WooCommerce follow-up emails: Strategies and examples (2025)

Reading Time: 17 minutes

Many store owners overlook the potential value of WooCommerce follow-up emails, or simply avoid them out of fear of annoying customers. But without regular, relevant follow-ups, even your happiest customers might slowly forget about your store or give into your competitor’s offers.

Follow-up emails help keep your customers loyal, engaged, and motivated. They drive repeat purchases, lead to more reviews, and increase customer lifetime value.

The key is to use them in effective ways that delight customers rather than annoy or repel them. 

In this article, you’ll discover how to create powerful automated follow-up emails for your WooCommerce store. We’ll then explore seven strategies for creating the most effective follow-up emails.

What are WooCommerce follow-up emails?

A follow-up email is any email sent in response to a customer’s action, in an attempt to sustain and increase ongoing engagement. These can be sent as single emails or as part of a series. 

Follow-up emails shouldn’t just happen after a purchase. Store marketers should send them after nearly any measurable action taken by a customer, like subscribing to your email list or downloading your fall catalog. You can also send follow-ups based on store updates — like when a popular item is back in stock or you launch new variations to a product line the subscriber previously viewed.

Getting someone’s attention is one thing — keeping it is quite another. That’s the primary reason to send automated follow-up emails as a part of a larger WooCommerce email marketing strategy.

Here are a few types of follow-up emails to consider:

Order-related follow-ups

When a customer places an order, follow up with an order confirmation email, shipping updates, and confirmation of delivery. These emails give the customer assurance about their purchase and contact information if they have any questions. Your company looks professional and trustworthy as a result.

Cart and checkout follow-ups

When shoppers leave items unpurchased in their carts, follow up about completing their purchase. Abandoned cart emails are a type of follow-up email, and one of the most profitable options as you’re reminding someone to complete a purchase they were already close to finishing. 

Customer engagement and loyalty

When someone signs up for your email list, joins your loyalty program, or fills out a survey, a simple thank you email conveys your appreciation and gratitude.

With survey follow-ups, include a coupon code or other reward to thank them for their time. For new loyalty signups, give them a special deal to welcome them to your program. Finally, for new email subscribers, a welcome series is appropriate and more effective than a single thank you email. A series allows you to introduce subscribers to your products and services — providing them with more choices in how they engage with you.

Upselling and cross-selling emails

Upselling and cross-selling emails work as follow-ups in several scenarios. 

They work well in welcome series for new subscribers, because you can offer deals without sacrificing profits with coupons. It also introduces them to more of your products.

Upselling and cross-selling emails also do well after a purchase. Send subscribers information about related products or let them know if something they searched for goes on sale or comes back in stock.

Subscription and membership follow-ups

New paying members and subscribers should also receive a series of follow-up emails. The whole idea of monthly members is recurring revenue. You want them to stick around. That means:

• Reminding them of the benefits of membership
• Rewarding them for joining in a surprising and tangible way
• Giving them something to look forward to several months down the line
• Making them feel special and exclusive

You can’t do all that in just one email, nor should you try. Just like email subscribers, members need ongoing engagement to keep them excited about their membership benefits. 

You can also send out automated follow-up emails in WooCommerce to announce upcoming membership expiration and renewal dates. 

Transactional emails

There are many different types of automated transactional follow-up emails, including:

• Payment reminders and invoices
• Refund and return confirmations
• Support ticket confirmations
• Survey completion confirmations

While each type of follow-up email has a unique purpose, the overriding goal is to drive more engagement, repeat purchases, and stronger customer relationships. You want one-time buyers to become loyal and satisfied customers. You want more customers leaving positive reviews and advocating for your brand. You want to move customers down the funnel. 

How to create and set up WooCommerce follow-up emails

Creating automated follow-up emails in WooCommerce takes a little time. The great thing is once it’s done it’ll run on its own — and it will keep running until you stop it or make occasional adjustments and improvements. 

Here’s a simple process for setting up automated follow-up emails:

Choose an email automation platform

Use an email automation tool like Omnisend that offers all the automated follow-up emails you want to send. Some platforms only do a few basic types of automation, while others offer the potential for a steep price. Omnisend delivers best value on both fronts. 

Decide which customer actions deserve following up

We’ve already discussed several types of follow-up emails. Each one of those needs its own trigger. So make a list of all the customer actions you’d like to be able to follow up with an email.

