Shopify stores use two distinct categories of email template: transactional notifications that Shopify sends automatically (order confirmations, shipping updates, password resets) and marketing emails you design and send yourself (campaigns, abandoned cart flows, win-backs). They're edited in different places, follow different rules, and the transactional ones are the ones your customers actually read.
The two template systems, and why the distinction matters
Transactional notifications live in your Shopify admin under Settings → Notifications. They're triggered by store events, they use Shopify's Liquid templating language, and they go out whether you touch them or not. Because they're expected and important, they get read at rates that dwarf anything marketing sends — an order confirmation is opened by the large majority of recipients, which makes it the most valuable real estate your store owns.
Marketing templates are different animals. You build them in your email platform, send them to segments you define, and they need consent. Confusing the two categories is where stores get into trouble: stuffing promotional offers into transactional notifications can jeopardize the exemption those messages rely on, and sending marketing to people who only ever bought once without opting in creates compliance risk.
| Transactional | Marketing | |
|---|---|---|
| Edited in | Shopify admin → Notifications | Your email platform |
| Trigger | Store event (order, fulfillment, refund) | You, or an automation rule |
| Templating | Liquid + HTML | Drag-and-drop or HTML |
| Consent required | No — it relates to a transaction | Yes |
| Typical open rate | Very high | Roughly 20–35% for a healthy list |
| Unsubscribe link | Not required | Required |
The transactional templates worth customizing
Shopify ships roughly two dozen notification templates. Most stores should leave the majority alone and focus effort on five.
- Order confirmation. The highest-traffic email your store sends. Add your logo, set expectations for what happens next and when, and include a support contact. A single tasteful "you might also like" block is generally acceptable; a full promotional banner is not.
- Shipping confirmation. The second most-opened. Make the tracking link enormous and obvious — this is the one thing the customer opened the email to find. Include the carrier name and a realistic delivery window.
- Abandoned checkout. Shopify can send this natively, but it's usually better run from your email platform where you can build a three-step sequence with branching. If you use Shopify's version, at minimum customize the copy and add the product image.
- Order canceled and refund notification. These arrive at moments of friction. Warm, specific, human copy here does real work for retention, and the default wording is cold.
- Shipping update / delivered. Underrated. A "your order was delivered" email is an ideal moment to ask for a review, because satisfaction is at its peak.
How to edit a Shopify notification template
- Go to Settings → Notifications in your Shopify admin.
- Under Customer notifications, choose the template you want to change.
- Click Edit code to open the HTML and Liquid. Shopify shows the email body, and some templates have separate subject line fields.
- Before you change anything, copy the existing code into a text file. There's a "Revert to default" option, but it discards all your changes, not just the last one.
- Make your edits. Liquid variables like
{{ order.name }},{{ customer.first_name }}, and{{ order.line_items }}pull live store data — don't rename or remove them unless you know what fills them. - Use Preview to check rendering, then Send test email to yourself and open it on a phone.
- Save, then place a real test order to confirm the live version behaves like the preview.
For branding that applies across all notifications at once, set your logo, accent color, and store contact information under Settings → Notifications → Customize (the shared branding section) rather than editing each template individually. It saves hours and prevents drift.
Marketing templates every store should have running
These are automations, not one-off campaigns, and they generate revenue continuously once built. Ordered by return on the effort to set up.
- Abandoned cart, 3 emails. One hour after abandonment (helpful, no discount), 24 hours (address the likely objection — shipping cost, sizing, return policy), 72 hours (final reminder, discount only if your margins justify it). Leading with a discount trains customers to abandon deliberately.
- Browse abandonment. Viewed a product, didn't add to cart. Lower intent than cart abandonment, so keep it to one email and make it useful rather than pushy.
- Welcome series, 3 emails. For new subscribers who haven't purchased. Brand story, best sellers, then a first-order incentive.
- Post-purchase sequence. Thank you, then care or usage instructions timed to arrival, then a review request about a week after delivery, then a replenishment or cross-sell timed to your product's natural cycle.
- Win-back. Triggered at roughly 1.5 times your average repurchase interval. "We haven't seen you in a while" plus what's new since they last bought.
- Back in stock and price drop. High-intent, low-effort, and among the best-converting emails a store can send.
- VIP / repeat customer. Early access and genuine perks for your top decile. This segment funds everything else.
Building these from scratch is unnecessary — starting from a proven layout in a library of responsive email templates gets the structure and mobile behavior right so your time goes into the copy and product selection instead of table markup.
Design rules specific to ecommerce email
- Single column, 600px wide. Multi-column layouts collapse unpredictably across mail clients, and the majority of your opens are on phones.
- Product image, name, price, button. In that order, repeated. It's boring and it works.
- Real alt text on every image. Many clients block images by default, and an email that renders as five empty boxes has failed.
- Buttons, not text links, for primary actions. At least 44 pixels tall so a thumb can hit them.
- Never build the whole email as one image. It won't render for image-blocked recipients, it's invisible to accessibility tools, and it's a well-known spam-filter pattern.
- Keep total weight modest. Heavy emails get clipped by Gmail, which hides your unsubscribe link and can hurt you.
- Test on a real phone. Not just the platform preview. Preview panes lie.
Connecting Shopify to your email platform
- Sync customers and consent state. Shopify records marketing consent at checkout; make sure that flag maps to your platform's subscribed status rather than importing everyone indiscriminately.
- Sync order data. Order history is what makes segmentation possible — first-time vs repeat, product category, order value, days since last purchase.
- Set up event triggers. Checkout started, order placed, order fulfilled, order delivered. These drive every automation above.
- Authenticate your sending domain. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on the domain you send marketing from. Getting this wrong is the single most common cause of an ecommerce store's email landing in spam.
- Decide which system owns which message. Abandoned checkout in particular can fire from both Shopify and your ESP, and customers receiving duplicates is a bad first impression. Turn one off.
- Add UTM tags to every link so revenue attribution shows up correctly in Shopify analytics.
For the broader strategy around segmentation, lifecycle flows, and revenue attribution behind these templates, our guide to email marketing for ecommerce covers the campaign layer that sits on top of this setup.
Frequently asked questions
Can I edit Shopify's default email templates?
Yes. Go to Settings → Notifications, select a template, and click Edit code to change the HTML and Liquid. Copy the original code somewhere safe first, because reverting restores the full default and discards every customization.
What's the difference between Shopify transactional and marketing emails?
Transactional emails are triggered automatically by store events like orders and shipments, don't require marketing consent, and are edited in the Shopify admin. Marketing emails are campaigns you send to subscribers who opted in, require an unsubscribe link, and are built in your email platform.
Do I need a separate email platform if I have Shopify Email?
Not necessarily, but most growing stores outgrow it. A dedicated platform gives you multi-step automation with branching, deeper segmentation, A/B testing, and better deliverability controls than the built-in tool provides.
How many abandoned cart emails should I send?
Three is the practical sweet spot: about an hour after abandonment, again at 24 hours, and a final one around 72 hours. Hold any discount until the last email so you aren't paying customers to abandon carts on purpose.
Why are my Shopify emails going to spam?
Most often because the sending domain isn't properly authenticated with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, or because marketing is going to customers who never opted in. Image-only emails and lists with high bounce rates are the next most common causes.
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