It’s easy to fall into the train of thought that transactional messages don’t need quite as much zhuzh as your promotional messages. After all, they’re essentially digital receipts.
But don’t be one such brand. According to Klaviyo’s 2026 Omnichannel Benchmark Report, the top 10% of post-purchase emails—the category which includes transactional emails—see click rates of 10.5%. That number represents a good amount of customers who are further engaging with brands after they’ve made a purchase.
“Transactional emails are viewed 3x more than marketing emails on average,” estimates Noah Rahimzadeh, former director of partnerships at Malomo. “If brands aren’t ensuring their transactional messaging is on-brand and personalized, they’re missing a huge opportunity to drive retention and lifetime value.”
Customers are waiting for these emails, after all. There’s a strong chance they’ll open them immediately to check their order details. After they buy something, customers want assurance, and the order confirmation email fulfills this desire to stay in the know.
“Order confirmation emails consistently see high open rates and click rates,” says Ashley Ismailovski, director of email marketing at SmartSites. “Customers frequently come back to them to check the status of their orders, which makes transactional messages a prime opportunity for brands to reinforce trust, provide value, and even drive additional sales.”
Keep reading to learn how to drive more loyalty with order email confirmation tips and best practices. They’re a crucial part of customer service, and any good CRM will help you optimize yours.
What is an order confirmation email?
An order confirmation email is a transactional email sent to customers who complete an online purchase. It’s a digital proof of purchase that contains the order summary, such as the items someone ordered, price, payment, and shipping information.
Order confirmation emails instill confidence that a brand correctly placed a customer’s order. They put the customer at ease and minimize their need to contact customer support with inquiries about their purchase.
In other words, an order confirmation email is your opportunity to “answer the customer’s questions before they have to ask,” says Morgan Mulloy, former associate director of retention marketing at Avex Designs.
“Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes and include the type of information you would require when making a purchase,” Mulloy suggests. “Think access to their tracking number, customer service information, and so forth. This just allows for a better experience and shows that you put the time in to make sure they have everything they may need while they wait for delivery.”
Even though order confirmations aren’t promotional or salesy in nature, they’re still an excellent opportunity for you to build customer loyalty and improve your customer lifetime value (LTV).
Essential components of order confirmation emails
The primary job of the order confirmation email is to let your customers know that their order was successful. You also need to reiterate the payment, shipping, and order details.
Here’s the essential information you need to include, based on order confirmation email best practices:
- Order number
- Payment method
- Name, quantity, and photo of the item(s) purchased
- Billing summary and a breakdown of the price
- Shipping address with phone number
- Shipping method
- Estimated delivery date
- Connection to customer support
“Order confirmation emails should serve as a digital receipt, noting costs and basic reminders, such as the customer’s name, shipping address, billing address, payment method (and credit card details like the card brand and last 4 digits), total and individual costs, and items they ordered,” says Kristina Lopienski, former director of content marketing at ShipBob.
“You should also provide an order number, return info, whether they should receive another email for shipping info, and how to contact the merchant if there is an issue,” Lopienski adds.
Keep in mind that, depending on where your recipients live, you may not be allowed to include anything resembling promotional content in transactional emails like order confirmations. Regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) either outright prohibit mixing promotional messages with transactional ones or require brands to get explicit permission for the separate purpose of marketing.
Whereas the federal US CAN-SPAM Act offers more promotional leeway for transactional emails, most brands want to comply with the strictest version of such regulations so as not to risk a violation.
Assuming it’s allowed for your brand, the order confirmation email is also a chance for you to thank your customers and show them how your products fit into their lives. Ideally, you give them further opportunities to engage with your brand. Here are a few order confirmation email tips to make your email stand out:
- Include a warm thank-you note that matches your brand’s personality.
- Tell customers your brand story and its values.
- Include your social media accounts to encourage customers to follow you.
- Include a list of AI product recommendations based on what they bought.
“Including personalized product recommendations or limited-time discounts in order confirmation emails is a great way to leverage this high engagement into additional revenue,” says Ismailovski.
Now that you know what an order confirmation email should contain, let’s look at a few order confirmation email best practices to make sure you get the most out of your email marketing strategy.
Send the order confirmation immediately after the purchase
As Lopienski puts it, order confirmation emails are all about putting your customers at ease. “At their core, transaction emails exist as a record but also to meet customer expectations, as consumers want to make sure their purchase went through as planned and then receive details on when it will arrive,” she explains.
