Email Templates

Change the wording of every automatic email your site sends: order confirmations, winner notifications, refund and withdrawal updates, password resets and email verification, plus the welcome series, abandoned-basket and spin-to-win emails. Edit the subject line and body text, personalise with merge tags like {firstName}, and check a live preview before you save.

Where to find it: Admin → Content → Email Templates (/admin/email-templates).

Find the email you want to change

The list shows every editable template with three columns: Template (its name, with a short description of when it is sent underneath), Subject (the current subject line) and Last Updated.

1. Find the row for the email you want. The list is in alphabetical order by internal name, so Abandoned Cart Follow-Up is near the top and the Withdrawal emails are at the bottom. Read the grey description under each name if you are not sure which is which.
2. Click anywhere on the row. The editor opens as a full page.
3. Use Back to templates at the top left to return to the list.

If you cannot see the template you expected, check Every editable template below.

Change an email's wording

1. Open the template from the list.
2. Edit the fields on the left. The live preview on the right updates as you type.
3. Click Save changes in the top right. A "Email template updated" confirmation appears.

The fields are:

• Subject Line is what the customer sees in their inbox. Merge tags work here too, for example Order Confirmed - #{orderNumber} - {siteName}.
• Title is the main heading inside the email.
• Subtitle is a smaller line under the title. Optional.
• Intro is the opening greeting paragraph, for example "Hi {firstName}, thanks for your entry!". Optional.
• Footer Note is the closing text at the bottom, a good place for "Need help? Reply to this email". Optional.
• Button Label and Button Note are the wording on the email's call-to-action button and the small line under it, for example "This link expires in 24 hours." These two only appear on templates that have a button.
• An extra message box appears on four templates, labelled for the job it does: Winner Claim Instructions on Main Prize Winner, and Approval Message, Completion Message and Rejection Message on the three Withdrawal emails. Use it for the detail that only makes sense on that email, such as telling a main prize winner how you will contact them and what paperwork to expect.

Optional fields can be left blank. That part of the email is simply left out.

There is no draft state and no autosave. Nothing changes until you click Save changes, so you can experiment freely in the preview and navigate away without affecting anything.

New wording applies to emails sent from that point on, though it can take up to about five minutes to be picked up everywhere. Emails already sent, or already on their way out when you saved, keep the old wording. Nothing is ever rewritten in a customer's inbox.

Personalise with merge tags

Merge tags are placeholders wrapped in curly braces, such as {firstName}, {siteName} and {orderNumber}, replaced with the real values when the email is sent. They let one template greet every customer by name and reference their own order, prize or refund.

1. Click into the field where you want the tag: Subject Line, Intro, or any other.
2. Click the tag you want in the Available merge tags panel at the top of the editor. It is inserted at your cursor position.

The panel only lists the tags that particular email supports, and they differ. Order Confirmation knows {orderNumber}, Main Prize Winner knows {competitionTitle}, {prizeTitle} and {ticketNumber}, Withdrawal Rejected knows {amount} and {rejectionReason}, and the marketing-flow emails know {discountCode}.

You can type tags by hand, but they have to match a listed tag exactly, including the braces and the capitalisation. {firstname} will not be replaced, and neither will a tag borrowed from a different template. Clicking the chips avoids typos.

Preview before you save

The right-hand pane shows the email as customers will receive it, rendered with your site's real branding and colours. It refreshes automatically a moment after you stop typing, and a brief "Updating…" note appears while it does.

• Merge tags are filled with sample values in the preview, so you can judge how the finished email reads.
• The Subject line preview box below the email shows the subject with the same sample values filled in.
• If the preview cannot render, for example because of a connection blip, a "Preview failed" note appears above the pane and the last successful render stays on screen. Your edits are unaffected and the preview retries as soon as you type again.

Recover the previous wording

There is no one-click undo, but every save is recorded in the audit trail with the wording before and after, so nothing is lost.

