How to Create a WooCommerce Subscription Reminder Email in WordPress

Many of our partner brands manage premium subscriptions to sell their eCommerce software. So, we’ve seen firsthand how tricky this process can be. Customers don’t always remember renewal dates, and that can lead to confusion or frustration when payments are automatically processed.

Unclear subscription timelines can hurt your customer relationships, too. If subscribers are caught off guard by charges, they might lose trust in your business or even cancel their subscriptions.

To tackle this, we took a deep dive into the best methods and tools for managing subscription emails. This includes finding solutions for setting up WooCommerce subscription reminder emails.

After testing dozens of plugins, FunnelKit stood out as one of the best options for WooCommerce subscription reminder emails. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to set up a WooCommerce subscription reminder email in WordPress, step by step.

Why Create a WooCommerce Subscription Reminder Email in WordPress?

Subscriptions are a great way to get consistent and ongoing revenue for your business. You might sell physical products such as subscription boxes or digital products like online memberships and digital courses.

If you are using WooCommerce, then you can sell subscriptions using the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension. For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to add subscriptions to WooCommerce.

After you have set up WooCommerce Subscriptions, it’s a good idea to create subscription reminder emails. These automatic messages let customers know that their subscriptions are about to renew.

In this way, you can allow subscribers to update their payment details and contact information or make other changes before their subscription auto-renews. This helps you avoid admin headaches, refund requests, and customer complaints.

It also gives the customer a chance to cancel their subscription. Although you’ll want to get as many subscribers as possible, people who feel tricked into renewing their subscriptions may complain or leave negative customer reviews.

In the following sections, we’ll show you how to create a subscription reminder email in WordPress using the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension and FunnelKit.

Here is a list of steps we’ll cover in this guide:

Ready? Let’s get started.

How to Create a WooCommerce Subscription Reminder Email in WordPress

The best way to create a subscription reminder email is by using FunnelKit Automations. FunnelKit Automations is the best marketing automation tool for WooCommerce websites.

We’ve tested it across a bunch of WooCommerce stores, and you can read our FunnelKit Automations review for more details.

FunnelKit lets you easily set up automated emails for abandoned cart recovery, lead nurturing, post-purchase education, next-order coupons, subscription reminders, and more.

Step 1: Set Up FunnelKit Automations

First, you’ll need to install and activate the FunnelKit Automations Pro plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

You will also need the free FunnelKit Automations plugin, as the premium plugin uses it as the base for its more advanced features.

Upon activation, you can navigate to FunnelKit Automations » Settings and add the license to the ‘FunnelKit Automations Pro’ field. You can find this information under your account on the FunnelKit website.

After entering the key, simply click on the ‘Activate’ button.

Now, you are ready to create all kinds of WooCommerce automations that increase sales.

Step 2: Create a FunnelKit Email Reminder Automation

To start creating a subscription reminder email, you’ll want to go to FunnelKit Automations » Automations (Next-Gen). Then, go ahead and click on the ‘Add New Automation’ button.

Here, you will see all the ready-made email campaigns you can use to recover WooCommerce abandoned cart sales, sell online courses, and more.

To create a WooCommerce subscription reminder, let’s click the ‘Start From Scratch’ button.

You can now type in a name for the automation. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything you want.

Once you’ve done that, you can click on the ‘Create’ button.

This will launch FunnelKit’s user-friendly email automation builder.

At this point, you should be all set for creating the WooCommerce workflow. To get started, simply click on ‘Select Trigger.’

You can now choose the action to trigger the automated workflow in WordPress.

To do this, you’ll want to click on the ‘WooCommerce’ tab and select ‘Subscriptions Before Renewal.’

When you are ready, click on ‘Done.’

This will add a basic trigger to the FunnelKit editor. To configure the trigger, you can click on ‘Subscriptions Before Renewal.’

Now, you’ll be able to decide when to send the reminder.

Just be aware that you can also create follow-up emails. For example, you might send an email 5 days before the subscription renewal and a follow-up the day before.

To set a date, simply type a number into the ‘Days before subscription renewal’ field.

You can also choose the time when the email will be sent. It’s a good idea to send reminder emails when the subscriber is more likely to be online and opening messages.

That said, it helps to know as much about your subscribers as possible. If you haven’t already, then we recommend installing Google Analytics in WordPress. It will help you learn more about your customers, including their time zones and when they are most likely to be online.

After setting up your reminder emails, it’s also a good idea to track your email open rates. You can even set up A/B split testing by sending messages at different times and then seeing what gets the best results.

By continuously monitoring and fine-tuning all your custom WooCommerce emails, you should be able to improve your open and conversion rates.

You can tell FunnelKit to send reminder emails at a specific time by typing them into the fields that show ‘HH’ (hour) and ‘MM’ (minute) by default.

