How to Test WooCommerce Emails: Step by Step Guide

Are your WooCommerce emails being sent but not delivered?

Email deliverability is a crucial part of eCommerce success. 

And what if your emails do make it to the inbox, only to appear broken with non-functional links?

Without proper testing, your emails can result in a poor customer experience and missed opportunities if they land in the spam folder. 

Testing your emails before sending helps catch these problems early.

We’ve seen how this simple step has significantly improved deliverability and customer experience for many store owners.

In this blog, we’ll show you how to test WooCommerce emails and ensure email deliverability. 

6 Key Things To Test In Your WooCommerce Email

If you don’t test your emails, you risk poor deliverability (like landing in spam), broken links or buttons, mobile display issues, and even legal trouble from missing unsubscribe links. That’s why testing is so important.

To ensure your emails perform as expected, here are the key things you should test in your WooCommerce emails:

• Design and mobile responsiveness

Make sure your emails are visually appealing and easy to read. Email open rates on mobile can range from 26% to as high as 78%. Therefore, emails should look good on all screen sizes.

• Links and CTAs

Ensure all links in your emails are working and directing to the right pages. Additionally, ensure that your CTAs are clear, prominent, and redirect users to the intended page. 

• Unsubscribe functionality

Ensure that non-transactional emails include a smooth and functional unsubscribe option. A good email marketing strategy respects the customer’s choice to opt out easily, which helps maintain a good reputation.

• Email deliverability

Test your emails to ensure they land in your customers' inboxes, not their spam folders. If your emails don’t reach the inbox, they won’t be seen, making your efforts ineffective.

• Order status triggers

Ensure transactional emails are sent correctly when order statuses change, like processing, completed, refunded, etc. This keeps customers informed with timely and accurate updates.

• A/B subject lines

Transactional emails have an average open rate of 80–85%, so subject line testing isn’t always necessary. However, A/B testing plays a key role in boosting open rates for marketing emails and broadcasts.

How to Preview And Test the Design Of WooCommerce Emails?

In this section, we will share how you can test the design and mobile responsiveness of all types of emails.

WooCommerce comes with 10+ transactional email options by default. With the default WooCommerce settings, you can only preview and test these emails. You will need an additional email customizer plugin for other emails (like marketing and broadcast).

We will use two plugins

• Woocommerce default settings
• WooCommerce email customizer plugin like FunnelKit Automations

Transactional Emails

Let's check one by one how you can preview and test the WooCommerce transactional emails in two ways:

Method 1: Using Default Settings

Follow these steps to preview and test the design of transactional emails using default options:

First, navigate to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings ⇒ Emails. You will find all the emails here, and you need to test each email individually. 

Next, scroll down to the Email Preview section. Here, you can see how the email will appear on a desktop. 

Here, you can switch to the Mobile icon to see how the email will look on mobile devices. 

Method 2: Using FunnelKit Automations

In this method, we will utilize FunnelKit Automations, the ultimate email and SMS marketing solution for WordPress and WooCommerce. 

With this CRM tool, you can preview and test all emails' design and mobile responsiveness, including transactional, marketing, and broadcast. The best part is that you can customize the layout with the utmost flexibility using its intuitive visual builder.  

To preview and test the WooCommerce emails, you must install and activate the FunnelKit Automations free and Pro versions. 

Follow these steps to preview and test the design of transactional emails:

First, navigate to FunnelKit Automations ⇒ Emails ⇒ Transactional Emails.

Here, you will find all the transactional emails that are ready to be customized, ensuring perfectly aligned communication with customers. 

To preview any of the emails, just hit the “Preview” option. 

Now, a window will open with the email preview in desktop mode. 

Now, at any point, if you don't like the design, you can easily change the layout and customize the design with a simple drag-and-drop builder.

You can switch the Mobile responsiveness mode to check how it will look on mobile devices. 

If you need to make any changes to the design, you can return to the email edit to do so. If you prefer, you can hide specific content on a mobile device. 

Similarly, you can navigate to any automated marketing email and broadcast to preview and check the mobile responsiveness of the emails.

Marketing Emails

You can use FunnelKit Automations to preview and test the design of any marketing email.

To test the WooCommerce marketing email, go to the Send Email action under the automation. 

Then a window will open where you need to scroll down and hit the button Preview and Test. 

Now, you can check previews and responsiveness and customize if needed, just as you did with transactional emails. 

Broadcast Emails

Like marketing emails, with FunnelKit Automations, you can easily review and test how your broadcast emails will appear to recipients.

For any broadcast, after choosing your audience and creating the email content, click on "Preview and Test" to start the testing process.

You can check the design and responsiveness, then make adjustments as needed, just like with transactional emails.

How to Test Links, CTAs, and Unsubscribe functionality of WooCommerce Emails?

We will use FunnelKit Automations to test links, CTAs, and Unsubscribe functionality. This email marketing plugin features an ‘Audit Email’ function to ensure your emails are error-free.

Transactional Emails

To do this, go to the preview email option, and you will find an Audit Email section. All you need to do is hit the Start Now button. 

This will check three things: Missing URLs, Broken URLs, and Email Size.  

If an issue is found after the Audit, hit the option ‘View Details’ for a detailed view.

Next, go to the email customizer and fix the issue. 

And after fixing, you can audit again to ensure. 

