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4 Important Insights into Shopify Post-Purchase Emails

Making a sale on your Shopify store can be exciting, but don’t think of a sale as the end goal of your store — instead, it’s the beginning of an opportunity to nurture a new customer with your post-purchase email flows.

While post-purchase emails are generally used to notify your customer of recent purchases and shipping updates, they’re actually a very important email marketing tool.

Unlike promotional emails, which tend to go overlooked in crowded promotional email tabs and have an open rate between 20%-25%, post-purchase emails head straight to your customer’s inbox, where they have an improved open rate of 80%-85%.

Instead of sending purely transactional and unbranded post-purchase emails, consider using a Shopify email builder app like UpOrder to drive repeat purchase, recommend new products, and improve customer loyalty — all using customizable post-purchase template designs.

What are post-purchase emails?

Post-purchase emails are notifications sent from the merchant to their customer following a completed order.

The most common post-purchase emails include order confirmations, shipping confirmations, POS receipts, and shipment delivered notifications.

By default, Shopify’s built-in post-purchase email templates are generic and plain, making these notifications more functional, but not necessarily fun or exciting.

However, did you know that Shopify allows merchants to upgrade their post-purchase email designs using third-party Shopify apps?

Using an app such as UpOrder, merchants can customize every component of their post-purchase emails to include personalized product recommendations, limited-use discount codes, and upload their store’s logo and colors.

Instead of sending another boring Shopify post-purchase email, consider upgrading your notification templates to make easy sales through your post-purchase email flows.

What is the return on investment (ROI) of post-purchase emails?

Did you know that email marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI) over any marketing method? For every dollar spent on email marketing, it can generate up to $38 in ROI.

Even with email marketing being so profitable, it can still be a challenge to have customers open up your promotional emails.

This is why merchants have become savvy to upgrading their post-purchase emails — these transactional emails bypass the “Promotional” email tab and head straight into the general “Inbox” folder.

When you upgrade your post-purchase emails, you can essentially have your transactional emails double as promotional emails to include discount codes, product recommendations, and cross-sells and upsells along with your customer’s important order information.

In short, upgrade post-purchase emails work to boost your sales and drive repeat purchases better than promotional emails.

The aim of post-purchase email flows

Post-puchase email flows are a series of automated transactional emails sent to the customer during and after their ordering process.

Many of these email flows are completely automated, triggered by your customer completing a pre-determined action or filter, such as placing an order, updating their payment information, or editing their order.

The aim of post-purchase email flows is to improve efficiency so you don’t have to manually send out emails each time a customer orders a product or a package is out for delivery.

But beyond that, post-purchase email flows also transform transactional emails into a profitable email sales channel you may not have considered.

Because your customers are anxious to check their order confirmation and shipping confirmation, they’ll gladly open up every post-purchase email related to their upcoming shipment — this is where you can include personalized product recommendations, discount codes, upsells, and cross-sells to make another sale and drive repeat purchases.

Remember, there are more post-purchase emails than just order confirmations. Post-purchase emails also include:

  • Customer account welcome emails
  • Shipping updates emails
  • Replenishment emails
  • Win-back emails
  • Abandoned checkout emails

What are the most important or most engaged with post-purchase emails?

Shopify’s admin page currently has up to 30+ post-purchase email templates that are sent out to customers throughout various stages of their customer journey.

Out of the 30+ types of post-purchase emails, these are the six that your customers will engage with most, making them the perfect vehicle to deliver new promotional information related to your store’s product catalog.

Order confirmation emails

Of all the post-purchase emails to upgrade, your order confirmation should be at the top of your list.

The Shopify order confirmation email is the most popular post-purchase email you’ll send out to customers.

Your customer’s order confirmation is automatically sent immediately after they have placed their order and it verifies that the order summary and payment information are correct.

Be sure to include between two to four product recommendations, links to your social media profiles, and a personalized, limited-use discount to get the most out of your order confirmation emails.

Customer account welcome

Also referred to as an onboarding “thank you” email, the customer account welcome notification is sent to customers who have completed setting up their online account with your Shopify store.

It’s customary to include a 10% limited-use discount code in your welcome emails to kickstart the first sale of your store.

Using UpOrder, you can customize your discount codes to automatically generate a discount code using your customer’s first name, making them more likely to use the discount over generic promo codes.

Shipping confirmation emails

Shipping confirmation emails are usually sent 1-2 days after the order confirmation, depending on your fulfillment speeds.

Customers are usually eager to open up these emails to see when their package will arrive.

At the bottom of your shipping confirmation emails, Include more personalized product recommendations, referral codes, and links to your store’s blog posts to generate more engagement and sales easily.

POS email receipts

Point-of-sale (POS) email sales receipts are emailed to your customer after they’ve placed an order with you in person, usually using a credit card processing app.

One best practice for optimizing POS receipts is to include your physical store’s address location.

Underneath your customer’s order summary is a great spot to include an additional limited-use discount code and product recommendations to encourage repeat purchases.

Abandoned cart emails

Even though a purchase didn’t technically take place, abandoned cart emails are one of the most valuable post-purchase email types out there.

When a member of your store loads their shopping cart with products, but leaves your store before completing their purchase, you will be notified via Shopify’s admin page.

You can send your customer an abandoned cart email, using a subject line such as “Oops! It looks like you forgot to checkout” to grab their attention.

Inside your abandoned cart email, you can include a summary of their checkout cart’s contents, and even add a limited-use discount to try and recoup your abandoned checkout losses.

Shipment delivered emails

Once your customer’s package has been successfully delivered, they’ll receive the “Shipment delivered” email. 

Because many of your customers will be at work when their package is delivered, they’ll click on this email to ensure their package was delivered without any issues.

Just because your customer’s package was delivered doesn’t mean the process is over though.

You can continue sending customers post-purchase email flows, such as the “win-back” email or the “replenishment” flow email to find new ways to bring your customers back to drive repeat purchases.

Download UpOrder today and optimize your post-purchase email marketing

UpOrder is a Shopify app that requires no coding to begin dragging and dropping smart post-purchase email templates.

Now you can drive repeat purchases, boost customer loyalty, and increase sales by 14% through optimized, upgraded Shopify email notifications.

Download your free trial of UpOrder (formerly Spently) today from the Shopify app store, and see why it’s been rated a perfect 5-star rating with over 574 reviews.

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