Customise transactional email templates
Brand every automated email your site sends — welcome, password reset, order confirmation, and notification messages.
Every site that takes user registrations, handles orders, or sends notifications is sending emails on your behalf.
By default those emails carry a generic structure that works but does nothing for your brand.
A password reset that reads like a SGEN system message is a missed moment.
An order confirmation that looks like a form letter is a friction point right after the most important conversion your site produces.
SGEN's email template editor lets you bring every automated email in line with your site's identity.
You control the header logo, the brand colors, the body copy, the footer content, and the button styling — across every template in a single interface.
A change to the global brand settings propagates to all templates at once.
A change to a specific template overrides the global setting for that email only.
This page covers the full workflow: finding the template list, editing global brand settings, editing individual template copy, previewing across email clients, and sending test messages.
What is this for?
Use this page when you need to edit the content or appearance of any automated email your site sends.
It covers the Email Templates surface in the admin under Settings.
This page is a how-to.
It does not cover marketing broadcast email — if you need to send a newsletter or a promotional campaign to a list, that is handled by an external email service provider integrated via SG-Modules.
It does not cover the email sender domain setup — that lives in the custom domain and white-label documentation.
Good use cases
- Your site has a custom color palette and font, and the default email templates do not match.
- A user-facing email contains a placeholder or default string that reads oddly.
- You are setting up an ecommerce site and the order confirmation email needs to include your return policy, your support contact, and your shipping timeline — none of which appear in the default template.
- You have multiple sites and each needs its own email identity.
- You want to confirm what every automated email looks like before a product launch.
What NOT to use this for
- Sending bulk campaigns to a subscriber list.
- Removing a legally required email type.
- Replacing the email infrastructure with your own SMTP server.
How this connects to other features
- White-label and reseller setup — if you are an agency, the email sender domain is configured at the agency level.
- Push notifications — email and push notifications are complementary channels.
- Ecommerce — the order-related email templates (confirmation, shipped, refunded, cancelled) are tightly linked to the commerce module.
Before you start
- You are signed in as a Site Admin.
- The site has a logo uploaded in the admin → Appearance → Branding.
- If you need to preview templates across multiple email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail), use a real test send to addresses in those clients.
Where to find it
Email templates live in the admin → Settings → Email Templates.
The left panel lists every template by category.
The categories are: Account (welcome, password reset, email change confirmation), Ecommerce (order confirmation, order shipped, order refunded, order cancelled, payment failed), and Notifications (site alert, comment moderation, form submission notification).
Steps
The workflow has three parts: set the global brand, edit individual template copy, and verify with a test send.
1. Set the global brand settings
Open the admin → Settings → Email Templates.
Click Global brand settings at the top of the template list.
The global brand panel controls the visual shell that wraps every template.
Changes here cascade to all templates simultaneously.
Header logo — choose whether the header shows the site logo from Appearance → Branding or a custom email-specific logo.
Upload a custom logo here if the site's main logo does not read well at email header proportions (typically 200 × 60 px wide-format).
Primary color — sets the color of the main call-to-action button and any accent elements across all templates.
Enter a hex value or use the picker.
This is the most impactful single change — the CTA button is the most visible branded element in every email.
Secondary color — sets the background of the email header area.
A dark secondary with a light logo creates a strong header.
A light secondary keeps the look clean and minimal.
Font — select from the system font stack: Helvetica/Arial (most reliable across clients), Georgia (if the site uses a serif style), or System UI (renders the recipient's operating system font, smallest payload).
Custom webfonts are not supported in email — the inline font declaration falls back gracefully but does not guarantee delivery.
Footer content — enter the footer copy.
This is where your business address (legally required for commercial email in most jurisdictions), your unsubscribe note, and your support contact live.
Keep the footer under 150 words.
Footer links — add up to four links to the footer link row.
Common links: Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Contact Support, and View in Browser.
Click Save global settings.
A confirmation banner appears.
All templates inherit the updated settings immediately.
2. Edit individual template copy
From the template list, click the template you want to edit.
The editor opens with the template body in the left panel and a live preview on the right.
Each template has a set of fixed structural blocks and a set of editable content blocks.
Fixed blocks (the header, the footer, the button shell) are controlled by the global brand settings.
Editable content blocks are the body of the email — the headline, the body text, and the contextual details.
Headline — enter the email's main heading.
For a welcome email, this might be Welcome to [site name] or something warmer.
Variable tokens available in the headline and body are shown in the Available tokens panel on the right sidebar.
Common tokens include {{user.first_name}}, {{site.name}}, {{order.number}}, and {{order.total}}.
Body text — enter the main message.
Keep it short.
The most effective transactional emails state one thing, make one ask, and stop.
A welcome email that tries to introduce the full product range in the body copy reads like a brochure, not a welcome.
Call-to-action label — enter the button text.
Defaults vary by template: Confirm your email, Reset password, View your order.
Edit the label to match your brand's voice.
Keep it under eight words.
