Shipping Notifications That Customers Actually Read

I recently bought a jacket online. Between placing the order and receiving the package, I got nine emails. Order confirmation, processing update, label created, picked up by carrier, arrived at sorting facility, departed sorting facility, arrived at local facility, out for delivery, delivered. By the fifth email I had stopped reading them.

That is the paradox of shipping notifications. Customers genuinely want to know where their package is — shipping-related emails have open rates two to three times higher than marketing emails. But bombarding them with every scan event from every sorting facility between Memphis and their front door turns useful communication into noise. The trick is not sending fewer notifications or more notifications. It is sending the right ones at the right moments with content worth opening.

Why Shipping Emails Outperform Everything Else in Your Inbox

Marketing emails average a 20-25% open rate. Even the best promotional campaigns rarely break 35%. Shipping notification emails routinely hit 55-75% open rates. An "out for delivery" email typically sees 60-70% opens. A delay notification — the one most sellers are afraid to send — gets 70-80% opens, making it the highest-performing transactional email most businesses will ever send.

The reason is obvious when you think about it: the customer is waiting for something they already paid for. They have a personal stake in every shipping email in a way they never have with a promotional email. This makes shipping notifications the most valuable communication real estate in your entire email program, and most businesses waste it by sending carrier-generated plain text with tracking numbers and zero branding.

The Five Emails That Actually Matter

You do not need nine emails. You need five. Each one serves a distinct purpose, and each is an opportunity to reduce support tickets, reinforce your brand, and occasionally drive additional revenue.

The order confirmation goes out immediately after purchase and serves one primary purpose: reducing the anxiety that follows online spending. The customer just gave you money and needs reassurance that the transaction was legitimate, the order was received, and something is going to happen next. Include the order summary, the expected processing and delivery timeline, and a clear next step: "We are preparing your order and will email you when it ships." This single email prevents the most common support question in e-commerce: "Did my order go through?"

The shipping confirmation goes out when the label is created and the carrier has accepted the package. This is the email customers look forward to because it means the wait has officially started. Include the tracking number as a clickable link (not just the number — make it easy), the carrier name, and the estimated delivery date. The estimated date is more useful to most customers than the tracking number itself. They want to know "when" more than they want to check a tracking page five times a day. If you can provide a specific date rather than a range ("arriving Thursday, March 6" instead of "3-5 business days"), do it.

The out-for-delivery notification is the most exciting email in the sequence from the customer's perspective. Their package is on a truck in their city and will arrive today. Send this email the morning the carrier marks the package as "out for delivery" — typically by 8-9 AM. This gives the customer time to arrange to be home, leave a note for the driver, or notify a neighbor. Open rates on this email are among the highest of any email type because the payoff — the package — is hours away.

The delivered confirmation closes the loop. The package arrived, here is where it was left (front door, with neighbor, in mailbox), and here is what to do if something is wrong. This email serves a dual purpose: it prevents "was it delivered?" support tickets, and it is an excellent moment to include a soft cross-sell or review request. The customer just received their order and is (hopefully) happy — this is the moment of highest brand affinity in the entire customer journey. A simple "How did we do? Leave a review" link gets significantly higher response rates here than in a follow-up email sent three days later.

The delay notification is the email most businesses avoid sending and the one that matters most for customer retention. When a package is running late — a carrier delay, a weather event, an unexpected hold — the customer will find out eventually. Either they find out from you, proactively, with an explanation and updated timeline, or they find out because they checked tracking on day seven and saw the package has been sitting in a facility since day three. The difference in customer reaction between these two scenarios is enormous.

A proactive delay notification says: "Your order is experiencing a shipping delay due to weather in the Midwest. The updated estimated delivery is March 10. We are monitoring it and will update you if anything changes. We apologize for the inconvenience." This email generates goodwill. The customer feels informed and cared for. They are far less likely to contact support, leave a negative review, or lose confidence in your store.

The same delay, discovered by the customer after days of radio silence, generates frustration, a support ticket, and often a negative review regardless of whether the package eventually arrives.

What Makes These Emails Worth Reading

The content of shipping notifications matters more than most businesses realize because the open rates are so high. You are reaching 55-75% of your customers with every shipping email — a reach that no marketing campaign achieves. Treating these emails as purely transactional (plain text, carrier jargon, no branding) wastes an extraordinary communication opportunity.

Brand the emails to match your store. Use your logo, your color scheme, and a tone of voice consistent with your marketing. A shipping confirmation from a premium skincare brand should feel different from one from a hardware store, just as their product pages feel different. The email is an extension of the buying experience.

Make tracking easy. The tracking number should be a prominent, tappable link that opens the tracking page in a browser. Do not make customers copy-paste a 22-digit tracking number into a carrier website. Better yet, host a branded tracking page on your own domain where customers can check status without visiting the carrier's generic tracking interface. Branded tracking pages keep the customer in your ecosystem and reduce the jarring experience of being redirected to USPS.com.

Include the estimated delivery date prominently. Customers care more about "arriving Thursday" than about the technical details of their shipment's journey through the carrier network.

Consider adding a product care tip, a related product suggestion, or a discount code for a future purchase. Shipping emails have high engagement — a well-placed recommendation in a shipping confirmation gets far more clicks than the same recommendation in a standalone marketing email. Keep it subtle — one small section, not the focus of the email — but use the attention you have been given.

Platforms like Atoship provide customizable shipping notification templates and branded tracking pages that give customers a cohesive experience from purchase through delivery, automatically triggering the right notifications at the right moments based on carrier tracking events.