Shopify Email Notifications: How to Customize Them

June Nguyen -

Imagine a customer excitedly buying from your beautifully designed store, only to receive a clunky, generic text receipt moments later. That jarring drop in quality is exactly why default order emails lose customer trust. With transactional emails seeing average open rates of 80% to 85% (four times higher than marketing emails), every post-purchase message is prime real estate.

If you want to build a memorable customer experience, learning exactly how to customize Shopify email notifications is a non-negotiable step. While the native Shopify email template editor gives you basic control, intermediate merchants often hit a wall when trying to add specific tax details, align brand colors, or fix formatting glitches.

In this guide, we will walk through actionable ways to customize your Shopify notifications without breaking your code. We cover everything from fixing blurry logos and adding Liquid variables, to understanding why HTML emails alone might not be enough for legal compliance.

Let's get started!

I. Why Default Shopify Order Emails Aren't Enough

Transactional emails offer the highest engagement rate of any merchant communication.

1. The High ROI of Transactional Emails

Transactional emails serve a completely different purpose than your standard marketing campaigns. Messages like your order confirmation email template or shipping updates deliver information the customer actively requested. This makes them highly anticipated.

According to Experian data, these transactional emails generate an 85% open rate. This massive attention makes them a powerful tool for reducing buyer remorse and driving repeat sales. Your customers are already looking at these emails. You just need to ensure the content reflects your store's quality and builds lasting loyalty.

2. The Limitations of the Default Editor

The native Shopify notifications settings are functional but visually basic. They prioritize plain delivery over brand building and customer retention.

Many merchants experience frustration when trying to adjust the Shopify email template editor to fit their specific visual identity. Generic emails fail to reassure buyers. Worse, relying solely on inline CSS tweaks or simple code edits often results in unpredictable formatting whenever the platform updates its backend structure. This easily breaks the customer experience.

3. The Customer Experience Impact

Customer trust drops when your storefront looks premium but your receipts look like raw text. The impact? Significant.

Matching your brand voice in notifications directly lowers customer support tickets. When buyers easily find accurate order summaries, refund details, and support links in a familiar layout, they feel secure. This peace of mind translates directly into fewer complaints and higher lifetime value. A consistent experience keeps shoppers coming back for future purchases.

II. 6 Ways to Customize Shopify Email Notifications

Navigating to your Shopify admin panel and clicking into Settings, then Notifications, is your starting point. The following steps progress from simple visual tweaks to intermediate Liquid code customization.

1. Perfect Your Visual Branding (and Fix Blurry Logos)

Updating your logo and accent color is the fastest way to align emails with your store's branding.

Updating your visual assets is the easiest first step to customize email templates Shopify offers. Sadly, it is where many merchants make a critical mistake.

Why this matters: A crisp logo and matching accent color instantly reassure customers they are communicating with the right brand.

Here is how:

  • Upload a Retina-Ready Logo: Shopify emails often compress images. Always upload your logo at 2x resolution to prevent it from looking blurry on high-resolution phone screens.
  • Set Your Accent Color: Use your brand's exact HEX code for buttons and links.
  • Watch Your Width: Keep logo width in the settings between 100px and 150px for the best mobile responsiveness.

2. Leverage Liquid Variables for Personalization

Moving beyond colors requires Shopify's native coding language. You can use Liquid to pull specific customer and store data directly into your emails.

  1. Locate the Code Editor: Click into any specific email type and select Edit code.
  2. Insert Customer Names: Use the {{ customer.first_name }} variable to greet buyers personally rather than a generic opening.
  3. Display Tax IDs: Add {{ shop.tax_number }} to the footer so your business tax registration appears on every receipt.

If messing with Liquid code feels risky, you can streamline your Shopify invoicing with automated PDF invoices to guarantee all customer data is perfectly formatted without touching a single line of code.

Pro Tip: Always keep a backup of the original HTML code in a blank text document before tweaking Liquid variables. You can easily revert if the layout breaks.

3. A/B Test Your Subject Lines

We often obsess over the body of the Shopify order email notification. However, the subject line determines if the customer opens it at all.

Why this matters: Tweaking subject lines can dramatically improve the click-through rates for secondary actions like review requests or package tracking links. The result? Higher engagement.

