International ecommerce

How to Translate WooCommerce Emails for Global Audiences

How to Translate WooCommerce Emails  for Global Audiences
Elizabeth Pokorny
Written by
Elizabeth Pokorny
Elizabeth Pokorny
Written by
Elizabeth Pokorny
Reviewed
Elizabeth Pokorny
Reviewed by
Updated on
July 18, 2024

Email marketing remains a savvy strategy for site owners and marketers alike, driving an impressive ROI of $36 for every dollar spent. However, to achieve such figures, customization is vital in order to stand out from the crowd and get your emails opened.

This is especially important for WooCommerce brands wanting to appeal to a multilingual customer base. Businesses who fail to localize all touchpoints of their shopping experience risk missing out on sales, as 40% of customers won’t buy a product if promoted in their non-native language.

While many businesses focus on translating their website content, email translation is often overlooked. From order confirmations to abandoned cart reminders, emails play a huge role in engaging customers and building long-term relationships. But ensuring accurate translations, managing custom content, and delivering the right language version to each recipient is no easy feat!

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the strategies and tools needed to overcome these hurdles, so you can create a truly personalized email experience for your global audience.

Maximize Your Global Reach with Consistent Email Communication

Email communication is a major marketing strategy for WooCommerce businesses. From the moment a customer creates an account, email plays a role in keeping them engaged, informed, and coming back for more. Timely updates about orders, products, and account activity all help to improve the customer experience.

However, as your business expands into international markets, maintaining consistency in email communication is a real challenge.

If your customer base speaks multiple languages, ensuring that every email conveys the same message and brand voice is the ultimate goal. Whether it’s a welcome email for a new customer, an order confirmation, or a promotion, every email needs to meet the language preferences of its recipient.

This is where automated translations come into play, revolutionizing the way businesses approach global email communication. By using tools like Weglot, you can easily overcome language barriers and deliver consistent, accurate translations across all your emails. Let’s take a look at how this works in practice!

How to Easily Translate Emails in WooCommerce with Weglot

Weglot homepage

By automating the email translation process, Weglot saves website owners significant time and effort that’s normally spent on manual work. The best part? Automation can be achieved in just a few clicks.

1. Install the Plugin

To get started with Weglot, first install the plugin on your WooCommerce site:

  1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Plugins > Add New.
Add new plugin screen on WordPress
  1. Search for Weglot in the search bar. Click Install Now and then Activate to enable the plugin.
Activate the Weglot plugin on WordPress
  1. Once activated, go to the Weglot tab on your dashboard.
  2. Create a new account on weglot.com, copy your API key, and enter it on the Weglot configuration page.
Enter the API key on Weglot’s configuration page
  1. Select your original language and destination languages, then click Save Changes.
  2. Go to Weglot > Settings and scroll down to the Translate email option. Click in the box to enable this feature.
Enabling email translation through Weglot

It’s important to remember that you can’t manually edit email translations. Weglot intercepts content when an email is triggered and translates it automatically, ensuring your customers receive it in the same language used as when accessing your website.

Our plugin will pick up any emails which use WordPress’ default wp_mail() function. Anyone using an SMTP plugin like WP Mail to manage their emails will need to add some filter code to avoid bypassing the wp_mail() function. This ensures your emails will still get translated.

2. Automatically Translate Emails with Weglot

Weglot can translate your WooCommerce store and emails into 110+ languages to help you deliver a professional experience to your global customers.

Our plugin detects and translates all parts of WooCommerce customer emails, including dynamic content like order details, product names, and prices. This comprehensive approach guarantees that your customers receive emails they can understand, increasing the likelihood of engagement with your brand.

As we’ve seen, advanced language detection capabilities ensure that emails are sent in a user’s preferred language. When a customer browses your site using the plugin’s language switcher, Weglot remembers their language choice and applies it to all subsequent email communications.

Weglot’s built-in language switcher

For example, if a visitor accesses the French-version of your WooCommerce store to place an order, Weglot will automatically translate the order confirmation email from English to French. This process applies to all email types, from abandoned cart reminders to shipping updates.

Overcoming Common Email Translation Challenges in WooCommerce

Every process brings its own challenges and email translations are no exception. We’ve covered the main struggles that site admins have during setup and execution below, and also provided some solutions!

Dynamic Content

One of the biggest challenges in translating WooCommerce emails is handling dynamic content. Product names, descriptions, and prices can change based on user actions, making it difficult to accurately translate this content in real-time. Failing to translate dynamic content can lead to a disjointed experience for international customers, potentially resulting in lost sales.

To overcome this challenge, use an advanced translation solution like Weglot, which ensures that every aspect of your store—including personalized emails and product information—is translated correctly and consistently.

Technical Limitations

Integrating translation capabilities into your WooCommerce store can sometimes be hindered by technical limitations. Not all WooCommerce themes are fully-compatible with translation plugins, which can result in untranslated strings or formatting issues that disrupt the user experience. Additionally, custom code and third-party plugins can introduce further challenges for non-technical users.

To reduce potential problems, opt for translation plugins like Weglot that offer extensive compatibility with WooCommerce and in fact all Content Management Systems (CMS), including WordPress and Shopify.

Automate Your Email Translation Process Today

Speed and accuracy are must-haves in modern digital marketing. For multilingual WooCommerce businesses, automating the email translation process cuts down on manual work and reduces timescales, improves consistency, and boosts the customer experience. These can all have a massive impact on overall brand performance.

Weglot is a leading solution for automating WooCommerce email translations, offering an efficient way to engage with your global audience. With its automatic translation capabilities and full editing control, Weglot ensures your customers receive a localized experience that meets their unique needs and preferences.

Don’t let language barriers hold your business back! Automate your WooCommerce email translations by getting started with Weglot’s 10-day free trial.  

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