Take the Extra Step: Customizing Your Store’s Email Notifications
Updated Dec 2023
Customer email notifications are one of those things that often get overlooked or skipped by eCommerce novices. They assume the defaults will work just fine and don’t do much beyond maybe adding a logo. This is a giant missed opportunity! Taking just a small amount of time to customize your store’s email notifications lets your customers know that you care about their experience beyond the sale and goes a long way in helping build brand credibility.
Customers get email notifications for a whole bunch of different activities they may take on your site including when they buy something, create an account, join a membership area, or even make a donation! Squarespace recently updated the entire email editor to provide more design and personalization options so it’s a great time to revisit this even if your site’s been live for years.
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How to Personalize Your Emails
Something that’s a great time-saver is the ability to set some global styles that will apply to ALL the emails that your site sends. (Also points for keeping branding consistent!) To get to the settings, just click on COMMERCE > CUSTOMER NOTIFICATIONS. To change the style options, just click the EDIT EMAIL button in the Global Email Styles preview pane. Business settings are under the… Business Settings link. Here’s a summary of all the possibilities and some important things to note:
Global & Business Settings
Global Email Styles
In terms of style, you have lots of control. You can edit colors, fonts, buttons, and the header & footer appearance.
Colors - I would recommend keeping a white/light background so that your emails are always easy to read. Then, just add in your signature brand color as buttons, below. Choose colors that match the ones in your Site Styles exactly.
Fonts - You’re only allowed to select from certain custom-paired font packs and cannot use custom fonts in emails (more on this at the end of the email if you need an explanation on why). You can change things like font sizes and text & link colors to suit your brand but you’ll need to pick a font pack that feels like your brand even if the fonts aren’t exactly the same. A good tip if you used one of the font packs in your Site Styles for your website, just pick a similar themed one for your emails; i.e. serif, sans, or mixed.
Buttons - You can change the style, alignment, colors & font of the buttons that appear in your emails. Don’t think too hard on this and just make them match your site’s settings!
Header & Footer- You have lots of options to be able to set your email headers & footers up so they don’t look so “default-y” 🙃 Play around with some great preset layout options but then choose colors and fonts that match the other choices you’ve made, above. I always think it’s a good idea to choose to display your logo in emails - it makes things look really official and personalized vs just having your site title. Or, you could choose to show your site title in the header and your logo in the footer! Another great footer option that you should enable if you are active on social media is including social links!
Don’t worry if this seems like a lot of options. The best part about taking the time to just edit the global email settings is that you only have to do it once and it automatically applies to everything!
Business Settings
You’ll want to make sure that you’ve added your business info by clicking on SETTINGS > BUSINESS INFORMATION from the home screen. This will feed that info into the email notifications section. Don’t omit this information because not only is it helpful to your customers, in some places it’s actually legally required to include in the footer. Here are a few tips when it comes to the business settings in this section:
The “From” email address should absolutely be a custom, branded email address. Do NOT use a Gmail, Yahoo, or other free email address! Not only does this look unprofessional but it can also affect email deliverability issues. You don’t want to end up in everyone’s spam box!
The “Reply-To” email should be whatever inbox you or your team check the most often. You want to be able to read and reply to customer emails quickly. If you’re setting up an email alias for all your shop emails (ex: shop@yourdomain.com) that’s not your main inbox, I would suggest also setting up forwarding on that email. This could be simple (all shop emails go to X person/dept) or more complex using a tool like Zapier.
💁♀️ Note: if you send test emails to yourself to check out how things look, they are all going to come from “no-reply@squarespace-mail.com” but that’s just for testing! Your actual reply-to email will be used for real emails sent from your site!
