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Products in an email

A product block shows products from your store: an image, a name, a price, and a button that goes to the product. One card, a grid of them, or a list — one row per product, the way an order email lists what was bought.

What it shows is decided here, in the template editor, on the block's own panel. Pick the block and the panel on the right asks how many products, what fills them, and what each card shows. Nothing about a product block is set anywhere else.

Each person's own products, in every email

A product block can show each person their own products — what they looked at, what they added to their cart, what they left in a checkout, what they bought, or what is picked for them. It works in every campaign and every automation, whatever started the automation. A back-in-stock notice is the one email that does not offer it.

Each person sees their own. Two people opening the same email see two different blocks, each worked out from that person's own history on your store — never from what started the email. Where someone's own products run short, your best sellers fill the rest, so the block still goes out full. What they were looking at and What they added to their cart exclude anything the person has bought since.

Choose one under Fill with:

Fill with, below, says what each one does.

Two examples.

See it before you send it. Choose a person under Previewing as and the block draws that person's own products, exactly as their email would show them today. A test you send while previewing as them carries the same products.

How many, and how they sit

How many products is the first question, because it decides the rest. One draws a single card. Several opens two more controls: How many, from two up to twelve — or up to fifty for a list of an order's items — and Per row, 1, 2 or 3 across. A single card has no per-row question, since there is nothing to move.

Layout is Grid or List. A grid is cards: a large image with the name, price and button under it. A list is one row per product: a small image, about 100 pixels wide, on the left, and the name, price, quantity and button beside it on the right — compact, and the way an order confirmation lists what somebody bought. On mobile, a list's image and words stay side by side. Per row is only for the grid; your choice is remembered, so switching back to Grid puts it back.

A row that is not full is centered. Every card keeps the width it would have in a full row, so the cards still line up down the email, and a row with fewer cards than Per row — one product in a block set to three across, or the last two of five — sits in the middle rather than against the left edge. (One email app, Outlook for Windows, still draws that row at the left.)

The buttons in a row line up. In a grid two or three across, every button in a row sits on the same line, even when one product's name takes three lines and its neighbor's takes one: the shorter card simply has more space under its price. There is nothing to set; it is how a row of products is drawn. We work out how many lines each name will take from its length, so once in a while a name wraps to one line more than expected and that one button sits a line lower. Nothing is ever cut off or drawn on top of anything else. A product with no image, in a row beside products that have one, keeps the image's space empty under its price, so its button still lines up with theirs. On mobile the cards stack, one under another, each button right under its own card, with no extra space. A few mail apps draw the grid without lining the buttons up — Outlook for Windows, and any app that ignores an email's layout rules: there each button sits right under its own card's price, with no extra space, the way product grids have always looked. In a grid whose buttons line up, a row with buttons has a little space under it before the next row starts.

A block is as wide as the column it is in. A block in one column of a three-column section is a third of the email wide, and its cards are a share of that — so for a full-width grid, put the block in a one-column section.

For an order's items the number is a ceiling, and it reads Show up to. A block filled with From what started the automation shows every line of the order up to that number: an order with five lines and a ceiling of three would show only the first three. In an email an order, a shipment or a return starts, choosing it starts the block as a List that shows up to fifty lines, so a large order is listed in full, one row for each thing ordered. A list of an order's items can show up to fifty; a grid, a list of anything else — such as the items left in a checkout — and every other kind of block, up to twelve. Switching an order's list to Grid brings the number back to twelve.

A list of an order's items starts without a button on each line. An order email lists what was bought rather than selling it again, and fifty buttons make an email so long that some inboxes cut it off and show a "view entire message" link instead. You can enable the buttons again; the words you wrote for them are kept. The preview shows how large your email is, and for an order's list it counts every line the list could hold — not just the example lines it draws — so it warns you while you build it if a large order could make the email too long.

Fill with

Fill with decides where the products come from, and it is the one question that matters most. You can pick them yourself, or let the block fill itself from your best sellers, new arrivals, a collection, a product group, what each person did on your store, or what started an automation.

Every window is in days, from one day up to ten years.

Two of these carry a note under them, because both would otherwise surprise you. Picked for them is honest about the people it does not know enough about:

When we do not know enough about someone yet, they see your best sellers.

What "Picked for them" is picked from is your own orders, and the count it reads is kept up to date on its own. When several different people have bought two things in the same order, this block shows one of them to someone who has bought the other. It takes three different people buying the same two things together before a pairing counts at all, so one household's shopping trip never decides what a stranger is shown. It is a count of what sells together and nothing cleverer than that — it knows nothing about similarity, substitutes, seasons or price.

It counts orders that were placed. An order that was later canceled or refunded still says the two things were bought together, and nothing takes it back out.

Which means it is quiet at the start. A store with little order history, and anyone whose own orders give it nothing to go on, gets your best sellers instead — and that is a real share of the people a "Picked for them" block goes to, not a rare edge.

