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  2. Follow up Email Tutorials /
  3. How to create a Follow-up Email for Pending Orders

How to create a Follow-up Email for Pending Orders

WooCommerce Follow-ups is a premium extension.

How create an Email for Pending Orders

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Following up automatically with customers that have a pending order, or their payment failed for one reason or another, is an important thing. After placing an order customers:
  • Often assume that everything is worked as planned
  • That their order will be shipped/delivered in short order
  • That their payment worked flawlessly
But, for anyone that has ever run an eCommerce storefront, you know all too well that this is frequently not the case. Mistakes, failed payments, and miscommunication happen all too often. With Follow Ups, you can address these scenarios head-on.

First, start a new Follow-up

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Click either the “Create New Follow-Up” button new the top of the page or the “New Email” link in the Follow-up Emails navigation menu. create_new_followup

Set Follow-up Type

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Next, you will want to make sure that you’ve set the correct Follow-up Type. For this tutorial, we will use the “Storewide Email” type, but you could use Subscriptions as well if you want to notify users of failed subscription payments. storewide_email_type

Give your email a name and subject

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Now enter a name for your email. The Follow-up name is used by you internal for reporting and tracking the email in the future. The subject line is the subject line that will be sent when this email is triggered and sent to your customer. Your email must have a subject line to be sent. followup_name_subject

Enter the email content

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Create the content of your follow-up by adding it here – just like any other WordPress post or page. You can just about anything with this content. The editor accepts full HTML – just like posts and pages – or you can keep the follow-up plain text. It is up to you. If you wish to include variables that will add dynamic content from the list to the right, you can do that. For example, if you want your customer’s name in the email, simply add {customer_name} where you want in your content, and when the email is sent that variable will be replaced with the customer’s name. See all the variables here. email_editor

Define your triggers

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For the sake of this tutorial, we will keep the trigger simple, but you can certainly add more complexity if necessary. I am going to define this email to be triggered: 1 minute after the order status is: pending pending_trigger_select Now, every time an order ends up in the Pending status, this email will be trigger to send 1 minute after that occurs. Do not worry, if the order status changes, this email will not be sent. To ensure this is the case, next we will want to click the “Settings” tab in the “Follow-up Details” section, and check the box next to “Remove on status change“. remove_on_status_change

Make Active and Save Email

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Now you just need to set your email as active and save it, and you’ll be all set for emails to send when your customer’s order status changes to Pending. active_and_save_email