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How to Customize Emails by Using Hooks in WooCommerce

Last updated: August 01, 2024
Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

Every business desires to attract the attention of its customers. Email transaction and email marketing are two of the most common ways to contact and engage your consumers. However, because it is a popular method, we will not be able to achieve our goal simply by sending a formal email with text. In fact, most consumers won’t even engage with your email if it’s not personalized to their needs or interests. Customized emails were created to make email more engaging and appealing.

This article will show you how to make your email marketing more exciting in the most efficient way possible. WooCommerce Email Hook is a good tool for achieving this purpose.

Why is it necessary to customize emails

The key to optimizing your email marketing programs is email customization. In fact, most customers will ignore your email if it isn’t suited to their specific needs or interests. Personalization helps you improve organic traffic, response rates, and click-through rates in emails. It also increases the likelihood of prospects purchasing from you after reading your emails. Personalized email marketing has a 10% better conversion rate than non-personalized email marketing. You can eliminate sales friction and shorten your sales cycle by using email customization. It makes it easy for you to nurture your loyal customers by allowing you to present them with relevant material that they’ll want.

Customizing your emails’ content helps build consumer trust by providing useful information that will help customers use all of your offerings. Because customized emails contain relevant and valuable content to the recipient, customers are more likely to purchase as a result of opening and reading them. Have to use your own colors, typefaces, and language establishes your brand, provide consistency, and aids in remembering. Including related products and coupon codes may also lead to extra purchases.

Besides, Customizing email allows you to strengthen your relationship with your recipients. Providing them with educational materials that they need or that you recommend. Sending consumers educational content or product recommendations that will assist them in resolving their issues as well as helping build trust and strengthen your relationship with them. It also contributes to the creation of a positive brand image among customers.

That’s all there is to it when it comes to the advantages of customizing emails. So, let’s check how the WooCommerce Email Hook can assist us in achieving this goal.

What are WooCommerce hooks

WooCommerce Hooks are crucial, and correctly putting them allows you to extend your store’s performance without modifying the theme’s core code. They’re used to specify markup for all pages, making it easier to perform Actions and Filters on them. Using hooks allows you to add or change code without editing core files. They are very useful for developers.

There are two types of hook: Actions and Filters.

Action Hooks

  • Action hooks allow you to enter custom code at different locations throughout the website (wherever the hook is run).

  • To use action hooks: Hook in with the action hook do action(‘action name’); to run your own code. Here’s where you should put your code:


add_action( 'action_name', 'your_function_name' );

function your_function_name () {
// Your code
}

Filter Hooks

  • Filter hooks allow you to modify and return a variable that it passes through (for instance, a product price).

  • To use filter hooks: Apply_filter(‘filter name’, $variable); is used to call filter hooks across the code. You can perform something like this to alter the passed variable:


add_filter( 'filter_name', 'your_function_name' );

function your_function_name ( $variable ) {
// Your code
return $variable;
}

Generally, WooCommerce is well-known for its hooks, which make it simple to increase a store’s capabilities.

How to customize emails by using hooks in Woocommerce

Email markup is configured using WooCommerce Email Hooks. The emails that are sent to clients after they make a purchase are frequently marked up and include a product list. WooCommerce hooks are a terrific method to add more material to your email layout. However, keep in mind that hooks will only allow you to add stuff, not change it. See the section on customizing templates above for more information on changing text.

Add the code snippets below to the functions.php file of your child theme. The hooks you utilize are determined by what you want to add and where you want to put them.

In the Customer Invoice email template, we’ll include some content. Depending on where we want to put the material, we can utilize a variety of hooks. To add our content, we can use the email hooks listed below. Add the code snippets below to the functions.php file of your child theme. The hooks you utilize are determined by what you want to add and where you want to put them.

Below the Header:

  • woocommerce_email_header( $email_heading, $email ): Use this hook to add additional content below the header

  • woocommerce_email_order_details ($order, $sent_to_admin, $plain_text, $email): Use this hook to places the content

  • woocommerce_email_before_order_table ($order, $sent_to_admin, $plain_text, $email): Use this hook to add additional content below the order table

  • woocommerce_order_item_meta_start($item_id, $item, $order, $plain_text): This hook is used to place the information in the order table below the item name. Before adding any other meta, this one must be added first.

  • woocommerce_order_item_meta_end ($item_id, $item, $order, $plain_text) : This hook is used to place the content below the item & the hook woocommerce_order_item_meta_start. This have to be added at last after all the other meta information.

After the Table:

  • woocommerce_email_after_order_table ($order, $sent_to_admin, $plain_text, $email): The content is placed directly below the order table using this hook.

  • woocommerce_email_order_meta ($order, $sent_to_admin, $plain_text, $email): This hook used to place the content after the order table and below the hook woocommerce_email_after_order_table ($order, $sent_to_admin, $plain_text, $email).

  • woocommerce_email_customer_details ($order, $sent_to_admin, $plain_text, $email): The hook puts the text in the front of the customer’s billing and shipping information.

Above the Footer:

  • woocommerce_email_footer($email): The hook places the content just above the footer text

In your theme’s functions.php file or a plugin file, paste the above code. The email that was sent to the customer will look like this.

In your emails, you can also use conditional logic. If the order is finished, you can add a link to the shop page.

WooCommere Email Hooks

As you’ve seen, several hooks and custom codes can be used to position contents in different areas of the email body. This is only a small example of what the hooks can be used for. It’s probably time for you to start customizing your emails using these hooks to make an impression on your target customers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, you can keep your customers up to speed on order status, promote brand awareness, and drive repeat purchases by customizing the look and content of your emails. Regardless of your level of coding ability, WooCommerce provides a variety of options for making the changes you require. We hope that these WooCommerce Email Hooks will assist you in increasing sales and making a positive impression on your target customers through transactional emails.

If you want to discover more about WooCommerce or find other fascinating plugins, you can discover more valuable articles on AVADA.


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.

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