And From what started the automation only ever fills in an email that something started:

This fills from what started the email, so it only shows anything in an email an automation sends.

Neither of those means an empty space. A block that cannot be filled the way you asked is filled with your best sellers instead — in the editor so you can see the design, and in the email so it goes out full. What you see in the editor, below, is the whole of it.

What you see in the editor

The editor always draws products in a product block, even when the real ones have not been decided yet, because otherwise you are designing around a gap. The sentence under the frame says which of three things you are looking at.

Today's pick. The block's own rule was answered just now, so these are real products from your store — and the same rule is asked again when the email goes out, which may give a different answer:

These products are today’s pick. The email picks them again when it sends.

Stand-ins. The block draws from something that does not exist yet in the editor — the email's trigger, or one of the per-person ways with nobody chosen under Previewing as — so your best sellers are standing in, purely so you can judge the design:

The products shown are stand-ins so you can see the design. The email fills this block when it sends.

Previewing as a person. Choose a profile under Previewing as and a block that picks per person draws that person's own products — what they looked at, what they added to their cart, what they left in a checkout, what they bought — exactly as their email would show them today. Where their own products run short, your best sellers fill the rest, as they would in the email, and the sentence under the frame says so:

This is what this person gets today. Where their own products run short, your best sellers fill the rest.

A test you send while previewing as that person carries the same products.

Nothing yet. Your store has no products this app can show, which usually means the catalog has not been synced:

This block has no products to show yet, because your store has none we can show. Sync your products and it fills itself.

None of those sentences is in the email. They are notes on the screen, for you.

When the products are chosen

Only "Products I pick" names the products — and a product group that is a set you picked. Every other answer is worked out later, and that is the point of them — a best seller is whatever is selling when the email goes out, not whatever was selling the afternoon you wrote it.

Three of them — Best sellers, New arrivals and From a collection — are worked out once, for everybody, at the moment of sending. Five of them — What they were looking at, What they added to their cart, Left in their checkout, Bought before and Picked for them — are worked out for each person separately, which is why two people opening the same email see two different grids. A product group is worked out the way its own rule is: once for everybody, or for each person.

Every block that picks its own products follows your store rules — no gift cards, nothing out of stock, and the rest you set on Content → Product groups. Products you pick by hand, and the items of whatever started the email, are never touched by them.

Scheduling a campaign freezes the rule of each product group it uses, so editing the group later changes nothing that campaign sends. An automation uses the group as it is saved now.

So what you approve is the rule, not the cards. A campaign's step 2, The email, shows you the email at real size, and step 3, Schedule, is where you confirm it by typing its name. If the email itself changes while you are looking at it, nothing is scheduled and the step shows the campaign as it now stands. But a block that picks its own products is confirmed against the way it fills — "best sellers over the last 30 days" — and your catalog is free to move under it: a sale placed while you read, a product that sells out, a collection you rearrange. The cards can be different from the ones on your screen a moment ago, and the campaign still goes. That is what these blocks are for. The alternative is that a busy store could never send one at all.

What the block would send right now is in the email on The email, so you can see today's answer before you decide. The whole email is kept with the send, so the same answer can be worked out again later. If a collection an email fills from has left your store, the send is refused rather than quietly filled with something else.

Changing what fills a block

Some answers need something chosen before the block can hold them — Products I pick, From a collection and A product group. Choosing one from the menu changes nothing on its own, and the panel tells you what the block is still filling with while it waits:

Nothing has changed yet — this block still fills with “Best sellers”.

Pick a product, or a collection, and the change takes. Walk away without picking and the block is exactly as you left it.

The collections you can choose from

Your product blocks read a copy of your Shopify collections, refreshed every day, so the panel is not waiting on your store every time you open it. The line under the collection shows when that copy was last checked. If your store's collections have never been read, the field says so instead:

No collections have been read from your store yet.

Type to find a collection. The field searches every collection in your store as you type — each word you type, anywhere in the name, capital letters or not — so a store with hundreds of collections reaches every one of them. The same search is in every collection field: a product group's, and the store rules'. The list shows up to 250 collections at a time, so when one letter matches more than that, the top of the list says Keep typing to narrow the list — type another letter or two and the rest come into reach.

Refresh, under Collections, pages and blog posts in Settings → Store, reads it now — Your collections, pages and blog posts on the Store settings help page has the rest.

A collection whose rules cannot be read one product at a time cannot be chosen, and is named. Some collection rules pick particular variants, or exclude products in a way that does not answer the question "which products are in here" — so rather than putting the wrong things in your email, the field lists it with Cannot be used here beside it. If a block already uses one, the mark by the field's name says so:

These cannot be used here, because their rules do not read the same way one product at a time: Summer Edit.

