circuly knowledge loop - How are Different Emails Triggered in the circuly operations backend?

How are Different Emails Triggered in the circuly operations backend?

January 27, 2022

written by Garima Singh

With circuly you get access to a list of editable email templates. All emails in the Email Template tab are attached to specific subscription operations and belong to either one of the following categories: Orders, Subscriptions, Payment and Return.

Here’s are a few example:

When a customer places an order on your website for the first time, the customer gets the Order Confirmation email from the Email Templates tab.
When a recurring payment is automatically charged, the customer gets the Payment was successful email with the Invoice attached to it.
When the recurring payment fails, the customer gets the Payment Failed email from the Email Templates tab.

Whenever your customer should get an email related to their subscription, order, payment or return they do so from the circuly operations backend.

Every email available in the circuly operations backend can be customised to fit your branding. The emails available in circuly are transactional emails and not marketing emails. This means that emails that are sent and can be sent from the Email Template tab are related to subscription operations. You cannot send an email about new offers, new vouchers or new discounts from the circuly operations backend. For that you need a Marketing automation tool.

Each email has an email trigger attached to it. When an action is performed, the email associated with that action is triggered and the email is sent out automatically from your circuly operations backend. In this article, we cover each email template, available in the circuly operations backend, in detail and also identify their triggers so that you know exactly which action triggers which email.

The emails are described as and how they appear in the Email Template section of the operations backend. The names that you see below are for internal use only. You can always adjust the subject line and other aspects of the email by editing the Email template.

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Invoice

Category: Payment

Trigger: When a “Your invoice” email is sent.

Explanation: The “Invoice” email is sent in combination with the “Your Invoice” email. It is sent to your customer as a PDF attachment whenever a recurring payment has to be charged. It is sent before the payment has actually been charged. The “Invoice” as the title suggests, just contains the invoice of the payment.

Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Enable the switch for Upcoming Recurring payments and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.

⚠️ IMPORTANT INFORMATION ⚠️

As per german law you are required to include the "service period" aka Leistungszeitraum (german translation) in the invoice to the customer.

In your circuly operations backend, there is a variable you can use for this called {{current_period}}. Kindly make sure to include this variable when designing the email template for all payment-related emails

✅ IMPORTANT TIP ✅

FYI, for the initial invoice (the one that is sent to the customer when they go through your checkout) you do not need the "service period" aka Leistungszeitraum. The "Leistungszeitraum" is only required for recurring payments.

Therefore, when setting up your email templates, remember to add the following to the email template so that the variable for Leistungszeitraum is only rendered if the invoice is for a subscription/recurring payment and not the initial payment.

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ADD THIS ➡️ {% if initial_invoice == false %}

<p>Service period: {{current_period}}</p>

{% endif %}

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One Time Password

Category: Order

Trigger: When a customer requests login details in customer login.

Explanation: The “One Time Password” email is triggered when your customer is in the customer login area and requests login details to access their subscriptions.

Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Order notifications > Enable the switch for all All order-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.

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One Time Transaction

Category: Order

Trigger: When you charge a One-time transaction in the circuly operations backend.

Explanation: The “One Time Transaction” email is sent to your customer in combination with the “Your invoice” email when you charge a one-time transaction from your circuly operations backend. The “One Time Transaction” email contains the invoice for the one-time transaction.

‍Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Order notifications > Enable the switch for all All order-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.

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Order Cancellation

Category: Order

Trigger: When an order is cancelled manually in the circuly operations backend.

Explanation: The “Order Cancellation” email is sent to your customer when you manually cancel an order from the circuly operations backend.

If you check the “Fully refund this order” checkbox the "Refund Invoice" will be sent to the customer as a pdf with the "Transaction refund" email.

Order Confirmation

Category: Order

Trigger: When an order is placed on your website on the circuly checkout.

Explanation: The “Order Confirmation” email is sent to your customer when the customer places an order on your website. This is just a confirmation to your customer that the order has been received by you.

Note: If you do not want to send an “order confirmation” email to the customer, you can either delete the template or not create it in the first place. You would not send an “Order Confirmation” email when you already have an order confirmation email in your shop system and dont want to send the same email two times.

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Order Fulfilment Completed

Category: Order

Trigger: When an order is manually set to completed in the circuly operations backend.

Explanation: The “Order Fulfillment Completed” email is sent to your customer when you manually set an order as completed (Mark as completed) in the circuly operations backend.

Payment Has Failed

Category: Payment

Trigger: When a payment attempt fails

Explanation: The “Payment has failed” email is sent to your customer when a payment that should have been completed/charged fails. This email can be triggered every time a payment fails and doesn’t go through. Failed payments are retried x times after every x days and if they fail to go through, then each time that the payment fails, the “Payment has failed” email is sent to your customer.

Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Enable the switch for all payment-related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.

Note: In the Recurring payments settings you can define how many times a failed payment should be retried, what should be the interval between them (in days/weeks) and if the customer should be informed every time the payment fails or only on the final attempt.

Read the article on retrying failed payments and the associated settings.

