Order Confirmation Emails: What to Include and What to Leave Out

An order confirmation email should tell your customer what they bought, what they paid, where it's going, and what happens next, with a link to check the order's status. Hayes Media, an email and SMS retention agency for eCommerce brands, treats the order confirmation and shipping confirmation as the first retention emails a new customer gets. Loyalty starts before the first order, and these emails keep earning it by answering a new customer's questions before they have to ask.

This guide covers the confirmation and shipping emails themselves, including how to edit the Shopify order confirmation email. For the full sequence that follows them, see our post-purchase email flow examples.

What's an order confirmation email?

It's the automated email your store sends when a customer places an order. Shopify's Help Center lists it as an example of how notifications work: "A customer places an order, and the Order confirmation notification is sent." The shipping confirmation is its partner: "You fulfill an order, and the Shipping confirmation notification is sent."

Both are transactional emails. Klaviyo's Help Center defines a transactional message as "an automated message that’s sent when an individual takes an action and contains information directly related to the action." It names order confirmations and shipping or delivery alerts as examples, and says "Customers expect transactional messages after actions such as placing an order or resetting their password."

On Shopify, most of them send whether you've edited them or not. Shopify says "Most customer notifications are sent automatically and can't be deactivated." So what matters is what yours say.

What should an order confirmation email include?

Everything your customer needs to stop wondering about the order. Klaviyo's guidance is that a transactional message "should only include details about the action the user took", plus general things like your company info. For an order, that means:

Order number and date. It's what your customer quotes when they contact you, so put it near the top.

What they bought. Product names, variants, quantities, and an image of each item if your template supports it.

What they paid. Item prices, discounts, shipping, tax, and the total, so nobody has to open their bank app to check.

Where it's going. The shipping address and the shipping method they picked. A wrong address caught now is a support ticket you don't get later.

What happens next. When the order ships, and that a shipping email with tracking will follow. If you show delivery dates at checkout, repeat the same promise here.

A link to the order status page. Shopify says "If you use Shopify's default templates, then your email templates automatically include a link to your customer's order status page."

How to reach you. A real reply address or a support link, and your store's details.

What should you leave out of an order confirmation email?

Anything that's selling. Klaviyo's Help Center says a transactional message "cannot include anything unrelated to the action or any promotional content", and lists coupons, products someone hasn't bought, newsletter information, links to sign-up forms, and marketing calls to action.

That rule decides how Klaviyo sends the email. Klaviyo says "suppressed profiles still receive transactional emails", apart from seven consecutive soft bounces, hard bounces, and past spam complaints. An email awaiting approval "is treated as a marketing email", and Klaviyo's suppression checks apply to it. A discount block or a product carousel stands in the way of transactional approval, so your confirmation goes out as marketing and some of your buyers never see it.

How does an order confirmation email build loyalty before the product arrives?

By answering every question a new customer has before they think to ask it. A first-time buyer has handed money to a store they may not know well. The confirmation is the first proof that you'll do what you said.

Loyalty is earned across the whole buying experience, from the ad to the product page to checkout to this email. The second order is where it shows up in your numbers. Our guide to what moves repeat purchase rate names the confirmation email as part of that first order experience.

The confirmation builds trust when it does a few plain things. It matches the promise. If the product page said it ships in two days, the confirmation says the same thing. It sounds like you. Shopify lets you add your logo and accent color to every template, and you can rewrite the default wording so it reads like your brand instead of a system message. It makes help easy. A customer who can see their order, their address and a status link doesn't need to email you to ask where it is.

A short line about what happens next is about the order, so it belongs. How-to-use guides, the review ask, and the next product to buy belong in the emails that come after.

What should a shipping confirmation email include?

The tracking link, first and clearly. Klaviyo uses a shipping alert as its example of a transactional message and lists what it can include: "Which products are in that shipment", "Shipping address", "Cost", "The tracking number and link", and "Estimated delivery date".

If an order ships in more than one box, name the items in each one.

Shopify sends more than one shipping email. Its customer notifications page lists Shipping confirmation ("Sent when an order is fulfilled"), Shipping update ("Sent when tracking information is updated"), Out for delivery, and Delivered. The last two are sent when a tracking event comes in from the carrier or fulfillment app, and Shopify warns that "Tracking event sources, accuracy, and timing vary by carrier." Don't promise a delivery date in your own words that your carrier data can't back up.

If you send texts too, keep them to these delivery facts. Our review request email guide makes the same call: texts for shipped, out for delivery and delivered, and the review ask by email.

Where do how-to-use tips, reviews and cross-sells go instead?

Into the post-purchase flow, as their own emails. Klaviyo's table of message types puts product recommendations, review requests, and replenishment reminders on the promotional side. Each one is a separate email with its own timing.

Our post-purchase guide sends how-to-use content around delivery day, when the product is in your customer's hands. The review ask waits until they've used it, which our review request guide counts from delivery, not from the order date. The next order is timed to how long your product lasts. Our guide to the Klaviyo flows every store needs shows where each of these sits.

How do you edit the Shopify order confirmation email?

In your Shopify admin, under Settings then Notifications. Shopify's Help Center gives two levels of editing.

Branding for every template. Go to Customer notifications, then Customize email template, to add your logo and change the accent color across all your emails at once. You can also turn off the "Powered by Shopify" footer there. Shopify notes that on the Shopify Plus plan there's no Shopify branding in these footers.

