How do you create an effective order confirmation that includes all relevant information while remaining personal and memorable for your customers? In this post, we’ll show you how! You’ll also find a template for your order confirmation to make the process even easier.
In email marketing, a distinction is made between two types of emails: trigger emails and transactional emails.
Trigger emails are event-based and can occur at any point in the customer journey. Classic and popular examples include birthday emails (often paired with a discount code) or abandoned cart reminders.
Transactional emails, on the other hand, are automated emails sent to your customers during the sales process. Typical transactional emails include order confirmations, shipping notifications, quote confirmations, or other updates regarding order status (e.g., delivery delays). Sending these emails meets customer expectations and helps prevent inquiries about things like expected delivery dates. In e-commerce, there is one transactional email you simply cannot do without: the order confirmation. Why? The IT-Recht Kanzlei provides the following explanation:
“If an entrepreneur uses telemedia (contracts in electronic commerce), such as the internet, to conclude a contract for the supply of goods (or the provision of services), they must confirm receipt of the customer's order electronically without undue delay (Section 312i (1) sentence 1 of the German Civil Code). ‘Without undue delay’ means without culpable hesitation, as defined in a different context in Section 121 (1) of the German Civil Code. The legal obligation is limited to informing the customer that the order has been received by the merchant.”
Source: https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/elektronische-bestellbestaetigung-im-online-handel.html
As an online retailer, you are legally required to send order confirmations to your customers. You can easily send these order or purchase confirmations via email. But what content must be included in this confirmation?
Since an order confirmation is, in most cases, a binding contractual declaration, it must summarize all the terms of the contract. In e-commerce, this primarily includes information about the goods ordered. However, according to the IT-Recht Kanzlei, other information must also be included:
Of course, don't forget to include your company's legal notice (Impressum)!
Your order confirmation doesn't start with the email body, but with the subject line! It should be as informative as possible so that your customers can immediately associate the email with their order. It is also useful to include information such as the order number, making it easier for your customers to search for emails related to this order in their inbox. Here are a few examples of what a subject line could look like:
In addition to the mandatory information in an order confirmation, you should always include standard polite phrases and a bit of extra text. You should always start with a personal greeting and a thank you for the order:
The next part of your template should inform your customers about the next steps.
Now you should give your customers the opportunity to check their order details and the items ordered. This also helps you fulfill your obligation to include specific information in the order confirmation. A table format is a great way to present this in your template.
You should also advise your customers to check that their details are correct so that any issues with incorrect delivery addresses or items can be resolved immediately. You can use the following text snippets for this:
Finally, make sure to include your company address and all other legally required information at the bottom of your order confirmation!
Since your order confirmation is not yet a formal order acknowledgment, a simple email text that you can automatically send to your customers upon receipt of an order is sufficient. To do this, you first need to set up an appropriate email template before automating it using a rule.
Before you start the setup in Billbee, you should check the settings in your shop system and on your marketplaces. These systems often send out their own order confirmations, so you need to ensure that your customers only receive one confirmation—either via Billbee or via your shop system/marketplace.
You can create email templates in Billbee by going to your settings, clicking on the "Automation" menu item, and then switching to the "Email templates" tab. Click "New" to create a new notification text. First, give your template an internal name and optionally add a description before you start drafting your email. The advantage of automating your order confirmations via Billbee is that you can automatically insert order data using placeholders. A complete overview of the placeholders can be found on our help page. For optimized display and better formatting, you can also create the email template in HTML format, as we have done in our example screenshot, so that your order confirmation could look like this.
We used the following email text as a template:
Hi {BuyerFirstname},
your order from {OrderDate} has been received—thank you for choosing Example Shop.
We will notify you as soon as your package leaves our warehouse.
You can find the details of your order here:
Your billing address:
{InvoiceAddress}
Your delivery address:
{DeliveryAddress}
Your chosen payment method: {PayBy}
Order total: {TotalSum}
Delivery method: Standard shipping
Here is a list of the items included in your order:
{SoldArticlesWithPricesMultiLine}
Do you have any questions or need to update your details? Please contact our Customer Happiness Team at beispiel@beispiel-shop.de
The Example Shop Team
---------------------------------
Beispiel-Shop GmbH
Managing Directors: Max Mustermann
Commercial Register: District Court of Beispielstadt
Registration Number: HRB 1234
Registered Office: Beispieldorf
Office / Postal Address: Musterstraße 12, 34567 Beispielstadt
The corresponding HTML code looks like this:
<p>Hi {BuyerFirstname},</p><p>your order from {OrderDate} has been received - thank you for choosing Beispiel-Shop.</p><p>We will notify you as soon as your package leaves our warehouse.</p><p><br/></p><p>You can find your order details here:</p><p><b>Your billing address: </b></p><p>{InvoiceAddress}</p><p><b>Your delivery address: </b></p><p>{DeliveryAddress}</p><p><br/></p><p><b>Your payment method:</b> {PayBy}</p><p><b>Order total:</b> {TotalSum}</p><p><b>Shipping method</b>: Standard shipping</p><p><br/></p><p>Here is a list of the items in your order:</p><p>{SoldArticlesWithPricesMultiLine}</p><p><br/></p><p>Do you have any questions or need to update your details? Please contact our Customer Happiness Team at beispiel@beispiel-shop.de</p><p>Best regards,</p><p>your Beispiel-Shop Team</p><p>---------------------------------</p><p>Beispiel-Shop GmbH</p><p>Managing Directors: Max Mustermann</p><p>Commercial Register: District Court of Beispielstadt</p><p>Registration Number: HRB 1234</p><p>Registered Office: Beispieldorf</p><p>Office / Postal Address: Musterstraße 12, 34567 Beispielstadt</p>
To automatically send this email template to your customers upon order import, you simply need an automation rule, which you can create in your settings under the menu item “ . It is structured as follows:
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