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Payment was Successful

Category: Payment

Trigger: When a payment attempt was successful.

Explanation: The “Payment was successful” email is sent to your customer when a payment goes through or in other words is successfully charged.

Refund Invoice

Category: Payment

Trigger: When a "Transaction Refund" email is sent.

Explanation: The “Refund invoice” is sent to your customer in combination with the “Transaction refund” email. The “Refund invoice” contains the invoice for the refund that has been made by you to your customer for xyz reason in the form of a pdf. The "Refund invoice" is also sent to the customer with the "Transaction Refund" email as a pdf when you check the checkbox for "Fully refund this order" when you manually cancel an order.

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Return Instruction

Category: Return

Trigger: Sent Manually when customer support gets information from the customer that they want to return a product or can be automated when cancellation request is made from the Customer Self-Service portal.

Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notifications > Enable the switch for Return instructions.

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Return Unpaid Product

Category: Return

Trigger: After the last retrial attempt of a failed payment in the second payment cycle.

Explanation: The "Return Unpaid Product" email is sent to your customer after 2 failed payment cycles.

Payment cycle: 1 payment cycle has “x” number of payment retrial attempts. You can define the default value for “x” in your Recurring Payments settings. Go to Settings > Recurring Payments > PAYMENT TRIES & INTERVALS > Insert a numeric value in the “Maximum number of payment retries” input field.

Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Payment notifications > Termination needs to be enabled to send the email.

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Subscription Activated

Category: Subscription

Trigger: At the subscription start date

Explanation: The “Subscription activated” email is sent to your customer on the subscription start date. The “Order Confirmation” email and the “Subscription activated” email are differentiated because there can easily be a time difference (days, weeks, months) between when an order is received and when a subscription starts.

‍Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notification > Enable the switch for all subscription related emails and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.

Subscription Ended

Category: Subscription

Trigger: When a product is marked as returned and thereby the subscription ended

Explanation: The “Subscription ended” email is sent to your customer when a product is marked as returned. ‍

Subscription is almost over

Category: Subscription

Trigger: x days before subscription end date (can be adjusted)

Explanation: The “Subscription is almost over” email is sent to your customer usually x days before the subscription end date (the time duration of sending out the email can be adjusted).

Note: Set the default value for sending out the Subscription is almost over email by going to Settings > Email > EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS > Insert a numeric value in “Days calculation before ending input” field.

‍Best practice: Active subscriptions are not automatically ended when subscription end date = date because every subscription potentially has the possibility of extending and being renewed. Therefore it is best to ask the customer whether or not they would like to end their subscription and return the product in the “subscription is almost over” email.

Subscription Pending Return

Category: Subscription

Trigger: When customer support manually sets a subscription to "pending return" (after accepting customer return request).

Explanation: The “Subscription pending return” email is sent to the customer by your customer support when a subscription is manually set to pending return by the customer care.

‍Settings: Go to > Settings > Emails > Subscription notification > Enable the switch for notify pending return and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.

Note: The “Subscription pending return” can also be automatically trigged. The action associated with this email will then be when your customer makes a cancellation request from the customer login, and in your Customer login settings, you’ve enabled the switch for Auto cancel subscription.

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Swap Confirmation

Category: Subscription

Trigger: When a SWAP (new product: upgrade/repair/exchange) is initiated manually or requested from the customer login

Explanation: The “SWAP confirmation” email is sent to your customer when a SWAP request is either initiated manually by a circuly backend user or when the customer makes a SWAP request from the customer login.

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Transaction Refund

Category: Payment

Trigger: When a payment is refunded manually.

Explanation: The “Transaction refund” email is sent to your customer when you manually process a refund from your operations backend. The “Transaction refund” email is sent out together with the “Refund invoice”.

Settings: Enable the switch for Payments (Settings > Emails > EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS > enable the switch for Payments) in the Email Settings and make sure the email template is created so that the email can be sent when triggered.

Your invoice

Category: Payment

Trigger: When a one-time transaction or recurring payment is triggered.

Explanation: The “Your Invoice” email is sent to your customer when a payment (recurring and one-time) is to be charged but hasn't been charged yet. If the payment is a recuring payment, then the “invoice” email template is attached to it as a PDF. If the payment is a one-time transaction, then the “one-time transaction” email template is attached to it as a PDF.

Note: The customer gets an invoice for both failed, and successfully charged payments before the payment is actually charged and accordingly gets the “Payment was successful” or “Payment failed” email depending on not the payment was successfully charged.

How are Different Emails Triggered in the circuly operations backend?

Invoice

⚠️ IMPORTANT INFORMATION ⚠️

✅ IMPORTANT TIP ✅

One Time Password

One Time Transaction

Order Cancellation

Order Confirmation

Order Fulfilment Completed

Payment Has Failed

Payment was Successful

Refund Invoice

Return Instruction

Return Unpaid Product

Subscription Activated

Subscription Ended

Subscription is almost over

Subscription Pending Return

Swap Confirmation

Transaction Refund

Your invoice

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