How to Customize and Send WooCommerce Order Notification Emails (2025)

Sending WooCommerce order notification email is a great way to keep your customers informed about their orders.

Customizing these WooCommerce order notifications enhances transparency during the order fulfillment process, ensuring your customers receive timely updates and a better shopping experience.

Even though WooCommerce offers a steady system for handling order notifications, the default emails lack flexibility for customizing as per your brand and interaction.

To create emails that reflect your brand and engage customers effectively, you’ll need a plugin to customize and send WooCommerce order notifications.

In this post, we’ll guide you through the step-by-step process of replacing default WooCommerce order notification emails with custom interactive ones.

Watch our video tutorial on how to send transactional emails like order notifications by designing them visually 👇

What is a WooCommerce Order Notification Email?

A WooCommerce order notification email is an automated email sent to customers to inform them about their order statuses.

Order notifications serve different purposes and are critical for streamlining the communication between the store, customers, and the store’s admin or staff.

These transactional emails cover various stages of the order fulfillment process. It includes order confirmation, payment pending, order failed, order refunds, and more.

Types of WooCommerce order notification emails

In fact, WooCommerce has the default email templates for different order statuses:

In fact, WooCommerce has the default email templates for different order statuses:

• New Order - This email is triggered when a new order is placed on your WooCommerce store. It notifies the store admin about the order details, including the customer’s name, order ID, and purchased products, so the admin can prepare for order fulfillment.
  
• Cancelled Order - This email is sent when a customer or admin cancels an order. It helps the store admin stay updated about order status changes and take necessary actions.
  
• Failed Order (Admin) - This email notifies the store admin when an order fails due to payment issues or other errors.
  
• Failed Order - The customer receives this email if their order fails during checkout, typically due to payment processing errors.
  
• Order On Hold - Sent to the customer when an order is awaiting payment or requires manual confirmation for offline payments.
  
• Processing Order - Sent after successful payment, this email confirms that the order is being processed.
  
• Completed Order - This email is sent to the customer when the order has been fully processed and shipped.
  
• Refunded Order - Customers receive this email when a refund has been issued for their order.
  
• Order Details - This email provides a comprehensive summary of the order, including product details, pricing, shipping method, and billing information.
  
• Customer Note - This email is triggered when the admin adds a note to the customer’s order.
  
• Updated Order - When an order is updated, such as changes to the shipping address, items, or status, this email notifies the customer, ensuring transparency and clear communication.
  
• Updated Order (Admin) - Alerts the store admin about updates or modifications made to an order.

Why You Should Customize WooCommerce Order Notification Emails?

As a WooCommerce store owner, sending email notifications based on order statuses can help you in various ways.

Here is the default WooCommerce email template for new order purchases:

As you can see, the default emails look entirely bland. You cannot customize them entirely for your brand. Furthermore, you cannot interact with your customers via feedback surveys or product recommendations.

Also, you can not even add your socials so that customers can connect with your brand.

That’s why you need a plugin that gives you CRM abilities to send emails and understands WooCommerce.

Plus, it should have several email templates and the power of an enhanced visual email builder, so you can design your emails without writing any code!

Here are some key reasons why customizing WooCommerce order notification emails can be beneficial:

• Improved branding - Customizing WooCommerce order email notifications lets you maintain brand consistency across transactional emails. You can use your business logo, colors, and fonts in the email template, creating a professional look for your customers.
  
• Personalization - Personalized emails get a 29% higher open rate and a 41% higher click-through rate than non-personalized emails. These emails are more engaging and make customers feel valued. This way, you’ll be able to create tailored and friendly communication.
  
• Reduced support inquiries - By including additional order details or FAQs, you can proactively answer some of the most common customer questions, reducing support inquiries related to their orders.

• Information clarity - By customizing the content and layout of default WooCommerce order notification emails, you can clearly and concisely present critical customer order information, such as order details, shipping information, etc.
  
• Upsell opportunities - Customized emails offer plenty of opportunities to offer upsells or related products. Include relevant product recommendations, attractive discounts, etc., to encourage customers to explore your offers.
  
• Enhanced communication - After customizing the email templates, your communication style and tone will become consistent. This will further help build a strong brand identity, fostering customer loyalty.

Customizing the WooCommerce order notification emails will help create engaging customer interactions, increasing trust and loyalty.

