WooCommerce email marketing: what the store sends on its own, the four ways to add campaigns, and the flows to build first

WooCommerce email marketing means adding newsletters and automated sales emails, such as abandoned cart and post-purchase flows, to a WooCommerce store. WooCommerce itself only sends transactional emails, like order confirmations and refunds. For marketing, you add a tool, and there are four main routes: MailPoet, which runs inside WordPress and is sold by Woo; AutomateWoo, Woo's own automation extension; or an outside platform such as Mailchimp, Klaviyo or Omnisend, connected through its official plugin. Pick the route by where you want your list and purchase data to live, then build four flows before you send a single newsletter.

What WooCommerce already sends

Under WooCommerce, Settings, Emails, the core plugin lists its built-in notifications. They include new order, cancelled and failed order emails to the store, and processing, completed, refunded, on-hold, customer note, password reset and new account emails to the customer. Each can be turned on or off, and its subject, heading and extra text can be edited.

Two recent changes are worth knowing, as WooCommerce's documentation read on 22 October 2026 describes them:

• Email improvements. WooCommerce 9.8 introduced updated email settings, switched on under Settings, Advanced, Features. They let you set a shared logo, colours and layout for every store email.
• A review request email. An optional feature, marked beta and off by default, that schedules an email after an order is completed to invite a product review. The delay can be set from 1 to 60 days, with 7 as the default.

A block email editor is also available as an alpha feature. These tools make your order emails look like your brand. They do not give you a marketing list, segments or automated campaigns, and that is the gap the routes below fill.

Fix delivery before you add anything

WooCommerce's own troubleshooting guide says it sends mail through wp_mail(), the core WordPress mail function. On many hosts that means mail goes out from the web server with no proper authentication, and it lands in spam. Before you add marketing email, connect the site to a proper sending service through an SMTP plugin, and set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for your domain.

Gmail's sender rules make this a requirement, not a nicety. Every sender needs SPF or DKIM. A sender who sends more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail also needs DMARC, one-click unsubscribe and a spam rate below 0.30%. A marketing tool that sends from its own servers handles part of this for you, but your domain records are still your job. Our guide to email deliverability covers the list hygiene side.

The four routes, compared

Route	Where the list lives	Best fit
MailPoet	Inside WordPress	A new store that wants one dashboard
AutomateWoo	Inside WordPress, with your send service	Stores with subscriptions, memberships or bookings
Mailchimp for WooCommerce	Mailchimp	Stores that already use Mailchimp
Klaviyo or Omnisend	The vendor's platform	Stores that want email and SMS on one customer profile

MailPoet

WooCommerce's marketplace lists MailPoet "by Woo" and calls it the official email marketing solution for new stores. Its WordPress.org listing, read on 22 October 2026, shows over 500,000 active installs. It builds newsletters and forms inside the WordPress dashboard, and it includes WooCommerce emails for abandoned cart, first purchase, specific product or category purchase, order status change and review added. It can also restyle WooCommerce's transactional emails. The WooCommerce listing says MailPoet is free for up to 500 subscribers, with paid plans above that.

The trade-off is that everything sits on your WordPress site. That keeps it simple, and it means the list lives where the store lives.

AutomateWoo

AutomateWoo is a paid WooCommerce extension built around workflows. Each workflow has a trigger (such as a completed order), rules (such as an order total over a set amount) and actions (such as sending an email or an SMS). It covers abandoned carts, win-back campaigns, review requests and personalised coupons, and it ties into WooCommerce Subscriptions, Memberships and Bookings, for example to email a customer when a renewal payment fails. SMS needs a paid Twilio account. Woo offers no demo, and points buyers to its 30-day refund policy instead.

AutomateWoo is an automation engine more than a newsletter tool, so some stores pair it with MailPoet or an outside platform for campaigns.

