Status emails to your customer

When you move an order to the next status, your customer can be told about it automatically. In your own branding, with your logo and your colour.

You set it up in your portal: open your software under My software, go to the Settings tab and open the Emails section. That is where the Status emails to your customers block is. The owner and the staff of your company can change it; you save with Save status emails.

Test mode is on

This is the most important part of this article. While test mode is on, every status email goes to you instead of to your customer. And it is on by default. At the top of such an email is a yellow bar:

Test mode — this email went to you, not to your customer (name@example.com). Turn test mode off under Settings → Status emails to your customers once the text is right.

The address in brackets is your customer’s real address. So you see exactly what would happen once the email goes live.

Once the text is right, switch off Test mode in the block. That takes one tick: I understand that my customers will get real emails from now on. Only after Save status emails do your customers get the emails that are on.

Test emails go to the Quote email address, which is in the same Emails section. If that is empty, they go to the email address of your own account.

On or off per status

Per status you choose whether your customer gets an email (Email your customer when the status becomes “…”). This is how it stands if you change nothing:

Status	Default
Confirmed	off
In production	off
Ready	off
Shipped	on

“Shipped” is the only one that is on, because that is the email your customer really expects: their parcel is on its way and there is a track & trace with it.

The statuses New and Cancelled have no automatic email. At “new” your customer already gets a confirmation from your shop itself, and a cancellation is exactly the message you want to write yourself.

Your own texts

Per status, the subject (max. 200 characters) and the text (max. 2000 characters) can get a text of their own, under Own subject and text. If you leave them empty, our default text applies.

Your customer gets the email in the language of your configurator, or, if you have not set one, in that of your account: Dutch or English. The default text and the buttons follow that language by themselves. If you write your own text, write it in that same language.

The English default for “shipped” reads:

Subject: Your order {{ordernr}} is on its way

Hi {{naam}},

Your order {{ordernr}} is on its way to you.

Track & trace: {{track}}
Follow your order here: {{statusLink}}

The five variables

Variable	Replaced by
{{naam}}	Your customer’s name (or “there” if it is unknown)
{{ordernr}}	The order number
{{status}}	The status in plain words, for example “In production”
{{track}}	The track & trace (or “to follow” if you do not have it yet)
{{statusLink}}	The link to your customer’s status page

Spaces inside the braces are fine: {{ naam }} works too.

If there is a typo, {{naam m}} stays in the email literally. That is on purpose — you see straight away in your test email that something is off, instead of a silent empty gap.

What is added automatically

Below your text the email adds buttons of its own, only when they do something. In an English email:

• Pay for your order (€ …), with the amount due, when there is still something to pay: online payment is on, your Mollie account is connected and the order has not been paid yet. The button takes your customer to their status page, where they pay with Pay now (see Online payments). In test mode it says that no money will be taken.
• Track your shipment, when there is a track & trace.
• Order again, only in the Shipped email, and only when the ordered design was saved. It opens the design again, to adjust it or order it exactly as it is once more.

No email address, no email

If an order has no email address, nothing goes out — not in test mode either. Test mode is a dress rehearsal, not a separate route: what would not be sent live is not sent in the test either.

Tips for the text

• Keep it short. Someone reads this on their phone, between two other emails.
• One thing per email. At “in production” your customer does not need to do anything, so there does not need to be a call to action.
• Put your name in it. Your customer ordered from you, not from “the supplier”.
• Do not promise dates you cannot keep. “We will let you know as soon as it is ready” is safer than “ready next Thursday”.