How to Send Custom WooCommerce Order Notification Emails? (Step-by-Step Guide)

Brand value is crucial in influencing user behavior and driving business success. Most businesses capture their user’s attention by using consistent branding elements in their store, emails, newsletters, etc.

However, WooCommerce uses default emails that can’t be customized to your brand’s look. To do so, you need some serious coding skills.

If you don’t want to write custom codes, you can easily customize emails with FunnelKit Automations.

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

You can set up automated sequences, send email broadcasts or SMS texts, track orders and conversions for each campaign, and more.

In this section, we’ll demonstrate the step-by-step process to send custom emails for different WooCommerce order statuses.

Before we begin, get a copy of FunnelKit Automations and install it on your WordPress website.

👉 Refer to our documentation to install and activate FunnelKit Automations on your website.

Let’s set up a WooCommerce order confirmation email that automatically sends a custom email when someone purchases an item from your store.

 Step 1: Install and configure the SMTP plugin on your website

Setting up an SMTP plugin on your WordPress website ensures your emails get delivered to your recipient’s inbox.

We recommend the following SMTP plugins for different service providers:

• WP Offload SES Lite for Amazon SES SMTP service provider
• WP Mail SMTP for SendGrid, Mailgun, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
• Elastic Email Sender for Elastic Email SMTP
• Postmark for WordPress to set up Postmark SMTP

Here, we’ll use the WP Mail SMTP plugin. And don’t worry - it complies with the latest Google and Yahoo deliverability rules.

Configure the settings through the setup wizard once you install WP Mail SMTP.

Proceed through the setup and configure your SMTP plugin.

Step 2: Disable the default WooCommerce order notification emails

Before we start setting up custom WooCommerce order status email notifications, it’s important to disable the default WooCommerce emails. You can do it from WooCommerce email settings.

To do so, navigate to WooCommerce ⇨ Settings.

Under the ‘Emails’ section, click on ‘Manage’ next to the order status you want to disable the default notification and send a custom email.

Let’s say you want to send a custom new order purchase email after a successful purchase from the checkout page. So, we’ll disable the default WooCommerce email here.

Now, uncheck the option next to ‘Enable this email notification’ and save the changes.

This is how you can disable the default WooCommerce email notifications under each order status.

Now that you’ve disabled the default WooCommerce order notifications, it’s time to set up custom emails for better engagement.

Step 3: Go to the transactional emails section in FunnelKit Automations

Navigate to FunnelKit Automations ⇨ Emails and click on the ‘Transactional Emails’ section.

You’ll see 11 prebuilt automated transactional emails to be customized as your WooCommerce store:

• Processing Order
• Completed Order
• Order On-Hold
• Refunded Order
• Order Details
• Customer Note Added
• New Account
• Reset Password
• New Order
• Failed Order
• Cancelled Order

Click on ‘Processing Order’ that we’ll customize with the FunnelKit Automations’ built-in visual email builder.

Add the From Name, From Email and Reply-to Email.

Next, enter the email subject line and preview text. As you can see, we’ve added a personalization of the first name in the subject line using merge tags.

Next, hit the ‘Edit’ button to start customizing your WooCommerce order notification email with the enhanced drag-and-drop visual email builder.

This built-in editor from FunnelKit Automations lets you customize pre-designed email templates.

Step 4: Customize the WooCommerce order notification email

The email editor screen will open up that has different drag and drop content blocks on the left and workspace to see changes in real time on the right side.

You get access to various WooCommerce blocks such as order summary, cart item, product, coupon, shipping/billing address, cart link, and more.

In addition, it has basic content blocks, such as images, text, columns, social icons, menus, lists, etc., to help you design beautiful emails.

You can start customizing your order notification emails like updating the business logo, header section, order summary block, billing and shipping address block, and more.

To better understand, here’s a short tutorial to customize WooCommerce order confirmation email with FunnelKit Automations:

Once you’re done with the email design, you can preview and test your order email:

You can send test emails, audit emails to fix any errors, and see live previews.

Make sure to save your design when done.

Step 5: Activate your order notification email in WooCommerce

Once everything is done, toggle this email to ‘Active’. This will activate your order notification email on your website.

Well done! This is how you can create and send a custom order notification email in WooCommerce.