Customize With Merge Tags
Before we get into all the different types of emails you can customize, a quick review of merge tags! Honestly, these are the key to making sure your customers feel loved and appreciated. It’s like getting a piece of snail mail that isn’t junk! Here are the different elements you can insert into your emails:
Customer first name - abandoned cart, product restock, customer account welcome, password reset & password updated emails
Linked site title - all emails
Order number - order confirmed, order refunded, order fulfilled, and digital download emails
Subscriber first name - subscription canceled and subscription authorization required emails
Subscription name - subscription canceled, subscription authorization required and subscription payment declined emails
Donor first name - donation confirmation emails
To add a merge tag, just highlight the text you want to customize and click the arrow icon in the formatting bar. Then just select the tag from the options. Here’s what it looks like:
💡 Merge Tag Tip! You can also work merge tags into subject lines or the email preview text to make emails really feel personalized and stand out in your customer’s inbox!
Descriptions of All The Email Types
Ok, now for the fun part! I promise that this may seem like a TON of emails to have to work on but for the most part, you’re going to let the default language and global style settings do most of the work and then just pepper in some personalization and merge tags here and there so that your emails stand out from the rest. I’ve listed out all the emails below and then added some ideas for how to customize them where I feel like it would be most impactful.
🤓 Remember in general I wouldn’t mess around at all with styling individual emails; do that at the global level! This is just focusing on the content or the actual wording of the emails.
💡 Tip! Squarespace is going to automatically fill in things like order numbers, order details, transaction info, tracking info, etc. into the various emails so you don’t need to add any of that info on your own. Along those lines, keep the personalized copy you add as general as can be as the same email(s) will be sent for all of your products/orders even if you sell lots of different things.
🚩 I’ve bolded the emails below that I think are most important so if you’re short on time, customize these ones first and come back to the others. I’ve also noted some emails as self-explanatory which is… self-explanatory.
General Orders
Order confirmed - this is arguably the most important email your site will send to a customer. It has the potential to go way beyond just providing a record of their order. A great confirmation email reassures the customer that they made a great choice, expresses gratitude for their business, and opens up the 1:1 conversation between them and your brand. It allows you to use your brand voice beyond your website and welcome customers into the fold. You can do things like asking them to follow you on social media or provide additional value by directing them to additional content on your site that relates to what they ordered. If you customize nothing else, do this one.
Customizing Product Emails by Product Type
Update! Since this post was first published, Squarespace released the option to create custom order confirmation emails based on the product purchased. This means that if you sell a mix of physical, digital & service products your order confirmation emails can have a custom copy for each one. This is super helpful because it means that if you want to include special information about shipping or lead times that would make sense for an order for a physical product but not for a digital good or service you can do that. It may make sense to include a link to your scheduler in a service email order confirmation or download instructions for a digital good order. Lots of possibilities! To customize these from the Customer Notifications panel go to General Orders > Order Confirmed > Edit > Add an optional custom message based on product type.
Order fulfilled - this is the email that’s going to include the tracking information that you’ve added (or your Squarespace shipping extension has added) to the order. Get people excited for what’s on the way by including an opening sentence or two thanking them for their order and getting them hyped for the delivery.
Ready for Pickup - if you offer a local pickup option, this email is sent instead of the “order fulfilled” email, above. Use this email to provide locals with precise pickup information. Some suggestions are to repeat the hours you’re available for pickup orders, your address, and what’s required to pick up their order. For example, you might require a photo ID or just for them to show you their order confirmation on their phone. If your location has any special parking instructions or a special area for curbside pickups be sure to note that as well.
Order refunded - self-explanatory
Digital downloads - if you sell digital products, apply everything I said for the order confirmation email, above, to this email instead.
Donation confirmed - if you’re a nonprofit or an organization that accepts donations, apply everything I said for the order confirmation email, above, to this email instead.
Payment declined - haha never a fun email to get but you could lessen the sting by injecting some humor into the situation!
Product not available - this email only gets sent if the product inventory drops to zero while an order is processing. If you’re releasing product drops that often sell out or have lots of traffic competing for a small amount of product, this one can be worth customizing. Otherwise, default is probably ok because for most sellers this will not ever end up ever being sent out.
