Receipts and marketing are different
Why an order confirmation still reaches someone who unsubscribed, and why a sale never does.
Where it is in the app
Open Home, choose Email & SMS, then Tools › Receipts & codes.
- Home
- Email & SMS
- Tools
- Receipts & codes
Your shop sends two kinds of email, and we treat them differently on purpose.
Marketing is anything you send because you want somebody to buy: a campaign, a sale, a newsletter, a cart reminder.
Receipts are mail you owe somebody because of something they just did: an order confirmation, a shipping notice, a password reset, a login code, "we have your wholesale application".
#What is different about a receipt
It goes even to someone who unsubscribed. Withholding an order confirmation is a broken shop, not caution.
It needs no consent. They asked for it by ordering.
It ignores your frequency limit. If you allow one marketing email per person per day, receipts do not count and are never held by it.
It has no unsubscribe link and no postal address. Those belong on marketing.
#What is the same
Some things stop a receipt, and you cannot turn them off:
A dead mailbox. A hard bounce means nobody is there.
The never-send list. A short list that applies to every brand on the platform.
A sending address you have not verified. Every email needs a verified domain.
The daily warm-up limit on a new domain. The request is told to wait, and the limit resets at midnight.
A spam complaint or an unsubscribe stops marketing only. That person still gets receipts for their orders.
#Who a marketing email goes to
Go to Settings → Email → Sender preferences. The card Who may get an offer has two choices:
- Anyone who gave you their email on your own site. The US reading. They opted in by typing it in and they opt out with the unsubscribe link. Every offer carries the unsubscribe link and your postal address.
- Only people who ticked a box. The EU and Canada reading. Nothing marketing leaves without a recorded yes. Choose this if you sell there.
An unsubscribe wins either way. Uploads and imports are never covered by the first choice. They stay held back until there is proof. Text messages do not change: marketing texts always need a ticked box.
The card Cart recovery on the same page decides who gets cart reminders: Anyone who typed their email at your checkout, or Only people who ticked the box.
#Mark each email in a flow
Every email step in a flow has a dropdown that asks what kind of email it is:
| The dropdown says | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Marketing | A promotion. The default and the safe answer. |
| Order or account | A receipt, about something the person just did. It must never carry an offer. |
| Cart or checkout recovery | Bringing someone back to their own cart. It needs consent unless you chose the open cart-recovery setting. |
Choose by what the email says, not by the flow it sits in.
| The subject line | Dropdown | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your order is confirmed | Order or account | They just ordered. No offer. |
| We have your wholesale application | Order or account | About their own application. |
| Still thinking it over? | Cart or checkout recovery | Their own cart, but it persuades. |
| Time to reorder — 10% off | Marketing | An offer. It stays marketing even inside a flow named "post-purchase". |
A discount in a receipt sends that discount to people who unsubscribed. That can break marketing law, and the penalty is charged per email. When you are unsure, choose Marketing.
#Anything sent from your own code is a receipt
Email sent through POST /api/v1/send, by the WordPress plugin's email switch, or as a login code is a receipt by design. You cannot send a campaign through it. See "Send a receipt from your own code".
#Keep them on separate domains
On Settings → General → Domains, the column Used for marks each domain Marketing, Receipts or both. A new domain does both. If you have two, split them, so a bad campaign week cannot slow your order confirmations. A domain marked for receipts only refuses a campaign, and the reverse.
#If it didn't work
- A receipt did not arrive for someone who unsubscribed. Check the step's dropdown. If it says Marketing, that is why.
- A step is marked as a receipt and still did not go. Open the person's page. Every held email shows which rule stopped it, most often a dead address.
- A sale was held with "no proof of consent". Open the person's page. The reason says whether your account requires a ticked box, the address was imported, or they opted out.
- Everything is held back. Check Used for on your domains. The refusal names the problem.