How to Set Up Automated WooCommerce Follow-Up Emails to Boost Sales

Want to turn one-time buyers into loyal customers?

Studies show that 50% of sales happen after the fifth follow-up email, yet most businesses give up way too soon.

That’s a lot of missed revenue! 

With WooCommerce automated follow-up emails, you can keep your customers engaged, bring them back to buy again, and maximize every sale, without lifting a finger.

In this blog, we will share how you can set up automated follow-ups for your WooCommerce customers right from your WordPress dashboard.

So let’s begin. 

What Are WooCommerce Follow-Up Emails and the Different Types?

WooCommerce follow-up emails are those you send to users after they interact with your website or make a purchase. The aim of such an email is to keep the engagement going. 

Such emails help you maintain your relationship with your customers. In addition, it also prevents the relationship cord from being cut. Some people confuse follow-up emails with transactional emails.

But they are not the same!

Transactional emails inform people of their parcels' whereabouts. WooCommerce follow-up emails, on the other hand, can be pre-purchase and post-purchase.

 With WooCommerce follow-up emails, you can send these different types of emails

• Abandoned cart reminders: Remind users about the items they left behind and encourage the to complete their purchases. You can include a small discount or free shipping offer to increase conversions.
• Post-purchase check-ins:  Follow up with customers after they receive their order to ask about their shopping experience. This builds trust and gives you valuable feedback to improve your store.
• Product education emails: If your product requires setup or has specific usage instructions, send an email with helpful tips, guides, or video tutorials. This reduces customer confusion and increases satisfaction.
• Product recommendations: Suggest relevant or complementary items based on what the customer has already purchased. Personalized recommendations help increase repeat sales and improve the shopping experience.
• Loyalty discounts: Encourage repeat purchases by offering a special discount or exclusive deal for returning customers. This helps build long-term relationships and boosts customer retention.
• Customer feedback requests: Send a short survey or request a product review after the purchase. This helps you understand customer satisfaction and improves credibility through social proof.

These emails are important for selling physical products and digital products.

How to Set Up WooCommerce Automated Follow-Up Emails for Free 

We are going to use FunnelKit Automations to set up follow-up emails in WooCommerce.

This plugin includes 15+ prebuilt automation recipes. Since these are ready to import, you can use them with minimal effort.

Best part? You can add unlimited contacts and send unlimited emails to your contacts.

This WooCommerce plugin offers a 360-degree overview of contacts, automation, integrated analytics & more. You can send unlimited emails to your users with a few clicks. 

On top of that, you can segment your audience by geographical location and purchase history. 

Sounds fascinating, right?

Make sure to install and activate FunnelKit Automation.

Now, let’s begin the process. Here we will show you how to send automated cart-abandonment recovery follow-up emails from the WooCommerce dashboard.

Step 1: Create an abandoned cart reminder automation 

We are going to use an abandoned cart reminder prebuilt automation. This automation sends three sequential emails to encourage users to complete the checkout process for their abandoned carts.

Go to FunnelKit Automations ⇒ Automations and click Create Automation.

Now, click on Abandoned Cart Reminder from the list to send WooCommerce follow-up emails for free.

Now, to import the prebuilt recipe, click on Import. Then, provide a Name and click on Create.

Step 2: Configure the event trigger for WooCommerce follow-up emails 

Now, let’s go through each step of this automation so you can better understand it and customize it to your needs. 

The first step is to select the event that will trigger the follow-up actions. In this case, of course, the event is cart abandonment.

Click the trigger to edit the event's settings.

You can run this automation once or multiple times per contact. Since a customer may leave their cart multiple times, it's wise to choose Multiple Times for the Run on Contact option. 

For the same reason, it's advised to turn on the "Allow currently active contacts in this automation to re-enter" option.

In the next step, the automation has a 30-minute delay, meaning it will wait 30 minutes before taking the next step after someone abandons a cart. This is because if he/she comes back within 30 minutes to complete the order, then we can assume they never really abandoned it. 

You can alter the first delay according to your follow-up strategy. You can create a delay of a specified number of hours, days, or weeks if you want.

🔔 Note: With FunnelKit Automations Pro, you can delay the first follow-up email until a specific date and time or a custom field has been changed.

Step 3: Set up and design the WooCommerce follow-up emails 

After the delay, the automation will send its first WooCommerce abandoned cart email. 

