsiveness of your email on desktop and mobile view.

You can even see the full preview of your emails and send a test email to recipients.

Step 4: Activate your automation

Go back to your workflow and turn the automation toggle to ‘Active’.

Activate your automation

This is how you can customize automated emails using pre-designed WooCommerce email templates.

You can follow the same process for email customization when sending announcement or broadcast emails.

Popular WooCommerce Email Templates to Have in Your Store

We have listed some brilliant ideas for creating WordPress email templates below:

1. Order confirmation email template

Many marketers don’t focus much on order confirmation emails. They consider these emails to be often sent out of necessity after the purchase is made.

However, order confirmation emails enhance conversions and improve retention rates.

Therefore, you should focus on setting up a branded order confirmation email template on your WordPress site.

FunnelKit has 2 pre-designed order thank-you email templates available. Here is a widely used FunnelKit template for WooCommerce order notification emails:

order email woocommerce email template

You can even send separate emails for each product in an order and design them elegantly with FunnelKit Automations.

In addition, you can customize different transactional email templates such as shipment tracking emails, subscription emails, order cancellation emails, refunds, and more.

2. Product education email

Some products require educating your customers so that they can use them effectively and to their full potential.

Providing clear instructions allows customers to understand the product’s features, benefits, and best practices.

This enhances the customer experience, reduces support inquiries, and increases customer satisfaction.

See one of the most used product education email templates of FunnelKit - feel free to customize this template at any time.

product education email woocommerce email template

Therefore, setting up perfect product education email templates is the best way to proceed.

3. Upsell or product recommendation email template

Offering upsell or product recommendations in your emails is a strategic way to leverage high engagement and build stronger customer relationships.

By suggesting relevant products, you can increase the potential for additional sales and enhance customer’s overall experience with your brand.

Here’s a popular product recommendation email template offered by FunnelKit:

product recommendation woocommerce email template

This will allow you to benefit from the high engagement within these emails, building your rapport along the way.

4. Newsletter email template

81% of B2B marketers prefer email newsletters as the most effective form of content marketing.

Email newsletters offer incredible opportunities to connect with the people that matter most to your business.

See the newsletter email template in WooCommerce:

newsletter woocommerce email template

Therefore, having a great WooCommerce email newsletter template at your disposal gets the right message delivered to the right people quickly.

5. Flash sale template

Many eCommerce store owners consider flash sales a foolproof selling strategy because they increase click-to-open rates by 74%.

Such flash sales create a sense of urgency, allowing shoppers to explore your store, research the products, and opt to buy them.

Here is the flash sale template in WooCommerce:

flash sale woocommerce email template

Therefore, having flash sale templates lets you inform your contacts about the sales running on your store.

Creating Custom WooCommerce Email Templates and Using Them in Automations or Broadcasts

Creating custom email templates in WooCommerce can enhance your customer information by providing personalized and branded email content.

These templates can be easily customized and used in your future email campaigns.

It helps you save time rather than designing emails from scratch every time.

1. Creating custom email templates

FunnelKit Automations allows you to create custom emails and save them as templates.

To do that, go to the Emails section and click on the ‘Create Template’ button.

Go to the emails section and click on create template

Enter the name of your template and create it.

Create email template in woocommerce

The process of setting up email templates is the same as we have discussed above.

We also have a new post coming up to help you design custom email templates in WooCommerce. Stay tuned for that.

2. Using your email templates in automations or broadcasts

You can use this email template when creating your broadcasts or setting up automated sequences in FunnelKit Automations.

When creating emails, click on the 'Templates' button.

Click on templates

Select a custom template you’ve created and click ‘Apply’. That template will be imported to your automation or broadcast screen.

Apply the woocommerce email template to selected automation or broadcast

Now, you can activate that automation or send the broadcast.

This is how you can create custom email templates in WooCommerce.

Stay tuned for our step-by-step detailed post on WooCommerce custom email templates.

Best Practices to Follow When Customizing Your WooCommerce Email Templates

Customizing email templates enhances customer experience and reinforces your brand identity.

Here are some best practices to follow when customizing your WooCommerce email templates:

1. Maintain brand consistency

Ensure your email design reflects your brand’s color theme and font typography. Your logo should be placed on the top of every email.

