Magento email marketing: what the store sends on its own, the reminder rules only Adobe Commerce has, and the platforms that add the rest

Magento email marketing means using a Magento store (now sold as Adobe Commerce, with a free edition called Magento Open Source) to send newsletters and automated sales emails such as abandoned cart reminders, welcome series and win-back emails. Out of the box, Magento sends transactional emails and simple newsletters. For automated marketing flows you either use the reminder rules built into Adobe Commerce, or connect an outside email platform such as Dotdigital, Klaviyo or Mailchimp through its extension. This page explains what the platform already does, the main routes for adding more, and the order to set things up.

What Magento already sends on its own

Every Magento store sends transactional email. Adobe's documentation describes email templates as the files that "define the layout, content, and formatting of automated messages sent from your store". The built-in set includes:

• Customer emails: new account, account confirmed, forgot password, reset password and change of email.
• Sales emails: new order, new invoice, new shipment and order update.
• Product alerts: price alert and stock alert, for shoppers who asked to be told.
• Newsletter messages: the subscription success, confirmation and unsubscribe emails.

Each template can be edited in the Admin to match your brand. Sales email settings live under Stores, Settings, Configuration, Sales, Sales Emails, and each type (order, invoice, shipment, credit memo) has its own switch. Adobe recommends turning on asynchronous sending, which sends sales emails "at predetermined, regular intervals" instead of at the moment of each event.

Magento also has a basic newsletter tool. Adobe's guide says Commerce "gives you the ability to publish and distribute newsletters to customers who have subscribed". Two settings matter here. Need to Confirm turns on double opt-in, which "requires customers to confirm twice that they want to receive your newsletter". Allow Guest Subscription lets people without an account subscribe.

What the free edition does not give you is automation: no abandoned cart series, no browse follow-ups, no segments built from purchase history. That gap is why most stores add a tool.

Email reminders, the automation inside Adobe Commerce

If you run the paid Adobe Commerce edition, you already have one automation feature. Adobe's page on email reminder rules says plainly: "This is an exclusive feature that is available only in Adobe Commerce and is not available in Magento Open Source."

A reminder rule is tied to a promotion. You set conditions on the shopping cart or the wish list (cart value, quantity, items in the cart), and the rule sends an email a set number of days after the cart was abandoned. A Repeat Schedule field sets the number of days between emails, and coupon codes can be generated for each batch. The master switch is Enable Reminder Emails, under the Promotions settings.

Reminder rules are a solid start for a store already on Adobe Commerce. They are rule based rather than a visual flow builder, so stores that want branching journeys, product recommendations or SMS usually connect a dedicated platform as well.

The main routes, compared

Route	Edition	How it connects	Best fit
Built-in newsletter and templates	Both	Native	A small store sending order emails and an occasional newsletter
Email reminder rules	Adobe Commerce only	Native	Cart and wish list reminders with a coupon
Dotdigital	Both	Connector extension	Stores that want abandoned cart series configured from the Magento Admin
Klaviyo	Both, 2.4.0 and later	Composer extension	Stores that want segments and flows built on order and browsing data
Mailchimp	Both	Extension, supported by ebizmarts	Stores whose team already works in Mailchimp

Dotdigital

Dotdigital has the longest history with Magento. Its Adobe Commerce page describes the company as an Adobe Gold partner and says it was "the first non-Adobe product approved by Adobe's App Assurance Program". It brings in "orders, products, and behavior" from the store, and runs campaigns across email, SMS and other channels. Dotdigital's connector captures abandoned carts as cart data against each contact. You can build the abandoned cart program inside Dotdigital, or set a series of up to three emails from the Magento Admin, with separate settings for customers and guests.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo's help article "Getting started with Magento 2.x (CE and EE)", updated 21 October 2026, says that "Magento 2 versions below 2.4.0 are not supported" and that your server needs a publicly reachable hostname. The extension is installed with Composer (composer require klaviyo/magento2-extension), so you need someone with SSH access. It syncs customer details, orders, fulfilment, refunds and cancellations, and the extension handles web tracking of which products people view. Newsletter sign-ups can flow into a Klaviyo list you choose. Klaviyo is careful on one point worth copying: "Adding a customer to a list does not by itself grant marketing consent."

Mailchimp

Mailchimp's own help describes its Magento integration as free, adding "your customers and their order information to your Mailchimp audience", and it sends data-sync questions to the ebizmarts support forum. For Adobe Commerce (Magento 2) it points to a separate setup article. Several older ebizmarts Magento 2 packages are marked abandoned and direct users to the current Mailchimp package, so install the current one rather than an old module.

The four emails to build first

1. Abandoned cart. Two or three emails over a few days. Show the items, link straight back to the cart, and keep any discount for the last email.
2. Welcome series. For new subscribers: what the store sells, shipping and returns, and a best seller or two.
3. Post-purchase. Care or setup tips for what they bought, then a review request, then a related product.
4. Win-back. For customers who have not bought in a while, timed to how often your products are usually re-ordered.

Build these before any regular newsletter. They run every day without new work, and each one is tied to something the shopper actually did.

Get delivery right before you add volume

An extension does not fix delivery. Gmail's email sender guidelines ask every sender to "Set up SPF or DKIM email authentication for your sending domains" and to keep spam rates in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%. Senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail also need SPF and DKIM, DMARC, and one-click unsubscribe on marketing messages. Gmail's monitoring section gives 0.10% as the better target. If your order emails go out from your own server and your marketing email from a platform, set up authentication for both.

Consent at checkout and sign-up

Keep a clear sign-up box for marketing email, separate from the order. Turning on Need to Confirm gives you double opt-in and a cleaner list. In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. 7704) requires every commercial email to include a clear way to opt out and "a valid physical postal address of the sender", and an opt-out must be honoured within 10 business days. If you sell into the UK, the EU or Canada, their consent rules are stricter, so check them before you import any list.

How to measure Magento email

Judge email by orders, not opens. Track revenue and orders per flow, the share of abandoned carts recovered, repeat purchase rate for customers who joined through the welcome series, and unsubscribe and complaint rates per campaign. Compare each flow against the same period without it where you can. If you also run search ads and SEO, you can see how email changes the value of those visitors once they have bought once. If the store's SEO needs work too, the guide to hiring a Magento SEO expert starts from the same question this page does: which edition you run.

Questions about Magento email marketing

Does Magento have built-in email marketing?

It has transactional emails and a simple newsletter tool in every edition. Automated reminder rules for carts and wish lists come only with Adobe Commerce. For full flows and segments, stores connect an email platform.

Can Magento Open Source send abandoned cart emails?

Not on its own. You need an extension or an email platform connector, such as Dotdigital, Klaviyo or Mailchimp, or a Marketplace abandoned cart module.

Which email platform works best with Magento?

Pick by your edition and your team. Dotdigital lets you set an abandoned cart series from the Magento Admin. Klaviyo needs Magento 2.4.0 or later and a Composer install. Mailchimp suits a team already using it. All three sync orders and customers.

Why are my Magento emails going to spam?

The usual causes are missing SPF, DKIM or DMARC on the sending domain, or sending from the web server without authentication. Fix authentication first, then check complaint rates in Gmail Postmaster Tools.

Is it the same for WooCommerce?

The ideas are the same but the tools differ. Our WooCommerce email marketing guide covers MailPoet, AutomateWoo and the outside platforms.

Where a shopper hears about your store before the first email

Every flow on this page starts after someone has found the store. More shoppers now begin by asking an assistant which store sells the part, the brand or the size they need, and the answer names a handful of shops. AI Knows Us checks whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI answers name your store for those questions, which is the step before anyone joins your list.