Just know that for many of these to work, your automation platform needs to integrate and sync with your CRM. 

Select the triggers that will send the follow-up emails

Each email automation tool has its own process for selecting the triggers that will send follow-up emails. Usually, you have to choose a trigger, decide on how much time passes before the follow-up email sends, and confirm the recipients.

In Omnisend, there are six order-related event triggers to choose from including Order canceled, Order fulfilled, Order refunded, Ordered product, Paid for order, and Placed order, as shown in the image below: 

Customize your email content and design

Once the trigger and timelines are set, write and design the email. Choose a pre-designed template or start from scratch — it’s up to you. One example is this abandoned cart template:

Next, add dynamic content blocks, such as product recommendations or personalized messages. Within these content areas, be sure to account for a subject line and whatever content and graphics you want to include. A strong call to action (CTA) is essential here too.

Activate the email and test the workflow

Once your email is ready, activate it and test it to make sure it’s working. To do this, use the Preview feature in Omnisend. Review how the email looks on desktop and mobile devices. Then send a test email to yourself. To do this, click Preview & test in the drag-and-drop email builder then select Send a test email, as shown below: 

Benefits of sending WooCommerce follow-up emails

Sending WooCommerce follow-up emails provides numerous benefits for your online store. It nurtures customer relationships, boosts sales, and improves customer satisfaction. 

Here are some key advantages of sending follow-up emails:

• Increased customer engagement: Follow-up emails keep your brand top-of-mind and encourage customers to revisit your store, building stronger connections and loyalty. Click rates for automated follow-up emails are about four times higher than regular emails.
• Repeat purchases: By offering exclusive discounts, product recommendations, or incentives, you entice customers to make additional purchases. Each subsequent purchase contributes to increasing their overall customer lifetime value.
• Valuable feedback: Soliciting feedback through follow-up emails lets you gather insights into customer experiences. Use this to identify areas for improvement for your products or services.
• Cross-selling and upselling opportunities: These emails provide a platform to showcase complementary products, upgrades, or product bundles, increasing average order value and maximizing revenue potential. 
• Brand advocacy: Satisfied customers who receive personalized follow-up communications are more likely to become brand advocates, spreading positive word-of-mouth and attracting new customers.

Even though they make up only 2% of emails sent, automated emails generate 37% of email sales. Post-purchase follow-up emails are polite, timely, and engaging as well as the most profitable type of email by far, especially abandoned cart, welcome, and browse abandonment emails

Leaning into the power of follow-up emails means creating a seamless post-purchase experience, nurturing long-lasting customer relationships, and driving sustainable growth for your online business.

Best WooCommerce plugins for follow-up emails

In this section, we’ll cover some of the best plugins for creating automated WooCommerce follow-up emails. If you prefer to watch a video on the subject, check out the five top WooCommerce plugins to boost any ecommerce business below: 

Here are some of the popular email plugins you can use for your WooCommerce store:

1. Omnisend
2. YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart
3. WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart
4. ShopMagic
5. AutomateWoo

All these platforms offer the option to send follow-up emails in addition to other email marketing features. Some of them also offer a free version, so you can try out a WooCommerce follow-up email plugin free of charge.

1. Omnisend

Omnisend provides a complete marketing automation plugin for your WooCommerce store that also enables you to send follow-up emails.

You can use it to set up automated follow-up email campaigns using pre-designed templates and tons of customization options. The best part is that you can set these automated workflows and go live in minutes, not hours.

Combine that with the unmatched email marketing features and an intuitive user interface, and you have all that you can possibly need for your follow-up email campaign.

2. YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart

This is a good plugin for setting up WooCommerce follow-up emails for abandoned carts. It also works for sending a coupon or offer to further incentivize these prospects to make a purchase. 

You can specify how much time must pass before a cart is considered abandoned and triggers the email. Another option is to use it to send multiple emails with different incentives for completing the purchase.

However, this plugin’s functionality is limited to abandoned cart follow-up emails. If you want a full email automation program, you’ll want to opt for Omnisend.

3. WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart

This is another niche plugin for sending WooCommerce follow-up emails for abandoned carts. It offers many of the same features as the YITH plugin.