Here is how:

  • Be Clear First, Clever Second: Ensure the order confirmation text and order number remain visible immediately.
  • Test Excitement vs. Utility: Compare a simple confirmation against a more enthusiastic brand voice.
  • Update in Settings: You can edit the Email subject field directly at the top of the template editor without touching the actual code.

4. Inject Custom Blocks (Cross-Sells & Referrals)

Transforming a simple receipt into a revenue-generating asset using custom text blocks.

Since you have your customer's full attention, use the footer of your notification to gently encourage their next action.

Why this matters: You miss out on free marketing real estate if your emails only state a simple thank you.

Here is how:

  • Add a Referral Hook: Scroll to the bottom of your HTML body and add a simple paragraph offering a discount for referrals.
  • Include Support Links: Reduce friction by adding a direct link to your FAQ or return policy right above the footer.
  • Keep it Clean: Use inline CSS to ensure these custom blocks do not overwhelm the actual order summary.

5. Optimize the Plain Text Fallback

Did you know your Shopify email notifications have a hidden second format?

Why this matters: Wearable devices, low-bandwidth connections, and strict corporate spam filters often strip HTML away. If you do not configure your plain text version, these users will see a jumbled mess of broken code.

Here is how:

  • Switch Views: In the template editor, toggle from the HTML view to the Plain text tab.
  • Format for Readability: Remove any leftover HTML tags. Use standard dashes to create visual dividers between the order summary and the shipping address.
  • Test the Output: Ensure all links are fully typed out rather than hyperlinked words.

6. Run the Anti-Spam & Deliverability Checklist

Customizing notification template designs will not matter if your emails land in the spam folder.

Why this matters: Changes to Shopify Tax settings or adding too many images can sometimes trigger spam algorithms.

Here is how:

  • Check Your Sender Email: Ensure you have authenticated your domain in your main Shopify admin under Store Details.
  • Send Test Emails: Always use the Preview and Send test buttons. Compare how the test looks on both desktop browsers and mobile email apps.
  • Watch Image-to-Text Ratios: Do not replace text headers with massive images. Spam filters heavily penalize emails that are mostly pictures.

While HTML emails are great for updates, downloadable PDF invoices are required for true B2B and global compliance.

Once your store's transactional emails look beautiful, there is one critical gap that standard HTML customization cannot fix. That gap is strict legal compliance.

1. Navigating CAN-SPAM and GDPR

When you customize email templates, you must respect the legal boundary between transactional and marketing emails.

Under regulations like the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR, a transactional email must primarily contain order-related information. If you add heavy marketing banners, discount codes, or cross-sells to your order confirmation, you risk reclassifying the email as marketing content. This shift requires an unsubscribe link and explicit opt-in consent.

Always ensure your order details take up at least 80% of the email's visual space to stay safely compliant.

2. Why HTML Emails Fail International Tax Laws

Here is a reality check for growing stores. An HTML order confirmation email is not a legal invoice in many parts of the world.

If you sell to B2B clients, or customers in the EU, UK, or Australia, local tax authorities require a fixed document. Because Shopify email Liquid variables render differently across mail clients, and HTML can be easily altered, businesses cannot use these emails for their accounting records.

Customers will inevitably flood your support inbox requesting a real document.

3. The PDF Bridge Strategy

To solve this, professional merchants use the PDF bridge strategy. You customize your native Shopify emails to be warm and mobile-friendly, but you use a dedicated app to automatically attach a compliant PDF.

This is where the Fordeer PDF Invoice Generator becomes essential. Instead of wrestling with complex code to force tax compliance into an email body, Fordeer automatically generates and attaches a perfectly formatted PDF invoice directly to your beautifully branded Shopify notification. You can even learn exactly how to customize your Shopify PDF invoices for a professional look to ensure your brand shines on every official document.

It bridges the gap between a great customer experience and strict legal requirements.

IV. Conclusion

So there you go—learning how to customize Shopify email notifications does not have to be an intimidating task. By updating your visual branding, thoughtfully adding custom text blocks, and ensuring your plain text fallbacks are clean, you elevate the entire post-purchase experience for your buyers.

Your order confirmations are the most opened emails your store will ever send. Take the time to make them reflect the quality of your brand. You do not have to tackle everything at once. Start with a clear logo, and gradually work through the list. Finally, do not forget to bridge the legal gap by attaching professional PDF invoices for your B2B and international customers.

Follow the Fordeer Team for more useful updates!