If a collection you use has left your store, the panel says No longer in your store beside it rather than showing you an empty menu.

What each card shows

Each card shows the product's image and name, and its price and a button when you enable them. Enable the button and What the button says is yours to write, up to forty characters.

Show the price and Show a button are switches. Your wording is kept whether or not the button is drawn, so disabling and enabling it again never loses it, and neither does changing what fills the block.

Link to the product decides whether each product's image and name take the reader to its page in your store. It is on for every block unless you disable it. A list of an order's items starts with it off: an order or shipping email is there to say what was bought and where it is, not to send the reader back to the product. A button, if you show one, still links to the product either way. An email you import keeps its products linked only if the original linked them, and has a button on each product only if the original had one.

Show the quantity appears when the block fills from the email's trigger. Enable it and every card says how many of it that line carried — Quantity: 2 — under the price. Every line of the order is its own card, or its own row in a list: an order with two shades of one product shows two, each with its own shade and its own quantity. The editor draws Quantity: 1 on its example cards so you can see where the line goes; a real email only ever prints the number from the person's own order. In an automation that starts from an order, a shipment or a return, the example cards carry no quantity at all, and Worth knowing says they are sample products because no order is chosen — pick a person to see their order instead. Those emails are never filled with your best sellers: each one shows the items of its own order and nothing else.

Image shape is Square, Tall or Wide, and every card in the block is drawn to the same one. A list's small images take the same shape.

How a product card looks is yours, even though the words are not. The name, the price and the image come from your store; the panel's Name, Price and Button rows are where you set their size, alignment, color and typeface. The Images, buttons and other blocks help page covers those controls.

Button placement puts each product's button at the left, in the middle or at the right — under the image in a grid, and under the name and price in a list. A list's buttons start at the left, where its words start; a grid's start in the middle.

When there is less to show than you asked for

If a product has gone decides what happens to a card whose product is no longer in your catalog: Exclude it, or Keep it.

If there are fewer than the number you asked for, the block either shows Show fewer — the ones it has — or Hide the block, and the whole thing comes out of that person's email. Where the block shows a single product the question reads If there is nothing to show instead, which is the same question with one product in it.

An order's items are never "fewer than" they should be. A block filled from an order, a shipment or a return asks for as many lines as the order has, so a one-item order shows one card and never hides the block. The question there reads If an item cannot be shown, with Show the rest or Hide the block — and it only comes up when If a product has gone is Exclude it, because that is the one way an ordered item can be missing. With Keep it, every line always shows, so the question is not asked at all.

A block that fills itself is topped up rather than sent short. If the rule finds two products for a block with room for four, the last two are your best sellers, so the email goes out looking the way you designed it. A product group with filters is topped up only with best sellers that pass them. The Checks card tells you it happened, and so does the check before a campaign goes out.

Three things are never topped up. A block set to Hide the block is hidden, because that is the answer you already gave; a block of products you picked by hand — in the block, or in a product group — shows those and nothing else, because you named them; and a block filled from an order, a shipment or a return shows exactly what was ordered and nothing else, because an email about somebody's order must never list something they did not buy. When that order had nothing the block can show, the block is empty rather than filled with other products.

Nor is a block filled from a product group that no longer exists. It shows nothing, rather than your best sellers under a name you deleted, and the Checks card says so.

Choosing products by hand

Choose products opens your own catalog. Change what is chosen is the same door once something is in the block.

You search, you never type an identifier. The box is labeled Search your catalog and it looks at the name, the variant and the product code:

Name, variant or product code

You choose variants, not whole products. A shade, a size, a scent — the thing somebody actually buys. A product with only one variant is simply its own name, with no shade listed under it. An empty search shows you your catalog, so there is something to look at before you type.

A row says what is wrong and nothing else. A product that is in stock and for sale carries no badge at all, because badging every row is how the two that matter become invisible. There are three:

Stock that has never been read is said once, not on every row. Where nothing in your catalog has had its stock read yet, one line under the results says so rather than printing the same fact against every row:

Stock levels have not been read from your store yet.

A long answer says it is long. Rather than cutting your catalog off in silence:

More match that. Keep typing to narrow it.

A block can show twelve products, and when you are at that number the picker says so:

That is as many as this block can show.

Take one out to make room. The last one cannot be taken out, because a block filled from products you pick has to have at least one:

A block filled from products you pick needs at least one. Choose another before you take this one out.

Done closes the picker. Your choices are already in the block — there is nothing to confirm.

A block that names whole products

A product block from a template you imported and converted, or one your AI assistant wrote, can name whole products rather than variants. It works and sends as it is. The panel says so, and what choosing here will do:

This block names whole products, not variants. Choosing here replaces them with variants.

Prices and availability

Prices are your store's, at the moment of sending. A price you saw in the editor is not a promise about the price that arrives, and neither is availability. That is deliberate: the alternative is mailing last week's price.