Use it to set up automated workflows for sending follow-up emails at specific times. To save you time, it has a variety of preset abandoned cart templates for quickly setting up an automated WooCommerce follow-up email campaign.

4. ShopMagic

This is a more generic email marketing plugin designed specifically for WooCommerce stores. Rely on it to create a follow-up email campaign and send customized emails according to your preferences. 

You can set specific events and triggers that act as a signal to send a follow-up email. It allows for numerous types of follow-up emails such as review requests, post purchase upsells, and customized discounts for specified customer behaviors. 

Other than WooCommerce follow-up emails, it also works well for creating all types of email marketing campaigns.

5. AutomateWoo

This marketing automation plugin for WooCommerce stores also offers the option to set up all sorts of WooCommerce follow-up emails. Send emails to win back inactive customers, market to subscribers with specific wishlist items, distribute review requests, send birthday emails, and ship personalized coupons to each subscriber. 

AutomateWoo also features the option to send SMS notifications. 

Use this tool to retarget any customers who have interacted with your brand, not just those who have abandoned their carts. It comes with a decent set of features and allows you to create customized campaigns.

Best practices for sending WooCommerce follow-up emails in 2025

Let’s start your follow-up journey with these best practices you need to master for your WooCommerce store.

If you use WordPress and want to get started with email marketing, check out Omnisend’s WooCommerce plugin. It’s the best tool to launch fast and effectively.

1. Automate with the right tools

If you want to set up post-purchase messaging or follow-up emails, you’ll need to automate the process. Doing this manually is exhausting and quickly becomes unmanageable, leading to complex spreadsheets tracking purchases and follow-up times. 

Instead, automate your workflow using the right tools. WooCommerce automated emails will increase your efficiency when you use certain triggers or a pre-set sending schedule. 

You just saw a list of five email automation plugins. That’s a great place to start. Look for tools that allow you to:

• List out the types of customer actions that should have automated follow-ups
• Use email software or plugins that let you to set triggers
• Consider shipping schedules
• Consider timing and how many emails you want to automate
• Develop a series of offers and calls to action to deliver after the initial customer action
• Effectively track results and sync data with other tools like Google Analytics

Here’s a good example of an effective workflow for a post-purchase email sequence:

Let’s say you want to send a five-email follow-up series, separate from the order, shipping, and delivery notifications. The series might look something like this:

• Email 1: Rate our customer service. Ask the shopper how they felt about their customer service experience.
• Email 2: Review request. Ask customers if the product meets their needs.
• Email 3: Thank you message with special offer. Include a personalized deal to thank customers for their purchase.
• Email 4: Cross-sell email. Indicate that, if a customer likes one type of product, they might like a related one, too. 
• Email 5: Community invite. Ask them to follow you on social media to further cement the connection.

To send an automated series like this, you need to know how long it takes the product to ship. While the first email can arrive before the product does, you don’t want your review request email to arrive until they’ve had a few days to use the product.

This type of series can be spaced out over a couple weeks or as long as a couple of months. You don’t want to wait too long, however. Aim to automate your follow-ups to begin going out about three days after the customer has received the product.

And don’t forget that your shipping confirmation emails offer a great opportunity to introduce other marketing offers, because shipping emails have the highest open rates of all types of automated emails at over 62%. 

2. Segment your audience

When sending follow-up emails, avoid sending the same emails to all your customers. Use segments and email personalization to make your content more relevant for each recipient. 

While it’s okay to use the same email templates, the content should be personalized to boost engagement and the likelihood of conversion.

Typically, marketers segment their lists by geographical or other demographic data. However, this doesn’t usually make that much of a difference, unless you sell gender or location-specific products.

A more effective email segmentation strategy should focus on details like:

• Engagement actions, such as clicks and shares
• Purchase history
• First time customers
• Coupon usage
• Loyalty club membership

In Omnisend, configure segments by going to your dashboard then selecting Audience > Segments then click Create segment and fill in the requested information.

Segments truly matter. After all, a customer who purchased from you many times will need different messaging than one who just bought from you for the first time.

3. Optimize subject lines and preview text

We enjoy researching the best email subject lines because they impact everything. Great subject lines lead to higher open rates, which lead to much better sales for your WooCommerce store.

When crafting your post-purchase and other follow-up emails, remember to think of something that will interest your readers, and use that in your subject line. 

