Notifications
- Before you start
- Accessing your Notification settings
- Available customer notifications
- Available store owner notifications
- Additional settings
- View notifications
- Sender information
- Default language
- Testing notifications
- Cancellation notification and HTML for loops
- Email footer
- Notification alternatives
Notifications in Recharge are template emails that are sent to you or your customers for different triggered events. You can also configure additional email notifications on your ecommerce platform for order confirmation and fulfillment.
This article goes through the various notifications available and basic troubleshooting information.
Before you start
- You must authenticate your custom domain in order to update the notification template.
Accessing your Notification settings
You can view and update your notification settings by clicking Settings and selecting Notifications. Click on any of the notifications to customize that message. The notification can be enabled and disabled within each template.
These email notifications support HTML and CSS so you can adjust them to suit your brand. You can also use variables to include dynamic information about the customer, such as the customer's first name or their customer portal magic link. See Using variables for notifications and scripts for a list of variables.
Available customer notifications
To access your notification settings, click Settings in your merchant portal and select Notifications.
Email notifications
The following email notifications are available to send to customers:
Notification |
Use case |
| Subscription activation |
Sent each time a customer begins a new subscription through checkout. By default, this notification includes a tokenized magic link to the customer portal. This notification is not sent if a subscription is added through the merchant portal. Default language is available to help better comply with California’s Automatic Renewal Law. Select the Use default language button to preview and modify the standard template. |
| Subscription 1+ year upcoming charge |
Sent to customers who have a 1-year+ subscription renewal cycle. When enabled, this notification is sent to customers with “long-term” subscriptions who are charged on a frequency of at least every 12 months to remind them of their upcoming charge. This notification is sent 30 days before the charge date by default. Adjust this time frame in the merchant portal by clicking Settings and selecting Notifications. |
| Subscription cancellation | Sent when your customer cancels all of their subscriptions, and are no longer considered an active customer. This email includes a link to re-subscribe. |
| Subscription recurring charge confirmation |
Sent to your customer when one of their recurring orders processes. The email includes a tokenized magic link to the customer portal, where the customer manages their subscription. Recurring charge confirmation notifications are sent shortly after charges process. Charge processing kicks off by default after 12am ET. |
| Subscription upcoming charge |
Sent before customers are charged for their upcoming recurring order. This email includes a tokenized magic link to manage recurring items within the customer portal. This notification can use the following syntax for the variable:{ {charge_date | date: (%b %d, %y) } } Upcoming charge notifications are sent daily between 5pm PT and midnight PT. By default, they are triggered to send three days ahead of the charge date. Adjust this time frame in the merchant portal by clicking Settings and selecting Notifications. You must contact the Recharge support team to update your notification settings for prepaid order shipment notifications. Default language is available to help better comply with California’s Automatic Renewal Law. Click default language on the notification to preview. Avoid saving if you do not want to utilize it.
Tip: Use the {{charge_date}} variable in the subject line for upcoming order notifications, ie. “Your upcoming order will ship on X date”, rather than counting down the number of days until the charge, ie. “Your charge is coming up in 5 days”. This prevents customers from receiving incorrect information as to when their next charge will be processed.
|
| Card declined |
This email includes a tokenized magic link to update billing information and is sent on the first decline of the credit card. For all future declines, Recharge sends a new email to the customer if a notification was not already sent within the past seven days.
Note: Stores using Failed Payment Recovery will not see 'card decline' email notification in the notification settings as this notification handled directly through the Failed Payment Recovery Strategy.
|
| Get account access |
Sent to customers when they use the Account Access link so they can access their subscriptions. The contents of this email change depending on the email address provided by the customer.
Note: If the Force Shopify Customer account login customer portal setting is enabled this notification should be edited to remove the
{{ subscription_url }} statement and link.
|
| Out of stock |
Sent when a charge attempts to process with an out of stock item. The customer is notified that the order will process once the item is back in stock. For more information on out of stock retries and partial order fulfillment settings, see Partial order fulfillment. |
| Card expiring |
Sent out two days prior to the upcoming charge notification if a payment method attached to that upcoming charge has expired, or will expire. It includes a tokenized magic link to update billing information. Note: This notification only applies to stores on the Recharge Checkout and BigCommerce Checkout Integration
|
| Refund |
Sent to notify customers when a charge has been refunded.