6 Use Cases to Design Custom Emails for Different WooCommerce Order Statuses

We hope you’ve learned how to set up and send custom emails for WooCommerce order confirmation.

FunnelKit Automations is not limited to this use case only. You can use it to design emails for each order status in WooCommerce.

Here, we have explored some valuable use cases for these automations and engage with your customers:

1. Failed Orders in WooCommerce

FunnelKit Automations has the ‘Failed Order’ transactional email.

Similarly, you can enter the subject line, preview text, and customize your failed order notifications. 

You can even send order failure notifications to your customers with FunnelKit Automations.

👉 Refer to our detailed blog post on WooCommerce failed orders here.

2. Order Refunded

You can send a custom email once your customer’s order has been returned and refunded.

FunnelKit Automations offers you with the ‘Refunded Order’ transactional email for WooCommerce.

Enter your email address and preview text.

Next, you can compose an email about their refunds and some service feedback emails as well.

3. WooCommerce Pending Orders

Go to the Automations section in FunnelKit Automations and hit the ‘Create Automation’ button.

You’ll be directed to the recipes section. Here, you can find some pre-built automated recipes for specific use cases.

These recipes can be imported and customized to set up your automated campaigns.

We’ll create a fresh automation. So, click on ‘Start from scratch’ and name your automation.

Hit the ‘Select an Event’ button and go to the WooCommerce tab. Here, we’ll choose the “Order Status Pending” event.

Configure this automation event to run multiple times on a contact. This way, this automation will run every time someone orders, not just the first time.

To add an action, click the (+) icon and hit ‘Action’.

Next, select the ‘Send Email’ action under Messaging.

Create a custom email for the WooCommerce pending order status here.

Enter the email subject line. As you can see, we’ve added a personalization of the first name in the subject line using merge tags.

Next, select your template type and craft your custom email accordingly.

• Visual Builder (New) - This enhanced drag-and-drop visual email builder lets you customize pre-designed email templates or create one from scratch.
• Rich Text - Write usual plain-text emails using the rich text editor
• Raw HTML - Write emails using HTML
• Visual Builder - This is the old-generation email builder that lets you design basic custom emails

Select the ‘Rich Text’ editor and write your custom email for pending order status.

As you can see, we’ve used the merge tags: {{order_id}} to display the order ID and {{order_items}} to fetch the order details.

Once done, click ‘Save & Close’ to return to your workflow screen.

If you want, you can even custom-design your branded emails with FunnelKit Automations’ built-in visual email builder.

It has various pre-designed email templates that you can import with a single click and customize according to your business requirements.

You get access to various WooCommerce blocks such as order summary, cart item, product, coupon, shipping/billing address, cart link, and more.

In addition, it has basic content blocks, such as images, text, columns, social icons, menus, lists, etc., to help you design beautiful emails.

Watch this tutorial to see how you can design emails with the enhanced visual builder:

Now, activate it to run pending order notification email automations in your WooCommerce store.

4. Shipment Tracking Email in WooCommerce

FunnelKit Automations integrates with multiple shipment tracking plugins like WooCommerce Shipment Tracking, Advanced Shipment Tracking for WooCommerce, and more.

This allows you to add tracking information to your emails that helps keep your customers informed and reduce post-shipping queries.

To add all the shipping information, click ‘Merge Tags’ and look for the shipment tracking details merge tag.

You get all the information of the shipment tracking fields, such as tracking number, tracking link, date shipped, tracking provider, etc.

Paste this information into your email content and you’re done!

👉 Refer to our WooCommerce shipment tracking email post for the detailed guide.

5. WooCommerce Order Delivered Email

Sending a custom order delivered email is quite easy.

You just need to click on the ‘Completed Order’ email under the transactional emails section in FunnelKit Automations.

Next, start by entering the email subject line, preview text and customizing the email content.

Now, you just have to craft an email regarding order delivery. You can even pitch product recommendations or add exciting discount coupons within this email to encourage another purchase.

6. WooCommerce Custom Order Status Email Notification

FunnelKit Automations also lets you send emails for WooCommerce custom order statuses.

You can create WooCommerce custom order status programmatically in two ways:

• By adding a code snippet to your WordPress website
• By using a WordPress plugin like Autocomplete WooCommerce Orders

👉 Check out our detailed guide on creating custom order statuses in WooCommerce.