Don’t forget the preview text. Customers can see the subject and the preview text in their inboxes, and both offer a chance to entice people to open the email. Think of it as a a headline and a subheading. 

To write effective email subject lines and preview text, make sure to follow these best practices:

• Put the most important information first since longer subjects and previews can get cut off in some inboxes
• Make people curious about what’s inside
• Be direct, especially when a specific action is needed
• Make sure the subject is relevant to the email since people don’t like being tricked

For post-purchase emails in particular, the following email subject lines work for your follow-ups:

• Enjoying your new purchase?
• 10% off your next purchase!
• Tell us what you think and get $25 off
• Your recent purchase…

If you need more help, try out Omnisend’s subject line tester:

4. Personalize content

You must take into consideration your entire customer journey and marketing funnel when crafting any specific step.

Follow-up emails should always deliver some sort of value to the customer.

A great way to keep your follow-up emails customer-centric is through personalized recommendations. They should already be relevant to your customer, but personalizing the products you recommend while using them to cross-sell will amplify the effect.

You can do this in a number of ways:

• Correlate purchase history to product recommendations
• Mention specific products customers have bought in the past
• Use other demographic or other relevant details to speak directly to each customer — this is one reason birthday emails produce consistent results, with an over 14% click-to-conversion rate

5. Time emails strategically 

As mentioned previously, email timing for follow-ups depends on more than just when your product arrives. That’s just one scenario. Timing also depends on how many follow-up emails you plan to send. That number might be different for each triggering action. 

Some follow-up emails should go out immediately after the action is taken, such as:

• Thank you emails
• Welcome emails
• Order status emails
• Order confirmation emails
• Survey completion emails

Other email follow-ups need to wait for more time to pass, such as until the order is delivered. 

What about email series though? How far apart should the emails be?

Answering this question isn’t simple because each situation might call for a different response. You need to consider a few aspects of each campaign.

First, what is the goal of your follow-up emails? 

Are you trying to make another sale, win customer loyalty, draw them into a community, increase engagement, or something else? If the goal is engagement, spreading the emails out from each other makes more sense. If you’re trying to promote a specific offer and have assigned a deadline for them to take it, your follow-up emails should be closer together.

It’s also possible to pursue more than one goal in the same campaign. In a welcome series going out to new email subscribers who haven’t even made a purchase yet, you could use different emails in the series to focus on different goals, and this works because you’re sending them in the context of welcoming a new subscriber.

Second, how many emails are you sending in this campaign?

If it’s a 12-email campaign, you won’t want to send all of them in just two weeks. That would be overdoing it, especially for a new customer or new subscriber. 

Third, how many other emails are you sending out?

Sometimes, especially with email segmentation, customers get added to multiple segments. You might think you’re sending just a simple seven-email post-purchase series but that same customer might also receive product category emails, an email for having used a certain coupon, and an email to social media followers. 

If the same customer is part of all those segments, they might be getting bombarded, even if you’re just sending one email per week to each segment. 

Consider those three factors and space out the emails appropriately.

6. A/B test for performance

Automated email campaigns aren’t like conventional email marketing, because they go out to an ongoing stream of individual customers, leads, and subscribers. A typical email campaign is distributed once, and can be evaluated for results within a few days or weeks.

This means that A/B testing won’t look quite the same as with a regular email campaign. After a week, you might only have sent a handful of follow-up emails for a particular campaign. This means you may have to run the A/B test for a longer period of time before getting statistically viable data.

It’s still worth doing though, because the reward for a top performing email may be even greater.

Optimizing your performance for these types of emails can result in big revenue swings. Here are some email attributes to A/B test:

• Subject lines
• Pre-headers
• Opening sentence
• Images and graphics
• Calls to action (CTAs)

7. Leverage SMS for higher conversions 

SMS follow-ups continue to grow in use and prove their worth as a companion strategy to email follow-ups.

Many people prefer using text messaging to email, and texting tends to be more immediate. It also gets far higher open rates than email. Automated SMS messages scored 147% higher click rates than regular campaigns, 118% higher conversions. In total, SMS marketing produced $25 million in revenue in 2024. 

While SMS doesn’t allow for as many characters or flexibility as email, it does allow for many of the same follow-up strategies, including purposes like:

• Order confirmations
• Shipping updates
• Welcome texts
• Segmented follow-ups
• Abandoned cart texts
• Order follow-ups

Because SMS is also very low-cost compared to other marketing channels, you don’t risk too much by adding this as one of your follow-up strategies.