Point of Sale
Order receipt - think of this as the in-person version of the order confirmation email so if you sell via Squarespace POS you could add some pizazz here. I think it’s less important than strictly eCommerce order confirmations because the customer presumably had some sort of in-person interaction with your brand but it’s still an opportunity to continue the conversation or make a good impression.
Refund receipt - self-explanatory
Customer Engagement
Abandoned Cart - according to this recent study, roughly 3 out of every 4 shoppers will leave a site without completing check out. Enabling - and customizing! - your abandoned cart email can help you recover 10% or more of that otherwise lost revenue. I think a strategic abandoned cart email cuts straight to the point so I wouldn’t add too much in the way of copy but your subject line and an opening header or sentence could really make things stand out in a crowded inbox. Don’t forget that you can use merge tags in email subject lines and preview lines!
Waitlists - if you’ve enabled waitlists for sold out, back-ordered or not-yet-launched products, this email is what will let people know when a product they were interested in is available for purchase. Note: these emails aren’t automatically sent by the system; you’ll need to indicate that you’re ready to send them by going to COMMERCE > WAITLISTS.
Customer Accounts
Account created - if you’ve enabled customer accounts, I think this is a good email to give a little love to. Add some personality and let people know what to expect and what they can do to manage their own accounts.
Reset password - self-explanatory
Password updated - self-explanatory but keep in mind that the reset password link expires after 24 hours.
Gift Cards
Gift card issued - this is admittedly not the best-looking feature on Squarespace BUT you can make the best of the situation by at least adding some exclamation points!? Yay! A gift!!
Gift card voided - self-explanatory
Subscription Orders
Subscription canceled - self-explanatory, but make sure they know if there is any fine print just to cover your bases
Subscription verification needed - self-explanatory
Payment failed - self-explanatory but see the payment declined email, above. (TL;DR when in doubt, make a joke.)
Member Areas
Membership Welcome - if you’re using the awesome new Squarespace Member Areas feature, this email is the equivalent of an order confirmation email (minus the transaction info, that’s sent separately). This email is your opportunity to offer valuable “getting started” type info, suggest the best next steps, and let people know how to contact you or manage their membership. Don’t make it too long but know that a lot of people will save or bookmark emails and refer back to them later!
Membership Canceled - express some sadness if you must but please don’t do that thing where you guilt/shame people for canceling. Just confirm what happened and move on.
What You Can’t Do
Just a reminder of a few requests that come up occasionally that are not possible:
You can’t turn off any of the emails to stop them from sending. If you are wanting to do this, I would suggest working through WHY. There may be something about the way you have the product or service set up or your own internal process that needs to change if you’re thinking about needing to do this.
You can’t change the default portions that automatically populate i.e. order details, transaction info, tracking info, etc. This is for a good reason - it saves you time! Just like above, if you’re thinking about trying to edit these types of things I would look instead at your fulfillment process or internal business systems first.
Change styles on an email-by-email basis. Another time-saver. Set these things at the global level and be done with it.
Use custom fonts. The reason for this is that the fonts need to be universal so that they display nicely in all different email providers. Custom fonts can be tricky and you’re better off picking something similar but standard even if it’s not a perfect match. Some brand designers will even provide recommended system fonts to use for situations like this since it’s pretty common.
Other Site Emails
While all of the emails above may seem like a lot, there are actually even more emails that your site can send depending on what other features you’re using. These features are:
Squarespace Scheduling
Squarespace Email Campaigns
Afterpay payment plan emails
Email notifications to the store owner & contributors about orders and low inventory
The thing to remember on these emails is that you’ll need to set them up and style them in addition to any of the customer notification emails described in the main part of this post. Most of them have similar options for things like adding a logo to the email header or customizing button colors, etc. but they may not look 100% the same. Just do your best to make them look as cohesive as possible and don’t sweat the small stuff on this. It’s ok if these emails look like sisters instead of twins.