1. Open System Logs and go to the Audit Logs tab.
2. Type email_template into the Action search to list every template edit. You can narrow further by date or by the admin who made the change.
3. Click View details on the edit you want to unwind. The Previous Values section shows the exact wording before that save.
4. Copy the old text, paste it back into the template editor and click Save changes.

The same audit entries answer "who changed this email and when?", because each one records the admin's email address alongside the change.

Change the timing of a welcome or abandoned-basket email

The welcome series, abandoned-cart and wheel-spin emails belong to marketing flows. This page only controls their wording.

• To change what they say, edit them here like any other template.
• To change whether they send, when they send, or which discount code they carry, go to the Marketing Hub.

Each flow step in the Marketing Hub shows its email template with a Preview & edit link that jumps straight to the right editor here.

What this page controls, and what it does not

Each template controls the text content of one automatic email: its subject line, headings, intro paragraph, button wording and footer note. The overall design, meaning your logo, colours and layout, comes from your site's branding and is applied automatically, so every email stays on brand whatever you write.

If the colours in these emails don't match your site — most often because you corrected a colour with custom CSS, which emails can't load — set them under Settings → Appearance → Email Colours. See Set different colours for your emails. Those colours apply to every email, so they're set once rather than per template.

Templates do not control who receives an email or when. That is fixed by the event itself: an order completing, a refund finishing, a withdrawal being approved. For the marketing-flow emails it is set by the flow, in the Marketing Hub.

Delivery problems (bounces, blocked addresses, failed sends) are handled in System Logs, not here.

Every editable template

Template	Sent when
Abandoned Cart Follow-Up	A customer's checkout timed out without payment, sent by the abandoned-cart flow
Email Verification	A new customer registers and needs to verify their email address
Main Prize Winner	A customer wins a main competition prize
Order Confirmation	A purchase succeeds, including the customer's ticket details
Order Failed	A payment fails or is declined
Password Reset	A customer requests a password reset
Payment Returned as Site Credit	A payment completes for an order that had already been cancelled, so the amount is returned to the customer as site credit
Refund Completed	A refund has been processed and the money is on its way
Refund Initiated	A refund is started for an order
Ticket Prize Partial Award	Ticket prizes could only be partly awarded, with the remainder compensated as wallet credit (store credit)
Ticket Prize Won	A customer wins free competition tickets from an instant win or main prize
Two-Factor Disabled	Two-factor authentication is removed from an account, by the customer or by your support team
Two-Factor Enabled	Two-factor authentication is switched on for an account
Welcome Series — Step 1 (Immediate)	A customer opts in to marketing, the first email in the welcome series
Welcome Series — Step 2 (Day 3)	Three days after opt-in, surfaces featured competitions
Welcome Series — Step 3 (Day 7)	Seven days after opt-in, encourages a first entry
Wheel Spin Prize Won	A visitor wins a discount code on the spin-to-win popup
Withdrawal Approved	A withdrawal request is approved
Withdrawal Completed	Withdrawal funds have been sent
Withdrawal Rejected	A withdrawal request is declined, including the reason

Troubleshooting

A sent email shows the tag itself, like {firstname}, instead of the customer's name. The tag did not match. Tags are replaced only when they exactly match one listed in that template's Available merge tags panel, braces and capitalisation included. Fix the template using the clickable tag chips rather than typing, check the preview (sample values expose any tag that is not being replaced), and save again.

A customer says they did not receive an email. Templates control what emails say, not whether they arrive. Check the email logs and the block list in System Logs to see whether the email was sent and why it bounced or failed. There is no one-click resend: fix the underlying cause, then have the customer re-trigger the email where possible (asking for another password reset, for example) or contact them directly.

I saved a change but an email that just went out still has the old wording. New wording can take up to about five minutes to apply everywhere, and emails already queued when you saved go out as they were. Send yourself a test case a few minutes later, for example a password reset to your own account, to confirm the new copy is live.

I cannot see the Button Label field. Not every email has a call-to-action button. Those fields only appear on templates that include one.

The wording is fine, but I want to change when the welcome or abandoned-basket emails go out. Timing, on and off state, and discount codes for those emails live with their flows in the Marketing Hub.