FunnelKit Automations uses a merge tag to personalize the email. Merge tags help you add dynamic user information to the email.

For example, use the customer's first name in the subject line to personalize it. 

Here is a preview of the first automated follow-up email that comes with the prebuilt recipe

This template was built with the Rich Text Editor. FunnelKit Automations offers three options for designing your WooCommerce automated emails. Visual Builder (New), Rich Text, and  Raw HTML.

The Visual Builder (New) is the best option for creating visually appealing emails using drag-and-drop technology.

🔔 Note: This is a premium feature. You need to upgrade to FunnelKit Automations Pro to use the visual builder.  

 To do so, select Visual Builder (New) and click Edit. 

FunnelKit provides many pre-built email templates that you can import to use. Hover over the prebuilt template you like and click 'Preview.' FunnelKit Automations has an email template designed for abandoned carts, and we are going with that. 

Then Click on “Import This Template” to import. 

After importing, you can customize the email template’s content and design. You can remove or add any section. For more details, check our blog on “email customizer.”

Here is a preview of the email built with the new visual builder : 

After the first email, this automation waits 12 hours, then 24 hours, and sends two more emails.

You can customize each step according to your strategy. If needed, you can also set up condition-based workflows in your WooCommerce follow-up email sequences.

Step 4: Activate the automation to send follow-up emails

Once you are happy with each step of the email automation, click the Active button in the top-right corner to activate it. This will start sending follow-up emails to WooCommerce users.

6 Different Use Cases of Follow-Up Emails with Example

Now that you know how easily you can send follow-up emails, let's look at the types of automated emails you can utilize to grow your eCommerce business’s sales.

1. Shipment Check-In Email or Satisfaction Assessment Email

It is a follow-up email that you send out to ask if the parcel was delivered as expected and if they're satisfied with the shopping experience.

Here's an example of a shipment check-in email from MOO:

We absolutely love this email because it comes from a character called 'Little Moo,' which is a print robot, and it is very conversational as well.

This email works because you're training buyers to believe that there is a real person behind the store who cares about their satisfaction.

2. Cross-sell or Product Recommendation Email

A product recommendation email is an email in which you recommend items to your customers based on their recent purchases.

Since they've already bought from you, they know, like, and trust you. It's now time to leverage it.

Let's look at an example of a product recommendation email from a fashion store called Lowellita:

In this email, they're acknowledging that the customer has bought from them and that they're not just another prospect.

They also recommend items based on their recent purchase.

3. Purchase Anniversary Email

Purchase anniversary emails can be sent three months, six months, or one year after customers have made the purchase. You can choose the time to send it out based on your strategy.

Here's a mind-boggling stat: Open rates for anniversary campaigns are nearly 34.4%, which is 3x higher than that of mass-promotion emails.

Take a look at an email from Zappos.

We love this email because it is brimming with personality.

In this email, they're simply wishing the customer and reminding them of the brand. Again, you can go a step further and offer an anniversary discount coupon code!

4. Product Education Email

The educational emails guide users on how to get the most out of the products they've just bought.

As a store owner, you must send out WooCommerce follow-up emails to help them every step of the way.

It also gives them a memorable experience and makes them believe you're not leaving them in the lurch.

Create a hands-on tutorial, a step-by-step plan to help them get started with your product.

Here's a wonderful example from a company called Framebridge that sells arts and frames:

They lead customers to an educational blog post where they explain how to hang their art pieces. Everything's laid out step by step.

5. Customer Win-Back Campaign

If a customer hasn't bought from your store in 3 months or 6 months, you can send them a win-back campaign.

Most store owners don't acknowledge that the customer hasn't shopped in a while and continue to send blast emails.

You can set yourself apart by making an attempt to woo them back!

According to a stat from MarketingLand.com, 45% of customers who receive a win-back will open your future emails as well.

And that's because a win-back email gets their attention and starts a conversation.

Here is an example of a win-back email:

It's nice, witty, and to the point.

There's also a 15% off coupon code they're offering to bring the customer back to the shop.

6. Cart abandonment email

60% to 80% of customers abandon their shopping baskets. Sending follow-up emails to these users is a proven way to get them to complete the purchase.

Sending follow-up emails to these users has been shown to increase their likelihood of completing the product.

Cart abandonment emails are sent to users to remind them of their cart and to return to complete the order.

Here is an example of a cart abandonment email from the Tools Express team:

We like this email because it is personalized and includes a discount code with a time limit. The discount code serves as a strong incentive to complete the purchase process.