Note: This notification only applies to stores on the Recharge Checkout and BigCommerce Checkout Integration. If you use the Shopify Checkout Integration this notification will be managed by Shopify.
|
| Payment re-authentication |
The notification works the same as when a card is declined except when the customer needs to re-authenticate their payment for SCA.
Note: This notification only applies to stores on the Recharge Checkout and BigCommerce Checkout Integration. If you use the Shopify Checkout Integration this notification will be managed by Shopify.
|
| Get account access by code | This notification is sent to customers when they request a one-time access code to sign in to the customer portal using the passwordless login feature. |
SMS notifications
The following SMS notifications are available to send to your customers:
Notification |
Use case |
| Get account access by code | This notification is sent to customers when they request a one-time access code to sign in to the customer portal using the passwordless login feature. |
Optional notifications
Notification |
Use case |
| Delayed checkout payment failed | This notification is sent to customers when their delayed checkout payment fails. It notifies customers of the attempted order, the failed transaction, and provides them with steps to access their customer portal to update their payment information. |
| Delayed payment checkout success | This notification is sent to customers to notify them that their request has been received, and will be created once the payment is settled. This is sent before the Subscription Activation notification so that customers have a confirmation email for their order. |
Available store owner notifications
Notification |
Use case |
| Cancellation alert | Sent when a customer cancels an item. |
| Error charge processed | Sent when a previously errored charge has been successfully processed. |
| Variant not found | Sent when ‘Variant not found’ error occurs in an order. |
| Customer action log | Sends a daily log of customers' actions. Actions recorded include: Skipping a delivery, cancellations, and delivery changes. |
Additional settings
Stay in the know on all customer activity by enabling the ability to CC or BCC the store owner on all customer notifications. This sends a copy to your store owner email.
View notifications
Notification Timeline
Recharge triggered notification logs are available through the Timeline section on the Customer details page in the merchant portal.
Access the timeline in the Customer details page in the merchant portal.
- In the merchant portal, click Customers and select Customers from the dropdown.
- Search and select the customer.
- Scroll down to the Timeline section for a list of actions taken on the customer's profile or subscription.
The timeline logs an event each time Recharge triggers an email to a customer. The message consists of the type of notification sent, and the date and time at which the email was triggered.
Email Export
To see the emails sent to customers within the past month, review the Emails export using the Export Builder. The export can then be filtered to show specific notifications if needed. See the Available exports in the Export Builder guide for more detailed information.
Sender information
To change the email address these notifications send from, click Settings and select Notifications, then click on the notification you'd like to edit and modify the fields for From name and From email.
Default language
All notifications use Recharge's out-of-the-box templates. You change and customize notifications to better suit your business needs as outlined in the Translation FAQ. However, in the course of your business's evolution, you may need to revert to a notification's default language.
To revert a notification to its default language:
- In the merchant portal, click Settings and select Notifications.
- Click on the notification you would like to change and click Use default language.
- Click Confirm on the pop-up modal to verify that you would like to revert the notification to its default language.
- Click Save to save all changes.
Testing notifications
Test any of the email templates by clicking Send a test e-mail in the Actions section of each template. Test notifications are sent to the email address of the user logged in and performing the test. Sign out of your ecommerce admin if you want to test customer portal magic links.
You may also preview your notifications by clicking Preview in the Actions section of the template. This is useful if you would like to render the HTML, CSS, and variables used in the template.
Cancellation notification and HTML for loops
Due to the way that the Cancellation notification works, looping through the subscription items isn't possible as the notification uses the Customer object, and does not access the item details.
Email footer
Per the Federal Trade Commission guidelines, an email footer is included that outlines a standard legal disclaimer. To customize your legal disclaimer, visit Updating the legal settings.
To update the store address listed in the email footer see Updating the store address in the notification footers.
Notification alternatives
If you require advanced DMARC implementation or specialized control over your notification delivery, SendGrid and Klaviyo are recommended options to explore.
