Last updated - September 24, 2020
This article is part of Order Management Guide:
- Basics of order management
- Dealing with refunds
- The role of plugins in order management
- Ensuring prompt email notifications (current article)
Email notifications play a major role to pay in smooth order processing and consequently customer satisfaction. If customers are not notified promptly after they place an order, there might be some confusion. Here’s a fact list of what all might prevent prompt email notifications to the customer after placing an order.
Pending orders won’t generate email notifications
When customers abandon an order after going to the payment gateway page, it results in ‘Pending’ orders. The reason for this can be anything that prevented the customer from completing the payment. An example would be a declined credit card. As you may already know, a pending order won’t send an automated email notification to the customer.
An order might stay ‘Pending’ even after you receive payment for the order. This is when the payment gateway fails to notify your store to update the order status. You have to figure out the cause of the Pending order and take suitable action to correct.
Email notification is disabled in your WooCommerce settings
If by some mistake, email notification settings are disabled, there won’t be an email notification. Enable ‘Processing order’ email notification on the Settings page. First, go to WooCommerce → Settings → Emails. Then, tick ‘Enable this email notification’.
Spam blockers prevent the delivery of emails
There is a possibility that a spam blocker has identified your email as spam and blocked it. Sign up with an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) Provider to tackle this issue. The process is similar to web hosting, where you make use of the service provider’s servers to send emails. If your customer base is not huge, you can very well stay under the free usage limits of the SMTP provider.
To learn more about notification issues, go through this FAQ on WooCommerce Docs.