Just make sure to get clear consent from your subscribers, and follow applicable laws regarding SMS marketing.

Set up an SMS campaign in Omnisend by going to Campaigns > New campaign > SMS Campaign > Create SMS, as shown below: 

8. Monitor and analyze performance

Just like A/B testing, you should also monitor your email and SMS marketing performance for your follow-up emails and texts. 

Beyond tracking the basic metrics like opens, clicks, click-to-opens, and click-to-conversions, also track things like:

• Revenue generated 
• Leads generated 
• New subscribers
• New customers
• Number of welcome offers converted
• Revenue from abandoned cart emails and texts (and other specific follow-ups)
• Engagement with content such as surveys, social media, and blogs

Stay updated and current on your metrics, and you have a better chance of increasing profits and improving marketing efficiency. 

WooCommerce follow-up email examples

Let’s look at some examples of follow-ups that you can use as inspiration for your own WooCommerce post-purchase email templates:

1. Crate & Barrel

In this email follow-up example, Crate & Barrel is promoting a sale to encourage the customer to buy again, and soon. It’s using an email follow-up strategy to try to boost lifetime customer value and build customer loyalty.

This email is also a perfect illustration of how to create a sense of urgency. It uses phrasing like “Shop Now” and indicates this is a limited-time offer.

2. Ulta Beauty

Here, Ulta Beauty pursues social proof with a review request email follow-up. While this is sent after the customer receives the product and has it on top of their mind, it doesn’t really offer an incentive.

Why should the customer review this product?

If it had added some incentive (even a free one, like having it featured on its social media), it would give more motivation.

3. Pottery Barn Kids

This email from Pottery Barn Kids recommends several possible products based on what this customer had previously purchased. This is a form of using data to create segmented, personalized marketing through email follow-ups. 

Create and send all types of follow-up emails using Omnisend’s pre-designed email templates.

4. Huckberry

This automated follow-up from Huckberry informs a customer that their order has been successfully returned and refunded. It explains all the information they need to be assured the transaction has been reversed.

The email doesn’t stop there, though.

Below the return information, it recommends a number of product categories with appealing imagery in the hope this customer considers making other purchases even though they returned the previous one for some reason.

The goal is to keep a customer who is right on the edge of deciding whether to stay or look somewhere else by combining good customer service with helpful marketing.

5. Zulily

Rather than sending out a coupon, this email from Zulily takes the refer-a-friend angle and gives away credits that the customer can use for their next purchase.

This has two main benefits:

• It helps focus on customer acquisition
• It rewards current customers and incentivizes them to purchase again

Even better, the email is designed so well that there are three reminders of credits.

At #1 in the graphic, there’s the customer’s credit balance, and then #2 (which the customer will probably see first) is the initial offer for credit.

Lastly, at #3, there is a longer explanation of the credit, which amounts to $15 for each new customer, but only after that new customer’s order has shipped.

6. ILIA

This follow-up email from clean cosmetics company ILIA is unique because it doesn’t directly try to pursue more sales. Instead, it includes a short personal message from the founder that shows the principles of the company and how much it values customer satisfaction.

The photograph of the founder further humanizes the brand and makes recipients feel like they have a close, personal relationship with it.

Although this email won’t directly drive conversions, it will boost brand affinity and loyalty.

7. Section

This follow-up email from Section, an online education company, is the first part of a welcome series to a new subscriber who, in this case, hasn’t yet become a member. 

The company uses social proof to support the top benefits of using their service. In this example, they’ve framed the whole pitch around the idea of self-improvement and career advancement, picturing a better future version of yourself. 

These are some great examples of follow-up emails you can use in your email marketing strategy to really build up your customer relationships, get repeat purchases, and create brand advocates.

Conclusion

Using WooCommerce follow-up emails, especially paired with automation, is a surefire way to increase revenue, boost customer engagement and loyalty, and deliver better customer service.

Thankfully, Omnisend has all the tools you need to develop and implement a strong follow-up email strategy, from templates and automation to personalization and beyond. 

Omnisend also offers SMS marketing and follow-ups, one of only a handful of platforms that combine this with email on a global scale, and our system integrates with WooCommerce.