How to Send Automatic Emails and SMS to Customers After Purchase

The customer places an order — and then silence. Did the payment go through? When will the parcel ship? Where is it now? Every question you don’t answer proactively comes back to you as a chat message, an email or — worst case — a negative review. Good post-purchase notifications are the cheapest automation in e-commerce: they cost a fraction of the time to set up, yet they take load off your support and raise service quality more than many bigger projects.

This article walks through which messages are worth sending after a purchase, how to automate them on order events, and how to do it well — without spamming the customer. Email (SMTP) and SMS notifications are a feature that works in Sellaro today as an automation action, so instead of theory we show a concrete way to set them up.

Which post-purchase notifications actually matter

The goal isn’t to send as many messages as possible — it’s to make each one answer a real customer question at the moment they’re asking it. The core of post-purchase notifications looks like this:

• Order confirmation — right after the order is placed or paid. The customer gets certainty that the transaction went through, sees the order number and a summary. The absence of this message generates the most unnecessary “did my payment go through?” enquiries.
• Payment confirmation — if payment is deferred (bank transfer, pay-later). A separate “paid” event is worth confirming, because it’s what actually triggers fulfilment.
• Shipping notification — with a tracking number. The single most important message in the whole cycle: a customer who knows the parcel has shipped and with which courier stops asking “where is my order”.
• Review request — a few days after delivery. On marketplaces and in Google, ratings directly boost listing visibility, so this one message translates into real sales.
• Exception messages — out of stock, delay, order held for clarification. An honest “we’re running two days late” saves the relationship better than silence ever will.

Keep SMS for the most important moments — confirmation and shipping — because it’s more expensive and more intrusive than email. You can email at every step; send an SMS only when the customer really should see it right away.

Event-based automation — WHEN → IF → THEN

The secret to good notifications is that nobody sends them by hand. Every message is pinned to an event in the order lifecycle and goes out on its own when that event happens. The simplest way to describe it is the WHEN → IF → THEN formula:

WHEN an event (e.g. “status changed to shipped”) → IF a condition (e.g. “channel = your marketplace”) → THEN an action (e.g. “send an email with the tracking number”).

Sellaro’s automation engine works exactly this way — on domain events (new order, status change, payment) with conditions and actions. One of those actions is sending an email or SMS notification. You define the rule once, and it then covers every future order that matches the condition — ten or a thousand, it makes no difference to the system.

A few rules worth building to start:

1. WHEN order paid → THEN email “thanks, we’re preparing your order”.
2. WHEN status = shipped → THEN email + SMS with the tracking number.
3. WHEN status = shipped, IF 4 days have passed → THEN review-request email.
4. WHEN a line item goes out of stock → THEN internal alert to the team (not the customer).

Conditions (IF) let you differentiate the communication: a different tone for marketplace orders, SMS only above a certain value, review requests only for channels where ratings matter. That’s the advantage of event-based automation over a rigid template — you build your own paths instead of forcing your shop into a single scheme. We covered the status transitions themselves in the post on order status automation.

Personalization with placeholders — one message, a thousand recipients

No customer wants to receive an email that says “Dear Customer, your order no. [INSERT NUMBER]”. So you write the notification content once, with placeholders, and the system substitutes the real data of a specific order at send time. In Sellaro you do this with the {{field}} syntax — e.g. {{name}}, {{order_number}}, {{tracking_number}}, {{amount}}.

An example shipping SMS:

Hi {{name}}! Your order {{order_number}} has shipped. Track it here: {{tracking_number}}. Thanks, {{shop_name}}.

One template, and every customer receives a message that reads as if it was written for them. Personalization best practices:

• Always the name and order number — the minimum that keeps the message from looking like a mass mailing.
• Give specifics, not platitudes — “your parcel arrives tomorrow at locker X” beats “thank you for your purchase”.
• One goal per message — a confirmation confirms, a review request asks for a review. Don’t stuff promotions into a transactional email.
• Add a contact channel — a short “reply to this email if something’s wrong” collects problems before they turn into negative reviews.

Timing — when to send so you help, not interrupt

The same message sent at the wrong moment can hurt. Timing matters as much as content:

• Confirmation — immediately. The customer is most anxious in the first minutes after paying; the sooner they get confirmation, the fewer questions.
• Shipping — at the moment of actual dispatch, not “in advance”. A “shipped” SMS for a parcel still sitting in the warehouse undermines trust in all your notifications.
• Review request — 3–5 days after delivery, when the customer has unpacked and used the product but before they forget the purchase. Too early and they have no opinion; too late and they can’t be bothered.
• Time of day for SMS — avoid odd hours in evenings and weekends. Email is forgiving; an SMS at 11 p.m. is irritating.

An important technical detail: notifications in Sellaro are sent asynchronously (through a background queue), so a rule doesn’t slow down order processing, and a momentary problem with an SMS gateway or SMTP server doesn’t block the rest of the flow. The customer gets the message and your system doesn’t sit around waiting.

What to watch for — an honest look at the limits

Before you put notifications into production, remember a few things automation won’t decide for you:

• The tracking number has to come from somewhere. A shipping notification with a parcel number is only as good as the data that reaches the order. Courier integrations (including InPost) and automatic labels are on Sellaro’s roadmap — we add them as modules on request. Today you can bring the tracking number from the channel or your own process, and the rule substitutes it.
• Invoices and marketplaces are a separate topic. Sending an invoice or messaging through a marketplace’s message system are roadmap features — don’t promise the customer what isn’t there yet.
• READ-ONLY toward the shop. Sellaro doesn’t write anything to your shop — it doesn’t change statuses in PrestaShop or WooCommerce, doesn’t create anything there. Notifications go out from Sellaro to the customer, and the order state in the shop stays untouched.
• Consent and legal basis. Marketing SMS requires consent; transactional notifications (confirmation, shipping) fall under performing the contract. Keep the review request on the transactional side and make opting out easy.

Frequently asked questions

Does Sellaro really send emails and SMS right now?

Yes. Email over SMTP and SMS are a working action of the automation engine — they trigger on an order event (payment, status change), support {{field}} placeholder personalization and run asynchronously in the background. It’s one of the features available today, not a plan.

How do I personalize the notification content?

You write the content once with {{field}} placeholders — e.g. {{name}}, {{order_number}}, {{tracking_number}} — and the system substitutes the specific order’s data at send time. One template covers all customers, and each receives a message with their own details.

How many post-purchase notifications is too many?

Follow the rule “one event = one message, if the customer is genuinely waiting for an answer”. Usually three are enough: confirmation, shipping with a tracking number, and a review request. Keep SMS for confirmation and shipping — email handles the rest.

Does Sellaro generate the tracking number and courier label?

Not today — courier integrations (InPost and others) and automatic labels are on the roadmap and we add them as modules on request. The shipping notification substitutes a tracking number that reaches the order from the channel or your process; full, hands-off dispatch is where we’re headed.

Summary

Post-purchase notifications are the automation with the best effort-to-impact ratio: a few rules on order events, a few templates with placeholders — and the customer is kept informed at every step with no human involved. Send what the customer is actually waiting for (confirmation, shipping, review request), personalize with placeholders, get the timing right and keep SMS for the most important moments. The rest of the support questions vanish on their own.

In Sellaro, email and SMS work today as an event-based automation action — with {{field}} personalization and asynchronous delivery. If you want to see how to set up the whole order lifecycle from payment to status, read the post on ecommerce order automation. And if you’re weighing the cost — see Sellaro pricing: a flat fee with a generous limit, all integrations included in the plan, and 0% commission on sales value.