Prompt · Transactional
Order confirmation worth reading
Stop the where-is-my-order email before it gets written.
- Email type
- Transactional
- Business
- Ecommerce
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 90-130 words
The transactional email prompt
Write a plain-text order confirmation from [BRAND] for [THE ORDER]. Words only — no HTML, no layout notes. This email exists to answer the three questions a buyer has the moment they finish paying: did it work, when does it come, and can I still change it. Rules: - 90 to 130 words on top of the order details themselves. - Confirm in the first line, with the order number. Do not open by thanking them at length; one short thank-you can go at the end. - Say [WHEN IT SHIPS] concretely. "Leaves us Tuesday" beats "3 to 5 business days", because the second is a range the reader has to convert into a date and will get wrong. - Say [WHAT HAPPENS NEXT] — the next email they will get and roughly when. A buyer who knows a dispatch email is coming does not write to ask where the order is. - Give [HOW TO CHANGE IT] its own line, including the cutoff. Address corrections are the most common support request and the cheapest to prevent. - No cross-sell, no discount for next time, no review request. Those come later and they make this email harder to scan for the information it exists to carry. - Never invent a number, date, tracking reference or delivery estimate beyond what I have supplied. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case. Write a subject line under 40 characters carrying the order number. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[BRAND]- Your shop name as a customer would say it.
[THE ORDER]- Order number and what they bought. Paste it in raw.
[WHEN IT SHIPS]- When it leaves you, not a vague delivery window. If it is three days, say three days.
[WHAT HAPPENS NEXT]- The next thing that will land in their inbox and roughly when. Usually the dispatch email.
[HOW TO CHANGE IT]- How to fix an address or cancel, and until when. This is the highest-value line in the email.
When to send it
Instantly, and from an address that accepts replies. A confirmation that arrives ten minutes later has already generated a support ticket, and one sent from no-reply turns every address correction into a phone call.
What to change first
[HOW TO CHANGE IT]. Address corrections and cancellations are the highest-volume support request in
ecommerce and almost every confirmation email omits the answer. One line with the cutoff — “reply
before 2pm tomorrow and we can change the address” — removes the ticket and the anxiety behind it.
What good output looks like
Subject: Order 4417 confirmed
Preheader: Leaves us Tuesday. Dispatch email follows.
Order 4417 is confirmed and paid.
It leaves us on Tuesday. You will get a dispatch email that morning with the tracking number, and then it is two to three days with the courier.
Need to change the address or cancel? Reply to this email before Tuesday 9am and we can still do it. After that it is with the courier and we cannot.
Thanks for the order.
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.