How to set up and customise a range of email templates Using WooCommerce
For organisations and businesses alike, email forms a critical component of business to consumer communications. Businesses can use emails for alerts, order confirmations, newsletters but, more and often, the standard email we send to family members and colleagues just isn’t enough.
Why do we use email in business?
If you think back to the last email you received from a business or organisation, you might remember the branded content, graphics and typography that you could instantly associate with the business you received it from. After all, if you have spent countless hours developing your organisations brand and positioning, you’ll want your emails to match that effort. This is where email templates can help.
How can templates benefit you?
Templates can be very useful in business, no matter the industry in which you are operating. They can help you save time, maintain consistency and make quick and efficient changes or updates when needed. This can also apply to any emails you send out to your customers as a business.
What types of email templates are available using WooCommerce?
If you’re using WooCommerce, there are several templates available for you, ready to be edited. These templates are all available with default WooCommerce and are all ready to be edited and sent out to your customers, including:
- New orders
- Cancelled orders
- Failed orders
- Orders on-hold
- Processing orders
- Completed orders
- Refunded orders
- Customer invoices / Order details
- Customer notes
- Reset password
- New accounts.
Why customise email templates?
The templates are serviceable enough for most businesses, but they can potentially come off as plain, especially when utilised by an organisation with a highly developed branded website or other brand material. Therefore, many businesses will opt to customise these templates to better suit individual needs and brand requirements of this business.
One of the strongest felt absences in the WooCommerce default email templates is the absence of images. Especially when it comes to product purchase confirmation emails, customers want to see an image of the product they have paid for as a form of assurance that the correct product is coming. So, if this is something you want for your business’s emails, you will need to set up a custom template within WooCommerce.
Which parts of an email template can be customised?
There are several aspects of the email template that can be customised, such as:
- Enable/Disable – This checkbox allows you to enable or disable this specific notification.
- Recipients – specify the email addresses to which this email will be sent. You can specify a single or multiple email addresses by delineating each with a standard comma.
- Subject – Here you can enter the email subject. You can also potentially enter a series of placeholders. You can enter either free text or select a placeholder. The available placeholders are:
- {site_title}
- {site_address}
- {site_url}
- {order_date}
- {order_number}
- Email heading – The same placeholders that can be used in the subject line can also be used here, as well as general free text.
- Additional content – This is where you can input text that will be seen in the general body of the email. Content can include any kind of relevant information that you want to include along with the notification. Again, the same placeholders apply here as well.
- Email type – This is where you specify the format of the email. There are three available formats to choose from: Plain text, HTML or Multipart.
Finally, after adding all the details, you can click the Save changes button.
Further customisations
After your customisations have been applied to your individual email templates, you are then able to apply further customisations that will apply across all your activated email templates. To access these customisation settings, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Emails, and scroll down to the Email template section. You can then click the link to view the preview of the template in this section. The editable sections are as follows:
- Header image – Here you can choose an image that will appear in the header of the email.
- Footer text – Here you can add a custom text to be displayed in the email footer. You will also find two placeholders to use here:
- {site_title}
- {site_url}
- Colour – You will also get four options to customize the colour of the email. You can click the respective field to change the colour of that section to match your relevant branding. These include:
- Base colour – The base colour of the template can be modified here.
- Background colour – You can customize the background colour of the template here.
- Body background colour – This is where you can change the email body’s background.
- Body text colour – Here you can change the text colour for the email.
Other considerations
Email type
The individual requirements of each email will dictate the included features and layout of the associated template. For example, if the email is a purchase confirmation email that lists a lot of products, practicality dictates these images must be of small or thumbnail size in order to keep the email at a reasonable length.
Alternatively, if the purchase confirmation only lists one product, the template might instead feature the product with a large image front and centre and perhaps feature some product recommendations within the email.
Excessive formatting
Another thing to be aware of when creating email templates and sending highly formatted emails to your clients and customers is how they will be received on the other end. Some email clients that clients are using, for example Gmail, Outlook and others, may not display elements beyond plain text as default, which means that some clients won’t receive the full impact of your email template.
Businesses must consider this component not only for transactional types of emails such as purchases confirmations but also all types of emails including marketing campaigns, newsletters and more. To make sure your emails can be understood regardless of how they may be viewed, you might consider using alt text in your emails.
Let Jezweb help you with your email templates and all other aspects of your online business
Email templates can make an impact on how you reach your customers, from simple order confirmation and account creation emails to EDMs and further marketing campaigns. They can help businesses to maintain brand affinity and link business assets. With these templates, there is an element of “set and forget” that allows you to defer more attention to those more pressing tasks that demand your attention.
However, balancing all elements of business at the same time can be a challenge, especially if you are only managing a small team or even operating as a sole trader. Jezweb can help lighten some of the technological load, whether it be related to your website or web hosting, SEO (search engine optimisation) or your emails and associated templates. To reach out to Jezweb, simply call 1300 024 776, visit jezweb.com.au or click here to send us an online message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