Mailchimp for WooCommerce

Mailchimp's official plugin, with over 200,000 active installs on WordPress.org, syncs customers and purchase data into a Mailchimp audience. It supports abandoned cart, browse and post-purchase automations, product recommendations, segments built on purchase history, and WooCommerce discount codes inside emails. The plugin itself is free. Your Mailchimp plan sets what you pay.

Klaviyo and Omnisend

Both connect through their own WordPress plugins and keep the customer profile on their platform. Klaviyo's plugin, with over 100,000 active installs, offers WooCommerce templates for browse abandonment, abandoned checkout, price drop, back in stock and cancelled order, plus SMS and push from the same profile. Omnisend publishes a separate plugin built for WooCommerce, "Email Marketing for WooCommerce by Omnisend", with over 40,000 active installs, covering email, SMS and pop-up forms. These suit a store that wants email and text messages to share one view of each customer. For a wider comparison of ecommerce email platforms, see our guide to email marketing software for ecommerce.

The four flows to build first

Newsletters get the attention, but automated flows do most of the selling. Build these four, in this order:

1. Welcome. Sent when someone joins the list. Say who you are, what you sell and what they can expect from you. If you offer a first-order code, deliver it here.
2. Abandoned cart. Sent when a known shopper leaves items in the cart. One email within a few hours and a second a day later is a sensible start. Show the items and link straight back to the cart.
3. Post-purchase. Sent after the order is completed. Thank the buyer, explain how to use or care for the product, and ask for a review a week or two later. If you use WooCommerce's own review request email, do not send a second one from your marketing tool.
4. Win-back. Sent when a past buyer has not ordered for a set time, chosen from your normal reorder cycle. A coffee shop might pick six weeks. A furniture store might pick a year.

Abandoned cart emails need an email address, which WooCommerce only has if the shopper is logged in or typed it at checkout. Most tools capture it as soon as it is entered in the checkout form. Check that your consent wording and privacy notice cover that use.

Consent at checkout

Add a marketing opt-in at checkout and on account sign-up. Keep it separate from accepting your terms, so a customer can buy without joining the list. US commercial email must carry a working unsubscribe link and a postal address. If you sell into the UK or the EU, the rules on prior consent are stricter, so read the guidance for each market before you email buyers there.

How to measure WooCommerce email

Every tool above reports revenue from email, and each counts it its own way. Measure what you can check yourself:

• Orders and revenue from UTM-tagged email links in your analytics, compared month on month.
• The share of carts recovered by the abandoned cart flow.
• Repeat purchase rate for customers who joined the list compared with those who did not.
• Unsubscribe and spam complaint rates after each campaign.

The recommendation a store owner gets from an assistant

Store owners now ask ChatGPT or Gemini "what is the best email plugin for WooCommerce?", and shoppers ask the same assistants which shop sells what they want. On the shopper side, the store an assistant names depends on what it can read about you: your product pages, your reviews and what other sites say about you. AI Knows Us measures whether those answers name your store. Pair that with the technical side of the store in our page on WooCommerce SEO services.

Questions about WooCommerce email marketing

Does WooCommerce have built-in email marketing?

No. WooCommerce sends transactional emails, such as order confirmations and refunds, plus an optional review request. Newsletters and automated sales flows need a tool such as MailPoet, AutomateWoo, Mailchimp, Klaviyo or Omnisend.

What is the best email marketing plugin for WooCommerce?

It depends on where you want your data. MailPoet keeps everything in WordPress, AutomateWoo suits subscription and membership stores, and Mailchimp, Klaviyo and Omnisend keep the list on their own platforms with deeper segmentation and SMS.

Is MailPoet free?

MailPoet's WooCommerce listing, read on 22 October 2026, says it is free for up to 500 subscribers, with paid plans for larger lists and advanced features.

Why are my WooCommerce emails going to spam?

Usually because the site sends through the server's default mail with no authentication. Connect an SMTP sending service and set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for your domain.

Can I send abandoned cart emails from WooCommerce?

Not with the core plugin alone. MailPoet, AutomateWoo, Mailchimp for WooCommerce, Klaviyo and Omnisend all offer abandoned cart flows.