This week I switched on the first automatic emails for a woman-owned self-care brand I work with: a welcome series and a set of abandoned cart emails. The writing was the easy part. The real work was deciding what those emails must never say. An automatic email gets written once and then sends for months, and nobody rereads it before each send.
What did the emails actually do?
The setup is small and standard:
- Welcome series: a first email when someone signs up, then a second one 3 days later.
- Abandoned cart: a reminder about an hour after someone leaves items in their cart, then a second one about a day later if they still haven't ordered.
That's four emails. Most small shops can set this up in a day. What takes longer is making sure every sentence in them will still be true in three months.
Why I left prices out of every email
Prices are the obvious thing to put in a cart email: "Your $29 cream is waiting."
I didn't. That same week the store's prices changed twice, and the owner made both changes herself, outside of anything my team touched. A price written into an automatic email doesn't change when the store does. It just keeps sending.
The cart email already shows what's in the cart. So the words around it don't need to repeat any numbers. If a fact changes often, keep it out of anything that sends itself.
Why "our bestsellers" became "how we'd choose"
The first draft had a "bestsellers" section. It sounds friendly, and you see it in almost every store's emails.
The store has no recorded sales yet. Calling anything a bestseller would be a claim with nothing behind it. So that section now reads "how we'd choose": the owner's own advice on which product fits which person. It's honest, and it's more useful, because it sounds like a person talking.
A claim nobody can check is a claim waiting to embarrass you.
Why "cancel any time" didn't make it in
The store offers a subscribe-and-save option, and "cancel any time" is the standard reassuring line. But the written cancellation policy for subscriptions hasn't been added to the store's settings yet.
So the email says "email us to change it" instead. That's true today, and it stays true after the policy goes up. When the policy is published, we can make the line stronger.
The one thing I did put in: shipping
Here's the opposite case. For this brand's social posts, the rule is to never mention shipping, because the homepage and the shipping policy still disagree with each other.
In the second cart email, I quoted shipping anyway: $5.95 standard, $15 express, plus local pickup. That's what the live shipping policy says, and a cart reminder is exactly where a shopper hesitates over delivery cost.
The lesson isn't "never mention shipping." It's that each channel gets its own rule. A social post is browsing. A cart email is someone about to pay, who wants a straight answer.
A simple test for any automatic email
Before you switch one on, read each line and ask:
1. Will this still be true next month?
Prices, stock, sale dates and staff names usually fail this test. Leave them out or let the store fill them in.
2. Can I prove it today?
"Bestseller," "customers love," "best in town" — if you can't show it, rewrite it.
3. Does it promise something my policies don't cover yet?
If the policy isn't written, don't promise what it would say.
4. Is this the right channel for this fact?
The same fact can be wrong in a post and exactly right in an email.
An email that sends itself is a promise you make once and keep repeating, so only put in it what you'd be happy to stand behind every single time it goes out.
If you're setting up your first automatic emails, start with these four questions before you write a word of copy.