FunnelKit Automations lets you set up global email styles to configure your brand logo and other design elements that can be inserted into your emails automatically.

Global Styles in FunnelKit Automations

Use a tone and style that replicates your brand’s personality.

2. Keep emails simple and clear

Keep the content of your emails concise and to the point. There is no need to elaborate. Share your support email ID or a URL so they can visit to clear their queries.

Use a clean and simple layout that makes your emails easy to read and navigate. 

Make your call to action (CTA) buttons or links clear and prominently visible.

3. Ensure mobile responsiveness

Email is accessed by over 1.7 billion people on their mobile devices. Therefore, make sure your emails look good on all devices, especially mobile phones.

FunnelKit Automations lets you switch between desktop and mobile view when customizing your WooCommerce email templates.

This allows you to test your emails on various devices and screen sizes to ensure their compatibility.

4. Personalize your emails

Address your users by their first names for a personal touch and include dynamic content such as product recommendations based on past purchases.

For this, FunnelKit Automations provides merge tags, which use dynamic data values to personalize your emails.

Use segmentation to send targeted emails based on customer behavior and preferences.

5. Optimize for email deliverability

Use clear and professional language to avoid spam filters. Ensure your sender name and email address are recognizable to your recipients.

Always make sure to use an SMTP plugin when sending emails from WooCommerce. Go through this detailed guide on fixing the WooCommerce not sending emails issue.

Check the latest Google and Yahoo's deliverability rules to follow when sending emails.

6. Use visuals wisely

Use high-resolution images that load quickly and ensure a seamless visual experience.

Maintain a balance between text and images to avoid overwhelming your readers with too much information.

Include alt text for images to enhance accessibility and readability in case images fail to load.

7. Test and optimize each element in your email

Perform A/B testing on different elements such as subject lines, CTAs, and layouts to determine what works best for you.

FunnelKit Automations allows you to perform A/B tests on both automations and email broadcasts.

Regularly review and update your WooCommerce email templates to keep them fresh and effective.

Monitor metrics like open rates, conversion rates, and click-through rates to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

In this section, we’ve answered some of the most commonly asked questions related to WooCommerce email templates.

1. How to create custom email templates in WooCommerce?

You can create custom email templates in WooCommerce using FunnelKit Automations. Navigate to the Emails section and create a template from pre-designed email templates, or start from scratch. 

When done, you can use these templates in automated emails and broadcast emails.

2. How do I configure emails in WooCommerce?

You can configure emails in WooCommerce by navigating to the settings section. Under the ‘Emails’ tab, you’ll be able to edit transactional email templates, customize recipient and sender details, and adjust the content.

3. How do I view WooCommerce email templates?

You can view WooCommerce email templates by navigating to the settings section and clicking on the Emails tab.

Here, you’ll see various templates, such as new orders, order processing, failed orders, refunded orders, password resets, and more.

4. How do I use WooCommerce email customizer?

FunnelKit Automations is the best WooCommerce email customizer tool that can be used to design beautiful emails.

All you have to do is drag and drop the content blocks and configure your emails.

5. How do I change the default email template in WooCommerce?

To change the default email template in WooCommerce, first disable the default emails from the settings section.

Then, set up the automation with custom emails using FunnelKit Automations.

Let’s suppose you want to change the default template for order confirmation email. So, set up the order-created event inside FunnelKit Automations and set the email action to trigger. Design the email and activate your automation.

Are You Ready to Make an Impact with WooCommerce Email Templates?

In this article, we’ve covered the importance of email templates, their customization options, and best practices to follow.

Customizing your WooCommerce email templates is a powerful way to enhance business communication and customer engagement.

With the right tool, like FunnelKit Automations, you can create beautiful emails that reflect your brand identity.

Take the next step in optimizing your WooCommerce store’s email templates by implementing the tips and techniques discussed in this article.

Get FunnelKit Automations and show your creativity when designing custom emails for your users.

Author: Editorial Team
The Editorial Team at FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) is a passionate group of writers and copy editors. We create well-researched posts on topics such as WordPress automation, sales funnels, online course creation, and more. We aim to deliver content that is interesting and actionable.
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