Emailing your customers
The confirmations that send themselves, and the promotions you send.
There are two completely different kinds of email here, and it is worth knowing which is which, because one is free and automatic and the other has a monthly limit.
The ones that send themselves
When someone buys from you they get an order confirmation straight away: what they bought, what they paid, where it is going, when it should arrive, and how to reach you. When it ships they get a second email with the tracking link. You do not have to do anything to switch these on.
Stripe also sends its own payment receipt. That receipt proves the card was charged; yours is the one that says what the order actually was. Customers expect both.
What those emails say about delivery times, returns and how to contact you comes from Settings, under Shop. Fill those in. With no delivery time set, the email honestly says you will be in touch when it ships, which is true but not reassuring.
Promotional emails
A campaign is one email to your list: a sale, a new product, an announcement. You build it out of blocks rather than designing it, so there is nothing to break and it looks right in every email app, including the old ones.
- Open Email and choose New campaign.
- Write a subject line, then add blocks: a heading, some text, a picture, a button, products from your shop.
- Send a test to yourself and read it on your phone.
- Send it.
Who gets them
Only contacts who have agreed to marketing. Somebody buying from you is not the same as agreeing to hear from you, so buyers do not automatically join the list. That is deliberate: mailing people who did not ask is what gets a business marked as spam, and once that happens even the order confirmations start landing in junk.
Anyone who unsubscribes is removed everywhere, immediately, and cannot be added back by importing them again. They still get order confirmations for anything they buy, because those are not marketing.
The monthly limit, and paying for more
Your plan includes a number of promotional sends each month, shown at the top of the Email screen, and it resets on the 1st. Most businesses never get near it.
If you do go past it, you top up a balance and marketing carries on at a dollar per thousand emails. Your included sends are always used first, so if you stay inside your plan you never think about it at all.
- Open Email and choose an amount: $10, $25, $50 or $100.
- Pay with a card. The balance appears within a few seconds.
- Turn on automatic top-ups so a campaign never stops halfway through.
If a campaign needs more than you have, it will not send at all rather than going to half your list. Sending to half and re-sending later means the first half gets it twice.