The Cancellation Confirmation Automation sends an email, SMS, or push notification to contacts when one of their orders is canceled. Use it to acknowledge the cancellation promptly, share next steps, and keep your store relationship intact.

The Cancellation Confirmation Automation is a pre-built workflow in Omnisend's library. Its trigger is pre-configured for the platform your store runs on – use the default where possible.

Go to Automation → Create workflow → Transactional → Cancellation Confirmation.

For Shopify, BigCommerce, and API-connected stores: The default trigger is Order Canceled.

You can narrow the automation to specific order types using trigger filters.

You can target the automation by contact profile data (Country, Tag, Gender, etc.) or by Segment membership. If you use a Segment based on purchase behavior, note that this adds processing overhead and may delay triggering.

The Order Cancellation email doesn't have any default exit condition, meaning the customer exits the flow after getting all messages. You can add up to 5 exit conditions to stop the workflow early, such as when an order receives a specific tag or the contact meets certain criteria.

By default, the workflow triggers for every new cancellation event per contact. If you enable Do not trigger the workflow for contacts already in this automation, the same contact cannot re-enter the workflow within a set time window.

You can add Email, SMS, and Push Notification message blocks to this Automation workflow.

Provide a subject line, pre-header, and sender email address when configuring the email block. Personalizing the subject line with the order name or number (for example, Order {{order.name}} has been canceled) makes the message immediately recognizable in your contact's inbox.

Click Edit Content to build the email. The following content blocks are available and pre-configured for order data:

If a contact has opted in to SMS, add an SMS block to deliver the cancellation notice immediately. Combining Email and SMS helps ensure time-sensitive order updates reach contacts through their preferred channel.

You can also add a Push Notification block or a Contact Tag action to the sequence.

Cancellation Confirmation emails consistently see strong open rates since contacts expect and look for this message. Use it to:

Sending the email immediately after cancellation reduces follow-up support contacts and reinforces trust in your store.

Cancellation Confirmation Automation reports are available under Reports → Automation. You can view the number of emails sent, open rate, click rate, sales generated, and unsubscribes. A month-by-month view and an activity feed with contact-level detail are also available. Learn more about Automation reports.

My contacts are receiving two cancellation emails – one from Shopify and one from Omnisend. How do I stop the duplicate?

When canceling an order in Shopify Admin, a dialog shows a "Send a notification to the customer" checkbox. Uncheck it before confirming the cancellation. Omnisend does not currently offer a way to globally suppress Shopify's cancellation notification – you need to uncheck this manually each time.

Will refunding an order (without canceling it) trigger this automation?

No. The Cancellation Confirmation Automation triggers only when an order status is set to "Canceled." A refund – even a full refund – does not trigger this workflow unless the order is also canceled. To notify contacts about refunds, create a separate Automation Workflow using the Order Refunded trigger.

How do I stop other active workflows (like order follow-up emails) from sending after an order is canceled?

In each active Automation that should stop when an order is canceled, add "Order Canceled" as an exit condition. When triggered, contacts in those workflows will exit automatically before receiving further messages.