Email

This page covers every email your store sends. You edit email templates here, check which emails Litestore sends automatically, and write broadcasts to groups of customers.

Go to Marketing → Email. It has two screens. The first lists the templates you can edit. The second, Workflows, lists every automated email, what triggers it and whether your current settings have it switched on.

You also write broadcasts here and send them to a lifecycle segment.

Litestore sends all of its email through Resend. That includes order and account emails, automated emails, broadcasts and the magic links people use to sign in.

Editable templates

Each template has a name, a slug, a type, a subject and a body.

The body can include {{variables}}, which Litestore fills in when it sends the email. Each type lists the variables it supports, so you know what you can use.

The types are:

welcome
magic link
order confirmation
shipping update
affiliate submission
team invitation
marketing
newsletter
other

Litestore seeds 7 templates, and you can't delete any of them:

• Welcome
• Magic link
• Order confirmation
• Collab approved
• Collab rejected
• Shipping update
• Team invitation

Two defaults for one type

You can mark a template as the default for its type, but Litestore doesn't stop you from marking a second template of the same type as default too.

If that happens, Litestore sends the one you updated most recently. If an edit to a template seems to have no effect, check whether another default of the same type exists.

Not every email is a template

Some emails have no template in the database:

• Shipping
• Refunds
• Cancellations
• Returns
• Abandoned cart
• Review notifications

Litestore builds these from built-in designs and uses the subject that the sending code provides. Editing a template won't change them.

The Workflows catalogue

The Workflows screen shows every email that Litestore sends on its own.

For each automated email, it tells you what triggers it and who receives it. It also shows whether the email goes out straight away, after a delay you set, or only when someone sends it by hand. You can see the rules that decide whether it sends and the template it would use.

Litestore checks each entry against your current settings and marks it active, disabled or manual. The catalogue shows what your store will actually do, not just what it could do.

The catalogue covers these areas:

• Orders
• Shipping
• Post-purchase
• Cart recovery
• Account
• Returns
• Affiliate and team
• Broadcasts
• Admin alerts

Broadcasts

A broadcast has a subject and a body. You send it either to every customer you're allowed to email, or to the lifecycle segments you choose:

new
invited
registered
purchased
repeat

You can never select restricted or banned accounts.

Litestore leaves unsubscribed customers out of the recipient count you preview and out of the send itself. The preview and the send always match.

Every send is recorded

Litestore writes one row for each email once it reaches its final state, sent or failed. The row records the recipient, the subject and the type. It also stores the provider's message id, any error, and the order or customer the email belongs to.

Litestore keeps these rows for 180 days and then deletes them.

The admin has no screen for this delivery log. The log is a trail in the database for checking a specific complaint, such as "was the pickup-ready email for this order sent?" It isn't meant for browsing.

Bounces and complaints stop marketing email

Once you connect the Resend webhook, Litestore reacts to delivery problems:

• A spam complaint unsubscribes that customer from marketing email.
• A permanent bounce unsubscribes that customer from marketing email.
• A temporary bounce, such as a full mailbox or a greylisted server, is recorded but never removes consent.

Before every marketing email, Litestore checks for unsubscribes, spam complaints and permanent bounces.

The difference between a permanent and a temporary bounce matters. A mailbox that was full on Tuesday doesn't mean the customer asked you to stop writing.

Newsletter providers are separate

The newsletter signup form on your storefront can send signups to one of 7 destinations:

Beehiiv
Klaviyo
Mailchimp
ConvertKit
Buttondown
Loops
your own webhook

You configure them with environment variables, and Litestore uses the first one it finds configured. None of them affect the emails your store sends for orders and accounts.

Setting it up

1. Connect Resend and set the address your email comes from. Until you do, nothing sends and nobody can sign in.
2. Seed the default templates and edit their subject and body. Then open Workflows to see which automated email each event sends and which ones your settings have turned off.
3. Write a broadcast. Pick the segments, check the recipient count and send it.

Choosing where to make a change

Edit a template when the email you want to change is one of the seeded types. Check Workflows first to make sure a template is what actually sends for that event.

If the email is built in, change a setting instead. Shipping, refunds, cancellations, returns, abandoned cart and review notification emails have no template to edit.

Use a broadcast for any email you send because you decided to. If an event triggers the email, it belongs in Workflows.

Only look at the delivery log when you have a question about one specific email. There's no screen for browsing it, and rows older than 180 days are gone.

Before you edit anything, ask yourself one question:

Does this email come from a template, or from a built-in design that no template can change?

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