Magento allows you to email the customer in the event of a range of ‘actions’ from placing an order to resetting a password.

Combined with the option of having different emails for guest or logged in account holders and also the extra emails templates that other extensions some times add – pretty soon you have have 60, 70 or more email templates in your admin to manage.

This isn’t a problem is you never change any part of your email content, but in the real world you will want to change opening hours or add a seasonal message – and doing this one email template at a time can take an age to complete!

This is where the Magneto ‘Custom Variables’ will help – if you click into your Admin and look in the System menu you will see this option – click on it and then click the ‘Add New Variable’ button on the top right and you will see this screen:

Now you can set this up:

  • Variable Code: enter a lower case / no spaces name for this (ie opening)
  • Variable Name: enter a meaning full name (ie Opening)
  • Variable HTML Value: enter the content for use on a html email template (ie <strong> 9am – 5pm 7 Days a Week</strong>)
  • Variable Plain Value: enter the plain text version (ie 9am – 5pm 7 Days a Week)

and then click the ‘Save’ button top right

OK, now you can use it.

If you click to System > Transactional Emails and select the email template that you wish to use, i am choosing the ‘New Order Template’

Select where on the emails contents that you want to use the Variable, so for this example i want to add it after the text that reads ‘Call us at” – then click on the orange ‘Insert Variable’ button and a window will open showing you all of the Magento Variable and your new ‘Custom Variables’.

Click on the one to use, in the case it will be called ‘Opening’ and the code will be added to your email template

Next click on the Preview template button and you can view your changes.

If you are not happy with the change, you can close the preview and click the ‘Reset’ button to reload the template again.

Now when you need to change the ‘Opening Hours’ you can edit one variable and it will update all the emails that it is used in.

So, other uses could include:

  • Seasonal Messages
  • Pop up shop details
  • Customer service updates
  • Address / Location details
  • & anything that could change!

We hope that helps and if you want 1 to 1, or group Magento Admin training online or on-site (UK Wide) please contact us.

Note & Disclaimer : As with all configuration changes,  test changes on a staging site before deploying to live and make sure you have a full back of your site includes SQL DB and files and directories and the ability to restore this data if needed.