Let’s say we have two custom order statuses: Order Placed and Awaiting Shipment.

You can assign the ‘Order Status Changed’ event as:

Next, you just have to send an email that the order has been packed and is awaiting the shipping partners to pick it up.

This is how you can send WooCommerce custom order status email notifications with FunnelKit Automations.

These were some of the use cases we discussed. When setting up your automated sequences, you can test various other opportunities.

9 Effective Tips to Follow for Your WooCommerce Order Notification Emails

Here are some effective best practices and tips for crafting and sending order notifications to your customers.

1. Improve email deliverability

Ensuring your WooCommerce order notifications reach your customers’ inboxes is crucial for maintaining a smooth customer experience.

Choose a reliable email service provider (ESP) and SMTP plugin like WP Mail SMTP for high deliverability rates.

Authenticate your emails by properly setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configurations. Make sure to follow the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) policy in your emails and business ethics.

2. Use compelling subject lines

Use clear and engaging subject lines that encourage recipients to open your emails. 

Add action-oriented words like "Thank you for your purchase", "Your order is on its way", and more.

Maintain a tone that reflects your brand’s voice, whether formal, friendly, or fun.

3. Maintain brand consistency and enhance design readability

Use a clear and professional WooCommerce order notification email template that aligns with your brand design and aesthetics.

Break down information into simple bullet pointers or separate sections to enhance its readability.

Ensure your emails reflect your brand’s logo, colors, and overall style to make them instantly recognizable.

4. Personalize your order emails

Personalized emails have an opening rate of 82% more than generic emails.

Address your customers with their names in your emails to make them feel personal. Depending on the email, you can include other details such as their address, order details, and more.

If needed, reference specific products or services they purchased and any personalized recommendations or follow-ups.

5. Add clear calls-to-action (CTAs)

Your WooCommerce order notification email should always include a call to action (CTA), which allows users to take action. 

These CTAs could be used to track orders, manage orders, complete payment, etc.

Furthermore, you can encourage actions like leaving a review, following on social media, or signing up for newsletters.

6. Include complete order details

Customers appreciate having all relevant information about their orders in one place.

Provide order numbers, itemized product lists, billing and shipping information, and payment status in order confirmation emails, refunds, shipping related emails, and more.

For admin notifications, include customer contact information for quick follow-ups.

7. Optimize for mobile users

There are more than 4.3 billion active email users globally, of which 1.7 billion+ use their mobile phones to open emails.

That’s why it’s crucial to design your emails optimized for mobile.

Make sure the fonts, images, and buttons are easy to click on small screens.

8. Add value with extra content

Suggest related products or complementary items like upsells and cross-sells they might be interested in.

Include discount codes or special offers for future purchases. This will help encourage repeat businesses.

You can even encourage customers to follow your brand on social media or ask them to leave a product review on your store.

9. A/B test and optimize regularly

Experiment with different email subject lines, email designs, inside elements, and email content to see what resonates best with your audience.

Take advantage of A/B testing with FunnelKit Automations’ built-in split path testing feature.

This allows you to figure out which paths convert better and generate good results.

Watch this quick tutorial to learn everything about Split path testing:

Join our Facebook group and subscribe to our YouTube channel for incredible tips to boost profits in your business.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Related to WooCommerce Email Order Notification

In this section, we’ll answer the common questions related to WooCommerce order email notification:

1. Does WooCommerce send an order confirmation email?

Yes, WooCommerce sends a default order confirmation email. But this email looks quite dull and offers no personalization, branding, or marketing opportunities.

However, you can change it and send customized WooCommerce order notification emails we discussed in this post.

2. Why is my WooCommerce custom order status email notification not working?

In case your WooCommerce custom order status email notification is not working, you can set up an automated email system that works.

With FunnelKit Automations, you can set up custom order status email notifications in WooCommerce with your business branding and personalization.

You just need to select the event and choose your custom order status. Then, set up the email action and write the text you want to send. We’ve discussed each of these details in this blog post.

3. How do I get notified of WooCommerce orders?

As a WordPress administrator, you should be notified of new WooCommerce orders when a customer purchases a product in your store.

You can customize the ‘New Order’ email inside the transactional emails section in FunnelKit Automations.