Content for one template. Click the notification you want, then Edit code, and edit the Email subject and Email body (HTML). Shopify says you need to confirm your sender email address before you can edit the body and subject.

Test before you save. Use Preview to check unsaved changes, or Send test email, which goes to the account you log in to the Shopify admin with.

One catch when you customize. Shopify says "Because you customized your order confirmation, shipping confirmation, or shipping update templates, Shopify can't include a link to the order status page in the emails." You either revert to default, which erases your other changes, or add the order status URL to the template yourself. Shopify gives the Liquid line to use: "Track the status of your order: {{ order_status_url }}." Place a test order afterwards and check the link works.

Should you send order confirmations from Shopify or from Klaviyo?

Shopify's built-in notifications already send automatically, so you don't have to move them. Klaviyo makes sense when you want them designed and written like the rest of your email program, and when you can turn Shopify's version off. For the order confirmation, that means a Shopify Plus store asking Shopify Support to do it.

Klaviyo's Help Center sets out the switch:

Transactional status needs approval. It's applied per email, needs a paid account, and works for emails in metric-triggered flows. Klaviyo says any sends while an email is under review "are treated as marketing messages", so wait for approval before you go live.

Where you can turn Shopify's version off, time it right. Klaviyo says to disable Shopify's emails "if you are currently sending them via Shopify and want to start sending them via Klaviyo, in order to avoid sending them twice", and to do it "right before you enable the corresponding flow in Klaviyo to avoid a gap in sending."

Shopify's order confirmation isn't one you can turn off yourself. It isn't on Shopify's list of notifications a store can deactivate. Klaviyo notes that "Most Shopify customer notifications cannot be turned off globally", and that "If you use Shopify Plus, the store owner can contact Shopify Support to turn off specific notifications." On other plans there's no setting to turn it off. A Klaviyo order confirmation would arrive alongside Shopify's, so customize Shopify's template instead. Shipping confirmations are turned off one fulfillment at a time, by deselecting Send shipment details to your customer now.

Watch automatic fulfillment. Klaviyo warns that "Automatic fulfillment can mark an order fulfilled as soon as payment is captured, which can trigger a Klaviyo Fulfilled Order flow before you ship the order." If you pack and ship yourself, it points you to manual fulfillment.

SMS needs consent. Klaviyo says "SMS and mobile push always require consent before you can send any transactional messages", and that Shopify order-update consent "only permits messages about the specific order the customer opted in for".

What does a better order confirmation look like in practice?

Here's an illustrative worked example, with made-up numbers only to show the mechanism. Say a skincare brand ships 1,000 orders a month on Shopify's default confirmation, lightly edited a year ago. Its support inbox gets 120 tickets a month asking where an order is or when it'll ship.

The brand finds a Revert to default button on its templates, so they were customized and Shopify can't add the order status link. It adds the order status URL back, adds a "what happens next" line matching the dispatch time shown at checkout, and removes a 10% off block from the footer. The shipping confirmation now leads with the tracking link.

The next month, "where is my order" tickets fall to 70. Nothing about the product changed. That's 50 fewer tickets a month from customers chasing the store for an answer.

When doesn't this apply?

Local delivery orders. Shopify says out for delivery and delivered notifications "aren't available for local delivery orders", which use a separate delivery confirmation email instead. Check those templates on their own.

Digital products. With nothing to ship, the shipping confirmation doesn't apply. The confirmation's job is access: the download link or login, and where to get help.

If your confirmation is fine and repeat orders are still weak, look past this email to the product, the delivery, and the rest of your flows. Our email marketing audit is where we start.

How Hayes Media runs transactional and retention email for your store

Hayes Media builds and runs retention for eCommerce brands: email, SMS, loyalty programs, and subscribe-and-save. We work in Klaviyo for most accounts and have experience in most other email and SMS platforms. Email on its own is a full engagement with us, and you can see how our email and SMS service works.

Our retention site lists "$500M+ Client revenue driven" and says we're "Trusted by 50+ eCom brands". Those figures, like our case studies, are published by Hayes on its own sites. We don't have a third-party review profile or a Klaviyo partner listing.

Hayes Media works with brands doing at least $100K per month in revenue. It's a guideline, not a gate: a smaller brand with a clear budget set aside to scale and real order volume already qualifies.

One-time email projects start from $2,000 USD, and retainers for ongoing full management start from $4,000 USD per month, scoped on the discovery call.

If you'd like a second opinion on your order emails, we'll audit your order confirmation, shipping emails, and post-purchase flow, and show you what to fix first. Book a discovery call. No onboarding fees. No lock-in contracts. No junior marketers.

Sources

Shopify Help Center: Setting up customer notifications. Source for when order and shipping notifications are sent, which can be turned off, and carrier tracking timing.

Shopify Help Center: Customizing email notification templates. Source for logo, color, footer branding, editing, and testing.

Shopify Help Center: Setting up order status updates. Source for the order status link and customized templates.

Klaviyo Help Center: Understanding transactional messages. Source for the transactional definition, what to include and leave out, suppression, approval, and SMS consent.

Klaviyo Help Center: How to disable notification emails sent by Shopify. Source for switching from Shopify to Klaviyo and the automatic fulfillment warning.

Hayes Email and Retention. Source for the Hayes retention figures quoted above, which Hayes publishes itself.