After that, you can choose whether to send this email once or multiple times.

Later in this guide, we’ll show you how to add follow-up emails to this campaign. With that in mind, you’ll typically want to send this email once by selecting the ‘Once’ button.

When you are happy with how the trigger is set up, simply click the ‘Save’ button.

Step 3: Design the WooCommerce Subscription Reminder Email

Now, it’s time to create the WooCommerce email that will be sent to your subscribers by clicking on the ‘+’ button.

You can then select ‘Action.’

In the pop-up window that appears, you can choose ‘Send Email.’

After that, go ahead and click ‘Done.’

Now, you should be able to start creating the email by entering a subject and preview text.

You can use a mix of plain text and merge tags. FunnelKit will replace any merge tags with real values whenever it sends a subscription reminder email. This allows merge tags to catch the subscriber’s attention with personalized content.

For example, you might use a merge tag to add the subscriber’s name to the subject line or the date their subscription will auto-renew.

To add a merge tag, just click on the ‘{{.}}’ icon next to the field where you want to use the tag.

This will open a pop-up window where you can look through all the available merge tags.

When you find a tag you want to use, you might see either a ‘Copy’ or ‘Settings’ icon. If you see the ‘Copy’ symbol, then simply click it to copy the merge tag.

With that done, you can go ahead and paste the merge tag into the email.

At this point, you may also want to add some static (plain) text by typing it directly into the field.

Once again, when looking through the merge tags, you may also see a ‘Settings’ icon instead of a ‘Copy’ icon.

For example, this image shows a ‘Settings’ icon next to the ‘Contact First Name’ merge tag.

This icon allows you to set a fallback, which FunnelKit will use if it doesn’t have access to the real value.

If you see a ‘Settings’ icon, you can give it a click and type some text into the ‘Fallback’ field.

After creating a fallback, click on ‘Copy.’

With that done, simply paste the merge tag into the field where you want to use it. You can also type static text directly into the field.

When you are happy with how the subject and preview text are set up, just scroll down to the small text editor.

Here, you can create the email body text by typing it into the editor. You can also add dynamic tags by selecting ‘Merge Tags’ and then following the same process described above.

The text editor has all the standard text formatting options, so you can add links, change the text size, change the font, and more.

After you’ve completed this process, you can preview your email by clicking the ‘Show Preview’ button.

When you are satisfied with the subscription reminder email, go ahead and click the ‘Save & Close’ button.

Step 4: Create Follow-up Emails

At this point, you might want to add one or more follow-up emails to the campaign.

To start, you will typically add a delay between these emails by clicking the ‘+’ icon and then selecting ‘Delay.’

On this screen, open the dropdown that shows ‘Minutes’ by default and choose a value from the list. When creating reminder emails for your online store, you’ll typically want to select either ‘Days’ or ‘Weeks.’

After that, type in the value you want to use, such as 1 Week or 3 Days.

After that, you may want to set the time when FunnelKit will send the follow-up email. You’ll typically want to send the reminder email when subscribers are more likely to be online or when you usually get the best open rates.

To do this, just check the ‘Delay until a specific time of day’ box.

You can now set the time using the new settings that appear.

By default, FunnelKit will use the timezone in your WordPress settings. However, you can also send the email based on the subscriber’s timezone by checking ‘In Contact Timezone.’

When you are happy with how the delay is set up, click ‘Save.’

With that done, it’s time to create the follow-up email. Go ahead and click the ‘+’ icon and then select ‘Action.’

In the pop-up window that appears, you canselect ‘Send Email.’

After that, you’ll need to click on ‘Done.’

This will open a pop-up window where you can create a subject and preview, as well as add body text by following the same process described above.

When you are happy with the follow-up email, just click the ‘Save & Close’ button.

You can now add more delays and follow-up emails by repeating the exact same steps.

When you are ready to make the automation live on your WordPress website, click on the ‘Inactive’ slider so that it turns to ‘Active.’

Now, FunnelKit will send automated subscription reminder emails to your online store.

Bonus Tip: Track Your WooCommerce Subscription Emails

Once you’ve set up your subscription reminder emails, it’s important to make sure they’re actually reaching your customers.

By tracking your WordPress emails, you can see who’s opening them, which links are getting clicked, and whether they’re being delivered successfully.

Plus, tracking emails helps ensure:

• Your subscription reminder emails are getting to the right inboxes.
• Important emails like order confirmations and membership updates are being sent correctly.
• You can identify any issues with email delivery or missed communications.

This extra step will help improve the overall customer experience and keep your email communication running smoothly.

For details, you can go to our step-by-step guide on how to setup WordPress email tracking.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create WooCommerce subscription reminder emails. You may also want to see our guide on how to create a WooCommerce popup to increase sales or our expert picks for the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.

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