That’s why customers expect an order confirmation email immediately after they complete a purchase. “It’s a comfort zone thing, where you check your inbox to make sure it’s there and can refer back to it for delivery tracking when needed,” Lopienski explains.
If the customer doesn’t receive the email in time, they might think the order didn’t go through. They might even call your customer support to confirm the order, which could leave a sour taste in their mouth and lead to an uptick in support tickets for your internal team.
The goal is to create a frictionless post-purchase experience. One of the easiest ways to do this is to set up an automated email flow triggered immediately when someone places an order, so customers don’t have to wait and you don’t need to manually send anything.
Focus on the order and shipping details
The main job of an order confirmation email is to convey essential order information. The email’s body should include the order number and the payment and shipping details.
Your email subject line should also give the customer all the information they need, including the order status and tracking number. Customers often come back to their inboxes to search for an order, so a clear subject line will help them find it quickly.
It’s also a good idea to include an order timeline in your confirmation email. The timeline informs the customer about your shipping process, and you can link it back to your order tracking page.
Create personal touchpoints
Depending on where customers live, order confirmation emails can include some light promotional content. Think of them as an opportunity to connect with customers and leave a positive impression on them.
Here are a few order confirmation email best practice for creating a positive message:
- Send a personal thank-you note from your founder.
- Invite them to be a part of your brand’s community.
- Inform them about your customer loyalty program.
- Set them up for success by showing them how to make the most of their purchase.
- Tell them your brand’s story and how their purchase aligns with (hopefully) shared values.
Positive messaging can also mean being transparent. For example, if your fulfillment and shipping process is experiencing delays, your customers will appreciate a note about what’s going on and when they can realistically plan to receive their package.
Use AI to keep your order confirmation emails consistent and on-brand
Order confirmation email flows follow more of a formula than your other email flows, meaning they’re perfect candidates for an AI marketing agent.
An AI marketing agent that’s built into your CRM can draw from existing customer data to pull together all the elements for an effective order confirmation email. And, depending on how much leeway you have with your transactional emails, an AI agent can also help you experiment with small promotional elements that can drive loyalty.
Let’s say you’ve developed some educational content for a certain product. An AI marketing agent can help you fold it into your order confirmation email in a way that’s natural and on-brand by pulling from your product catalog and brand guidelines.
Then, if the educational content isn’t driving as much engagement as you’d like, you can ask your AI marketing agent to run a flow audit and make suggestions for improvement.
Add FAQ answers to your order confirmation email
People often call customer support with simple questions about their recent purchases. Adding answers to the following FAQs in your order confirmation email will help save your customers’ and support team’s time:
- How to update/edit the order
- How to track their shipment
- How to cancel or return their order
“An order confirmation email should include more than just ‘Your order has been confirmed!’” says Joyce Lee, former senior director of platform and ecosystem partnerships at Narvar.
“Will there be warehouse delays? What are your typical fulfillment times? An order confirmation email is a perfect opportunity to level-set with customers on the average fulfillment time, setting expectations and reducing the need for them to pick up the phone between an order being confirmed and shipped,” Lee adds.
Add an option to sign up for an online account
As an extension of your basic FAQs, you can also encourage shoppers to sign up for an on-site self-serve customer experience hub. According to Klaviyo’s 2025 State of B2C Marketing Report, brands with 61–80% of customer service handled by self-service are 133% more likely to exceed their marketing goals than brands with under 20% handled by self-service.
Self-serve customer hubs give shoppers access to one place where they can check their order status, manage returns, find more FAQ answers, and interact with an AI customer agent that can provide personalized support.
The goal is to make answers to common questions as accessible as possible, so customers can get in and get out with the information they need. This improves the customer experience and can lead to more purchases later.
Connect shoppers to AI and human customer support
Customers won’t always find answers on your FAQ page. That’s why Ismailovski emphasizes the importance of clear instructions for how your customers can reach out to your support team if they have any questions about their order.
Let’s say a customer finds a mistake in the shipping address in their order confirmation email. This is a small error that an AI customer agent, accessible directly via email, should be able to address. When that AI agent is built into your CRM and pulling from real-time customer data, it can read the order and make changes to the record so the order goes out to the right address.
But let’s say the issue becomes more complex during the AI conversation. AI customer agents with clear guardrails will escalate the conversation to a human agent, who also has access to a real-time customer profile with complete conversation context preserved.
When your order confirmation email connects shoppers to personalized service like this, it becomes a vehicle for differentiating your customer experience from other brands.
Give customers the option to get order confirmation texts
To improve your customer experience, combine email with text message marketing. If you have someone’s email address and phone number, you can send both an order confirmation email and an order confirmation text message, and ask how they prefer to be contacted about shipping and delivery updates.
