Skip to main content

​
Three things have to be true

An order confirmation only reaches a customer when all three of these are in place:
  1. A sender. SMTP credentials on the brand, or an email integration on the merchant.
  2. A template. The email itself, from Emails in your brand dashboard.
  3. That template selected on the merchant. Merchant → Email tab → Order Emails.
Miss any one of them and nothing sends. There is no built-in fallback email, and for shipping and cancellation notices there is no warning either. The order goes through, the customer is charged, and the inbox stays empty.
ElasticFunnels never sends a generic default on your behalf. If the slot is empty, the customer gets no email at all.

​
Step 1: connect a sender

Go to Settings → Emailing. This is the SMTP relay ElasticFunnels connects to for every transactional email this brand sends.
1

Enter the server details

Your email provider gives you these. This example uses Mailgun:Mailgun, Postmark, Amazon SES, SendGrid, Gmail, and any other relay that speaks SMTP all work here.
2

Set the sender identity

This is what the customer sees in their inbox:Set Reply-to to a mailbox someone reads. Customers reply to order emails constantly, asking to change an address or cancel. Leave it blank and their replies go to the From address instead, which is often an unmonitored sending mailbox.
3

Save, then send a test

Save SMTP, then Send test. The test message goes to the email address of the user who is logged in, not to the From address.If it arrives, the card shows a green Verified badge.
“Verified” means one test message was accepted by your SMTP server. It is not domain verification. It does not check SPF, DKIM, or DMARC, and it does not confirm your provider will accept the From address you entered. Send a real test order before you trust it.

​
The From address on the template is ignored

Email templates have their own from_name, from_email, and reply_to_email fields. When the brand sends over SMTP, those are not used. The three values on the Emailing tab win for every template. Change the sender in one place and every transactional email follows.

​
Alternative: a per-merchant email integration

Instead of brand SMTP, a merchant can carry its own sending service. Merchant → Email tab → Email Integration lists your Mailgun, SendGrid, and Mailrelay integrations from Integrations. Brand SMTP takes priority. If the brand has SMTP configured, the merchant integration is ignored for order emails. Use the merchant integration when a single brand sells through merchants that need to mail from different providers.

​
Step 2: create the templates

Open Emails in the brand dashboard. Every brand ships with system templates for the standard transaction types, and you can create your own. See Email Templates for the builder and Template Variables for the merge tags. The fastest route is Step 3: the merchant screen can create a pre-built template and select it in one click.

​
Step 3: wire the templates to the merchant

Go to Merchants, open the merchant, and switch to the Email tab. This is the step people miss. Templates live on the brand. Sending is decided per merchant. A brand with three merchants has three separate sets of these slots, and filling them in for one does nothing for the other two.

​
Order Emails

​
Subscription Emails

Visible for NMI and Stripe merchants: Each row has a Create template button that seeds a ready-made template for that type and selects it immediately. A row showing Not set sends nothing.
The usual setup is all four order slots filled on the merchant, with a custom purchase template rather than the stock one. Create from the button, then edit the copy in the builder.

​
Which template actually gets used

There are two places a subscription template can be chosen, and they are checked in order:
  1. The merchant’s Email tab. This wins.
  2. Settings → Subscriptions, which holds brand-wide defaults for the same events.
  3. The brand’s built-in system template for that event.
Order emails are simpler. Set them on the merchant. The brand defaults under Settings → Subscriptions are not a reliable fallback for shipping and cancellation notices, and purchase and refund prefer the brand’s locked system template over anything picked in a dropdown. If you want different purchase copy, edit the locked template rather than duplicating it.

​
What sends, and from where

Order emails are queued and sent by ElasticFunnels a couple of seconds after the conversion lands, so Elasticsearch has time to index the line items. Members area login codes are sent directly by the page runtime and arrive immediately.

​
Deliverability

The SMTP form gets the message to your provider. Getting it to the inbox is your provider’s job, and it depends on DNS records you set once:
  • SPF and DKIM for the sending domain, at your email provider. Every provider documents the exact records. Without them, order confirmations land in spam or get rejected.
  • A From address on a domain your provider is authorised to send for. team@example.com only works once example.com is added and verified as a sending domain at your provider.
  • A real reply-to mailbox. Providers score unmonitored senders poorly, and customers who cannot reach you open chargebacks instead.
Use a subdomain for transactional mail if you also send marketing campaigns. A complaint on a promotional blast should not put order confirmations at risk.