Marketing Emails

For marketing emails, you can run an audit test in the same way, which will inform you if the email is missing an unsubscribe tag, as well as identify missing and broken URLs.

Broadcast Emails

Similarly, you can audit your broadcast email also for missing URLs, broken URLs, unsubscribe tag and image size.

How to Test Email Deliverability of WooCommerce Emails?

Email deliverability is the top priority when testing WooCommerce emails. You can verify this by sending test emails and ensuring they land in the recipient’s inbox and are not marked as spam.

Here are the three methods in detail to test email deliverability:

Method 1: Using default WooCommerce settings

In this method, we will use the default option. However, there is a limitation: you can send only one test email at a time.

To do this, navigate to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings ⇒ Emails and scroll down to the email preview section. Next, select the email from the dropdown to send a test email, and then click the “Send a Test Email” option.

Next, provide the email address and hit the ‘Send test email’ button to send the test email.

Now, check if the test email lands in your inbox or spam. Here is a preview of the default test email in the inbox.

Method 2: Using FunnelKit Automations

Once you preview any email in FunnelKit Automations, you will find options to send test emails.

Under the Send to Test Email section, add the recipient emails, and hit ‘Send Email’ to send the test email. 

Here is how the email looks in an inbox:

Method 3: Test and ensure email deliverability with WordPress SMTP providers 

By default, WooCommerce’s wp_mail relies on PHP mail(), which doesn’t add authentication headers and often trips spam filters. To fix this, you can rely on WP Mail SMTP.

Install and configure the plugin with email sending services, such as SendLayer, SMTP.com, Google/Gmail, Mailgun, etc. Then, publish the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC TXT records in your DNS to prove your domain’s legitimacy.

With authenticated SMTP and proper email authentication, your WooCommerce emails will land in inboxes, not vanish into spam. After completing all these settings, go to WP Mail SMTP ⇒ Tools and send a test email. Here, you can send multiple test emails simultaneously.

WP Mail SMTP will display errors if there is an issue with SPF, DKIM, or DMARC TXT records.

Here is how the test email looks in an inbox.

How to Test Emails for Different Order Status Triggers in WooCommerce?

The easiest way to test if emails are working for each order status is to update them in WooCommerce manually.

First, place a test order and check the status once it's completed. Go to WooCommerce ⇒ Orders and then hit the test order. The order status will appear on the order page. 

Typically, if the order is placed successfully, it should show as Processing or On Hold, depending on the payment method. 

Then, check if the right email was sent to the order email address. 

You can try the same steps for different payment methods. 

You can also manually change the order status to Failed, Cancelled, Refined, Completed, etc., to make sure everything works as expected.

How to A/B Test Subject Line And Other Email Components in WooCommerce?

As mentioned earlier, it is essential to test the subject line for both marketing and broadcast emails. FunnelKit Automations allows you to send all types of marketing emails and broadcast emails.

Along with the subject line, you can also A/B test preview text, email content, dynamic discount coupons, and more.

To A/B test WooCommerce emails, we will use FunnelKit Automations.

Let's check how you can A/B test both types of WooCommerce emails

Marketing Emails

With FunnelKit Automations, you can A/B test your email using two or three variants. You can create different variations of elements in your emails, such as:

Here’s how to do it.

First, to create a Split Path, hit +, and then hit Split Path. 

Next, provide the name, select the number of paths, and add a description (optional). Finally, hit Add.

Now you can add two "Send Email" actions, one for each path. Next, create two distinct versions of the email with unique subject lines, preview text, content, etc.

Generate dynamic coupons before the "send email" action and seamlessly use them in the respective email versions.

You can utilize the pre-built email templates to incorporate different variations into your email design. 

Specifically, in this case of abandoned cart recovery, two pre-built email templates are available. 

Here, also before saving any of the variations, you can preview, audit, and test the email by hitting the ‘Preview and Test’ button.

After successfully running the automation, you can view the results, which include the number of contacts, sent emails, opened emails, clicked emails, click-to-open emails, revenue generated, and unsubscribe rates, among other metrics. 

Then, you can declare the winner who will be sent to the audience afterwards. 

Broadcast Emails

FunnelKit Automations provides you with the option to A/B test your broadcasts as well. 

Now let’s check how A/B testing works in email broadcasts. 

For this, when you create a broadcast email, select the type as A/B test.

Next, you can add different variants and set the subject, preview, and email content for each variation. 

One of the advanced features of broadcast in FunnelKit is Smart Sending. Using this approach, you can send a sample size of emails to each variation, and then the winning version will be sent to the rest of the audience, ensuring maximum results. 

Test Your Emails Before Sending to Ensure a Better Customer Experience 

Testing your emails isn’t just a good practice; it’s essential for delivering a reliable and professional customer experience. 

Issues like broken links, missing personalization, or a missing unsubscribe link can lead to confusion, lost trust, or even compliance issues.

FunnelKit Automations makes testing simple and effective. Its audit feature lets you identify and fix problems before your emails go out, helping you maintain quality and consistency. 

Plus, you can A/B test your marketing automation emails and broadcasts as well. The best part is that you can take care of all your email marketing tasks using this single plugin right from the WordPress dashboard. 

From smooth order updates to engaging campaigns, FunnelKit Automations helps you send error-free, on-brand emails that keep customers informed and satisfied.

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