Call-to-action URL — for most templates this is system-set (the confirmation link, the reset link, the order page).
Some templates allow a custom URL — for example, a welcome email CTA that links to your getting-started guide instead of the default account page.
If the field is editable, it accepts a full URL or a relative path within the site.
Click Save template.
The saved state is shown in the preview immediately.
3. Preview across clients and send a test
With a template open, click Preview in the top right.
The preview panel shows the rendered email in a simulated desktop width.
Use the width toggle at the top of the preview to switch between desktop and mobile views.
Most email clients render to approximately 600 px; the mobile view simulates 375 px.
Check that the CTA button is full-width on mobile, that the header logo is not oversized, and that the body text is readable without horizontal scrolling.
Click Send test to send the template to an address of your choice.
Enter the address in the test modal and click Send.
The test email arrives within a few minutes.
Open the test in the email client you want to verify against.
Check:
- The logo renders at the intended size and is not broken.
- The primary color on the CTA button matches the site's brand color.
- The footer address and unsubscribe copy is correct.
- Any tokens (name, order number) have resolved — test sends use placeholder values.
- The email does not land in spam.
If the email lands in spam during testing, the sender domain may not have SPF and DKIM records configured.
See the white-label setup documentation for the DNS steps.
Repeat the test send for each template you edited before the site goes live.
4. Handle template variants (ecommerce order states)
Ecommerce templates have four variants that share a base design but carry different messaging: Order Confirmed, Order Shipped, Order Refunded, and Order Cancelled.
Open each variant from the template list.
Edit the headline and body copy to match the event — Confirmed is congratulatory, Shipped carries the tracking context, Refunded confirms the credit and timeframe, Cancelled explains the next step.
Each ecommerce template has a Line items table toggle.
When enabled, the email includes a rendered table of the order's line items below the body copy.
The table format is fixed; you control whether it appears or not.
Enable it for Confirmed and Shipped (customers want to see what they ordered and what shipped).
It is optional for Refunded and Cancelled — sometimes a clean message without the table reads better for those states.
What success looks like
Every template shows your site logo in the header, your brand's primary color on the CTA button, and your business address in the footer.
The preview renders correctly at desktop and mobile widths.
A test send arrives from the configured sender address, does not land in spam, and all tokens resolve to placeholder values in the test message.
For ecommerce sites, a live order placed against the site triggers the Order Confirmed email within two minutes of the order being recorded, and the email carries the correct order number, line items (if enabled), and the CTA linking to the order detail page.
What to do if it does not work
- Logo is not appearing in email clients.
- Token is rendering as literal text —
{{user.first_name}}not the name.
John, ORD-12345).If tokens are rendering as raw {{}} syntax in live sends, the template was saved before the token syntax was correct.Open the template, verify the token is in the exact format shown in the Available tokens panel, and save again.- CTA button color is not matching the brand color.
- Test email is landing in spam.
- Template save is failing.
- Ecommerce email is not triggering after an order.
Examples
Example A — branded welcome email for a membership site.
A wellness membership site with a terracotta-and-cream palette opens Email Templates, sets the global primary color to #C7724E, uploads a white logo variant for the header, and sets the footer background to cream.
They edit the welcome email headline to You are in. Here is how to get started. and the body to a three-sentence orientation with a single CTA labelled Explore your membership.
Test send confirms it renders cleanly in Gmail and Apple Mail.
The welcome email now matches the site's design from the first touchpoint.
Example B — order confirmation with return policy.
A fashion retailer sets up ecommerce and realises the default order confirmation email does not mention their 30-day return policy.
They open the Order Confirmed template, add two sentences to the body text explaining the return window and the returns portal URL, and enable the line items table.
Test send shows the policy copy above the order table.
Customer service reports fewer questions about returns the week after launch.
Example C — audit before a product launch.
The day before a site launches, an operator runs through every template in the list.
They send a test for each, open each test in Gmail and Outlook, and confirm that all tokens resolve, the footer address is correct, and no template still carries placeholder copy from setup.
The review takes 40 minutes and catches two templates with the wrong CTA label from a brand-rename done the previous week.
Both are fixed before a single live user triggers them.
Reference — template list and trigger conditions
| Template | Category | Trigger condition | Mandatory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome email | Account | User registration confirmed | No — can be disabled |
| Email confirmation | Account | New email address set on an account | Yes — cannot be disabled |
| Password reset | Account | User requests a password reset | Yes — cannot be disabled |
| Email change confirmation | Account | User changes their account email | Yes — cannot be disabled |
| Order confirmed | Ecommerce | Order status moves to Confirmed | No |
| Order shipped | Ecommerce | Order fulfillment status set to Shipped | No |
| Order refunded | Ecommerce | Refund processed on an order | No |
| Order cancelled | Ecommerce | Order status set to Cancelled | No |
| Payment failed | Ecommerce | Payment attempt fails | No |
| Form submission notification | Notifications | Form submitted — sent to site admin | No |
| Site alert | Notifications | Platform-triggered system alert | Yes |