How to Send WooCommerce Failed Order Emails to Customers?

Are you looking to send custom WooCommerce failed order emails to your customers? 

Sometimes, users can place an order perfectly, but it may fail due to many issues. 

Such failed orders are more than just a minor inconvenience. Not only do they mess with your sales, but they also give your customers a not-so-happy experience.

However, a failed order email can help you repair the dent in customer experience and convince users to reorder and thus help you gain revenue as well. 

In this blog post, we will share what a failed order is, what caused such an issue, and how you can send a custom WooCommerce failed order email to your customer without any coding knowledge.

What is a Failed Order in WooCommerce and How to Know Why It Failed?

In WooCommerce, a "Failed Order" refers to a situation where a customer initiates the process of making a purchase on an online store, but for some reason, the transaction doesn't go through successfully. 

This means that despite the customer's intention to buy a product or service, the payment or checkout process encounters an issue that prevents the order from being completed and thus results in a failed order. 

When you go to WooCommerce ⇒ Orders, you can find such orders with the status “Failed”.

Now, if you open the order, under the order note, you can find the reason for the failed order. 

Like in this case, WooCommerce provided that the user’s card was declined. A quick fix here is to use another card for the payment.

What are the Common Causes of WooCommerce Failed Orders?

Some of the common reasons of WooCommerce failed orders are:

• Card declined: This occurs when the customer's payment card is not accepted by their bank or payment processor. It could be due to reasons like insufficient funds, an expired card, or exceeding the card's spending limit.
  
• Authentication issue: When the website cannot establish a connection with the payment gateway, authentication fails. This can also result from an expired API key, which is a security credential used to connect your WooCommerce store with the payment gateway. Renewing or updating the API key is necessary in such cases.
  
• Duplicate transaction: If a customer accidentally submits multiple transactions with the same card information, it can lead to order failures or multiple charges. Payment gateways often have safeguards against duplicate transactions, but it's important to ensure your system handles these scenarios gracefully as well.
  
• Website issues: Problems within the WordPress website hosting the WooCommerce store can cause transactions to fail. Outdated software, server issues, or conflicts between plugins can disrupt the transaction process. Regular updates and maintenance can help prevent such issues.

Does WooCommerce Send Default Failed Order Email?

Yes, WooCommerce sends emails to customers on failed orders. However, for WooCommerce’s failed order email to work, you must ensure you have turned on the email notification option.

To do so, navigate to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings ⇒ Emails and click the “Manage” option for Failed Orders. 

Here, you need to turn on the “Enable this email notification” option to ensure users receive the email when their order fails. In this section, you can also customize other sections such as subject, email heading, additional content, etc.

Here is an example of such an email.

If you see, the email is very basic; it doesn’t provide the user with the proper reason for the failure nor instruct the user what to do next or present the brand. In short, this is not optimized to ensure a good user experience.

Now, if you want to customize this email, then you need to know how to code and be a pro at it otherwise, it can make things worse and not better. 

So, what’s the solution?

Well, in the next section, we will share how you can send customized WooCommerce failed order emails to customers without any coding. 

How to Send a Custom WooCommerce Failed Order Email to a Customer From the WordPress Dashboard?

To send customized WooCommerce failed order email to the customer, we will use FunnelKit Automations.

This is the ultimate email marketing solution for users that allows you to send customized and personalized emails based on the different events of a WooCommerce store. You can send any type of WooCommerce follow-up emails or post purchase emails easily using this tool. 

Let’s install and activate FunnelKit Automations before we move on to the main process. 

Step 1: Turn off the default failed order email notification

After installing and activating the plugin, you need to turn off the default settings. Otherwise, users will receive two emails, leaving them confused and resulting in a bad user experience. 

To turn it off, from the WordPress dashboard, go to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings⇒ Emails and click on the “Manage” option for Failed Orders. And uncheck the ‘Email this email notification’ option. 

Step 2: Add new email automation using FunnelKit Automations. 

Navigate to FunnelKit Automations ⇒ Automations (Next Gen) and then click on Add New Automation.

We are going to build automation from scratch, so click on the “Start from Scratch” option.

After that, provide a name to your automation and click on ‘Create’. 

This will create automation from scratch. 

Step 3: Add failed order as a trigger 

Now it’s time to add a trigger that will run this automation. For this, click on the “Select Trigger” option. 

Go to the WooCommerce tab and select the Event “Order Status Changed,” then click on “Done.”

Now click on the event you just added to configure it. 

Choose “Pending Payment” as the “From Status” and “Failed” as the “To Status”. Finally, click on Save. This will set this event to trigger when any order status changes from pending payment to failed.

Step 4: Add custom WooCommerce failed order email

Now, it’s time to set the email notification option. For that, click on the “+” icon and choose “Action” as the next step.

Choose “Send Email” from the Messaging tab and click on Done.

Now, provide the subject and preview text. It’s always a good idea to personalize the order failed. So, instead of saying “Hey! Your order failed”, you can address the customer by their name and add the order ID in the email subject line. 

FunnelKit Automation offers different merge tags to add dynamic information to email. You can access the merge tags by clicking on the “{{..}}” sign. For example, here we are using “{{contact_first_name}}” to address the customer by name and “{{order_id}} ” to print the order ID that failed.

Like the subject line, add a proper preview text. 

After that, you need to customize the email body. FunnelKit Automations offers three options to customize the email body: Rich Text, Raw HTML, and Visual Builder.

Today, we will use the Visual Builder. For that, choose the Visual Builder option and then click on Start. 

Now, drag and drop an image widget and upload a logo to add on the top to represent your brand. 

Now, write the email content. Here, you can use different merge tags to add information. We are here using 

• {{order_date}}: Displays the date on which the order was placed.
• {{order_summary}}: All the items on the order.
• {{order_billing_address format='default'}}: BIlling address of the order.
• {{order_confirmation_page_link}}:  A link that sends back user to the site to order again. We used it as an anchor link for the order again button.

Once you are done, save the email template. Here is a preview of the email we just designed.

Step 5: Activate the automation

The last step is to activate the automation. For that turn on the toggle button on the top right corner.

And that’s it  Your automation to send custom WooCommerce failed order email is ready!

Start Sending WooCommerce Failed Order Email to Customer Today!

Failed orders are an unavoidable part of running an online store, but with the right email notification, you can turn them into sales.

With FunnelKit Automations, you can send personalized emails to users, which boosts your chances of getting those sales. Not just failed order emails, you can also send custom canceled orders emails, refunded order emails, and so on. 

Not just failed order emails, you can send any type of follow-up emails and recover abandoned carts by sending abandoned cart emails to users using this amazing tool. 

And for each campaign, you will find analytics such as active contacts, completed contacts, orders, revenue, etc., which will give you a solid idea about your campaign with real data. 

So, don’t lose out on sales due to failed orders; send them a custom email and turn them into sales today.