But if someone has been interacting with your brand for a while, you don’t need to ask what they prefer at all. With AI-powered channel affinity, you can automatically confirm orders on the channel customers are most likely to engage with next.
Channel affinity ranks each customer’s top channels in order of preference. You can use these insights in segments and flows to increase engagement just by following people’s channel preferences.
In your order confirmation emails, consider asking email-only subscribers whether they might want to receive texts instead. You can send them to a transactional text message opt-in form, where they can
Optimize the order confirmation email for mobile phones
Even when someone does prefer email over text, it doesn’t mean they’re opening the email on a desktop device. It’s likely that recipients will see their order confirmation emails on their phone, which means they need to render perfectly on mobile devices.
Here are a few order confirmation tips for mobile device optimization:
- Use a clutter-free email template.
- Use a responsive design.
- Use a short subject line and preview text.
- Avoid large chunks of text or image-only emails.
- Make sure buttons are easily tappable.
- Don’t include too many links that might be difficult to tap.
5 top-grade order confirmation email examples and why they work
You’ve learned what order confirmation emails should contain and the best practices for designing a successful email. But what does that actually look like?
Let’s take a look at some of the brands that have done it right.
1. Olipop sends a celebratory cheers
Olipop’s order confirmation email is pure celebration. Their hero banner clearly confirms the order, but the recipient gets more than that: They also get a cheers for ordering. And after all that delight, Olipop is clear about next steps when they give recipients a heads up to stay tuned for their shipment email.
2. Farmhouse Pottery opts for a clean design
Farmhouse Pottery uses a clean layout for this order confirmation emails. The design is minimalist, but the email still conveys all relevant information. There’s also a clear way to contact customer service at the bottom, with a simple reply to the email.
Farmhouse Pottery
3. Vuori makes a controversial promise
Athletic clothing brand Vuori sends an order confirmation email that’s perhaps a little controversial. The brand makes a promise to the customer about speed, but they’re clear about the trade-off: once an order has been placed, it can’t be changed or canceled.
The brand is quick to remind the customer that they can reply to the email and receive care. It’s a great way to set clear expectations after a big reveal.
4. Methodical Coffee suggests merch
Methodical Coffee is likely sending this order confirmation to a US citizen outside California, because they take it as an opportunity to up-sell. After a clear confirmation of their order, including shipping information, the brand makes the case for picking up some merch.
This email would be a great candidate for audience segmentation. If someone just made a first purchase, they may not be ready to respond to an up-sell like this. But if this order confirmation email goes out to someone who’s ordered several times, they may just be loyal enough to rock some merch for the brand.
5. Recess releases carrier pigeons
In this order confirmation email example, beverage brand Recess opts for some humor, telling the recipient they’ve released the carrier pigeons to let them know their order is on the way. Just above the address confirmation, the brand includes a cheeky line about making sure the customer didn’t order the item in a “fugue state.”
This order confirmation email shows how fun transactional emails can be. These emails don’t need to be boring. If your brand allows for it, have fun with them and make them memorable like Recess has.
Speed up your email marketing processes with Composer
Composer is your always-on AI marketing agent, built directly into Klaviyo B2C CRM. With Composer, you can create on-brand net-new emails in minutes.
Start with a goal, a brief, or something Composer uncovered in your customer and performance data. Composer can help build the audiences, flows, and campaigns across email, text message, and mobile push, using your brand and business context throughout the process.
Order confirmation email FAQs
What is the goal of an order confirmation email?
An email order confirmation aims to reassure the customer that they’ve made a successful purchase. For this reason, it’s crucial to send order confirmation emails as soon as the customer has completed their order to provide them with the necessary information on what to expect with their order.
How to write a confirmation email for an order?
The best order confirmation emails provide key information about the order. To follow email order confirmation best practices, include:
- Customer name, address, and contact information
- Order number, date, and delivery timeline
- Product details (e.g., name, quantity, image, link, product description)
- Payment details (e.g., billing summary, payment method)
- Shipping and delivery information (e.g., shipping method, delivery address, estimated delivery time)
- Information on how to contact customer support
How to write an order confirmation email subject line?
An email order confirmation subject line should be brief and to the point, informing the customer that their purchase was successful. You can format your subject line to express gratitude and thank them for their purchase, get straight to the point and provide key order details, specify your brand name and product information, or personalize with puns and catchy phrases. Looking at email order confirmation examples can help you decide which style works best for your brand and audience.
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