So, these were some of the pre-purchase and post-purchase follow-up email use cases that you can use for your online business.

Now, let’s look at how you can measure the performance of your follow-up emails in the next section.

How to Measure the Performance of WooCommerce Follow-Up Emails

Just sending a bunch of follow-up emails to your existing email addresses is not the end of action. 

You need to measure the performance of follow-up emails. Based on previous performance, you can take future actions to improve the results your follow-up email will achieve. 

Here are some of the metrics you should consider while deciding whether a follow-up email campaign is successful or not:

Track email engagement

You can track email engagement through key metrics like sent, open, click rate, etc.  These insights help you understand how users interact with your emails and optimize your strategy.

The click rate is the percentage of recipients who click links in your email, indicating engagement. A high open rate without clicks won’t drive sales, making it essential to monitor. With FunnelKit Automations, you can track email send, open, and click rates.

Revenue/revenue per person 

The primary purpose of follow-up emails is to increase sales and generate more revenue. That's why you must consider revenue from follow-up email campaigns as a metric for measuring success. 

Set a target revenue you want to achieve through a follow-up campaign. This will help you measure the success of your follow-up emails more effectively.

Unsubscribe rate

This matrix should be considered because a high unsubscribe rate indicates something is wrong with your follow-up emails.

You may be sending emails too frequently, at the incorrect time, or simply aren't communicating effectively with your audience.

When you know what's wrong, you can correct it so that your follow-up email campaigns provide greater results.

The good news is that with FunnelKit Automations, you can also keep track of your email's unsubscribe rate.

7 Proven Best Practices for High-Converting WooCommerce Follow-Up Emails

Sending follow-up emails is easy, but sending ones that customers actually open and act on requires the right strategy. These best practices will help you create more effective follow-up emails for your WooCommerce store.

1. Segment Your Audience First

Not every customer should receive the same follow-up email.

Segment your audience based on purchase history, browsing behavior, order status, engagement level, or customer lifecycle stage. Targeted emails consistently outperform generic campaigns.

2. Personalize Your Emails

Customers are more likely to engage with emails that feel relevant to them.

Use personalization such as the customer’s name, past purchases, product recommendations, or browsing behavior. Even small personalization elements can significantly increase open and click-through rates.

3. Include a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA)

Every follow-up email should guide the customer toward a specific next step.

Whether it's completing a purchase, leaving a review, or exploring related products, a clear and visible CTA makes it easier for users to take action.

4. Automate Your Follow-Up Emails

Manual follow-ups are not scalable for growing WooCommerce stores.

Automation allows you to trigger emails based on specific actions such as abandoned carts, completed orders, or customer inactivity. This ensures customers receive timely and relevant follow-ups without manual effort.

5. A/B Test Your Emails

What works for one store may not work for another.

Run A/B tests on subject lines, email copy, CTAs, sending times, and layouts to understand what resonates best with your audience. Continuous testing helps improve open rates, clicks, and conversions over time.

6. Use Dynamic Content

Dynamic or conditional content allows you to show different information to different customers.

For example, you can display product recommendations based on previous purchases or tailor messages based on order status. This makes follow-up emails more relevant and engaging.

7. Keep Emails Clean and Easy to Read

Good design improves engagement.

Use clear formatting, proper spacing, and mobile-friendly layouts so customers can quickly understand your message. Even simple text-based emails should be easy to scan and visually organized.

More Questions About Follow-Up Emails In WooCommerce

Got more questions? Have a look at the following questions with quick answers:

Ready to Set Up WooCommerce Follow-Up Emails?

Follow-up emails are one of the simplest ways to build lasting relationships with your customers, and the results compound over time.

Whether you're recovering abandoned carts, educating buyers, or winning back lapsed customers, a well-timed email can make a real difference.

The good news is that you don't need to send these manually.

Tools like FunnelKit Automations make it easy to set up trigger-based sequences that run in the background while you focus on growing your store.

Start with one or two email types, track what's working, and expand from there. Small, consistent improvements to your follow-up strategy will pay off far more than any one-time promotion.

Get FunnelKit Automations today.

More WooCommerce Resources:

• What is an Email Drip Campaign and How to Create One in WordPress
• Triggered Emails: How to Generate 4x Times More Revenue
• How to Send a Broadcast Email from WordPress Dashboard

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