Add your admin email address to the recipient(s) field, from name, from email, reply-to email, subject and preview text.

Then, customize this email as per your requirements.

You can even add multiple admin email addresses in the recipient(s) fields in FunnelKit Automations.

Once done, hit ‘Save’ to lock your changes.

4. How to set up email notifications in WooCommerce?

The default email notification options in WooCommerce are available inside the email settings. You can set up your email notifications by going to the particular order status.

However, if you want to send custom, branded email notifications to your users, our experts recommend using FunnelKit Automations. 

It’s a must-have tool in your repertoire if you want to set up automations and marketing campaigns for your business.

5. Can I send different order notification emails for different products?

Yes, you can send product-specific emails using plugins like FunnelKit Automations. It’ll allow you to create rules to trigger specific email templates based on products, categories, or other criteria.

All you have to do is select the ‘Order Created’ event trigger and add conditions for your products

Next, create an email for these products in an order.

Check out our detailed process on WooCommerce custom per product emails here.

6. How do I add custom order status emails in WooCommerce?

You can add custom order emails in WooCommerce using FunnelKit Automations. Make sure to set up custom order statuses in your store.

Now, set up the order status changed event trigger and select that custom status inside FunnelKit Automations. Next, select the send email action and design your email. 

Once done, activate your automation, and it’ll send this custom order status email once this order status processes in the fulfillment journey.

7. Why is WooCommerce not sending order emails?

There are several reasons why WooCommerce might not send order emails. 

However, the first recommendation is to use an SMTP plugin like WP Mail SMTP to send emails from WooCommerce and WordPress.

Some common causes and potential solutions can be:

• Spam filters - Check your spam filters and settings to ensure that emails don’t end up in the spam or junk folder.
• Hosting server issues - Some hosting servers restrict email sending. That’s why it’s better to use a good email service provider like Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun, etc.
• Email template customization - If you have customized email templates, the code might have some issues. That’s why we recommend using FunnelKit Automations to design your emails visually.
• Plugin or theme issues - Conflicts with other plugins and themes can interfere with email sending. Deactivate all plugins except WooCommerce to see if the issue persists. For the theme, switch to a default WordPress theme to see if emails start working.

8. How do I track the performance of WooCommerce email notifications?

You can track the performance of your custom WooCommerce email notifications inside FunnelKit Automations.

First, you’ll be able to see the complete email history in the History section.

Navigate to the Analytics tab to see how your WooCommerce email notifications are performing:

You’ll be able to see the sent emails, their open rate, click rate, orders placed, and revenue generated with them.

Additionally, you’ll be able to see the graph which you can filter with dates or campaigns.

Scroll down to see how an individual email has performed to enhance your marketing strategy.

9. How do I translate WooCommerce order emails?

FunnelKit Automations is compatible with multilingual plugins such as WPML, Polylang, Weglot, and TranslatePress.

Once you’ve set up multiple languages in your store as per your customer’s region, you’ll be able to see separate tabs inside transactional emails like this:

Now, you can easily customize each of these emails with the language you have set up in your WooCommerce store.

This ensures that only those specific emails are sent in your customers’ preferred languages for a more personalized experience.

10. Can I send order notifications to multiple admin email addresses?

Yes, you can add multiple email addresses in the recipient(s) field of the respective email settings. 

Go to WooCommerce ⇨ Settings ⇨ Emails ⇨ Manage Admin Notification Emails, and separate email addresses with a comma.

Once done, save the changes to update.

Boost Your Engagement and Conversions with Custom WooCommerce Order Notification Emails

Order notification emails are critical components of an eCommerce business. They keep customers and staff informed about the order, improving the customer experience and streamlining the fulfillment process.

While your default WooCommerce emails look drab, you can send custom order notification emails with FunnelKit Automations.

FunnelKit Automations is an excellent marketing automation CRM tool that allows you to customize the content and layout of your emails. This gives you complete control over your business’s email messaging and branding.

You can set up and design different transactional email notifications for different order statuses, such as order processing emails, pending orders, refunds, and failed orders. Not just that, you can even send emails for your custom order statuses.

This way, you can improve the engagement of your emails and boost conversions through effective marketing campaigns.

So what are you waiting for? It’s time to set up attractive WooCommerce order notification emails in WordPress.

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