May 17, 2020
How to personalize your customer notifications on Shopify
Hey, thanks for dropping by!
Currently, I’m working on building a Shopify store from the ground up. Once finished, I’m experimenting with different types of marketing tools, such as Facebook Ads and Snapchat Ads. Additionally, follow along as I’ll be dropping tutorials and updates as well as other content all month, as part of a challenge where I’m blogging every day this month.
There are so many factors that go into building a successful Shopify store, and I didn't really think about all of them until I actually started doing it.
Every area is an opportunity to personalize and build your brand.
Today, I thought of the typical order confirmation email that every store sends. I thought about how that would be a great chance to be different, and essentially leave a great impression as the customer is “going out the door”.
A great order confirmation email reminds me of a cashier at Trader Joes. They’re different than all others. The way they interact with you as you check out is a match with their whole store vibe. Even if it’s not the main thing you like about them, their typical friendly and energetic engagement certainly leaves a good impression as customers leave.
So how can you turn your order confirmation email into a Trader Joes-esque experience? Follow along as I discover for myself.
Go to the main control screen for your store. On the left option pain, select “Settings” all the way at the bottom.
The “Settings” menu is all the important inner workings of your store that one should definitely know about and make use of.
Select the “Notifications” option from the list
This will bring up a long list of notifications that you can customize to fit your brand. I would recommend editing them all at some point. But, we’re just focused on one right now.
It should be the first one on the list.
Select “Order Confirmation” from the list
Don’t be alarmed by what you see next! It’s pretty simple. Let me break it down for you.
First off, a general rule of thumb:
Don’t edit what is inside brackets! (unless you understand what you’re doing)
This is actual code and is responsible for the formating and general appearance of your message.
If you accidentally edit something you didn’t mean to, scroll to the very bottom of the screen and click “Revert to Default” to return the message to its original state.
Apart from that, feel free to edit, add to, or remove from whatever is inside the purple and orange boxes in the picture.
If you wanted to edit what message the customer receives when they're picking up their order at some point, edit the text that comes after the “% if pickup_in_store? %” code. Right now, by looking at the picture you can see that message would read “You’ll receive an email when your order is ready for pickup”.
For any other type of sale, alter the text that comes after the “ % else %”.
Here’s what I did.
I wanted to add this text to non-pickup orders:
We hope you enjoy your purchase as much as we enjoyed creating it. Can’t wait to see you back soon. God bless!
Here’s what it looks like once I added it.
Now obviously, this is not what the finished product is going to look like.
To get a better idea, look above the subject edit line and click “Preview”.
You’ll see a popup that shows what your newly edited email will look like to your customers. Here’s mine!
Boom! You’re done!
Click “Save” in the top right corner and your new email format will be sent as an order confirmation to your next buyer.
Altering this email and the others is a valuable way to personalize your message and tell your buyers that you're unique. Instead of a generic and unoriginal message, you took the time to create something special and they’ll appreciate that.
I learned something new today and I hope you did too. Use this to strengthen your Shopify store emails and customer presence, wherever you do business.
