Automated email messages are a great way to keep your customer informed about the current status of their order and where it is in your build process. They're also a great way to keep your team on the ball by letting them know when an order is headed their way, and what they might need to do with it.

You can set these messages up to be sent whenever an order's status changes inside of your process (e.g. from 'Painting' to 'Drying', or 'Received' to 'Ready to Ship'). If that stage changing event matches the trigger of any automation rules that you've set up, your automated messages will be automatically sent to the recipients.

So, who can you actually send these automated emails to?

• The customer: The email will be sent to the primary customer's email address. The customer's email address is automatically pulled in from the order's source — Shopify, Amazon or eBay. If, for whatever reason, no customer email address is present, the email will not be sent.

• Myself: The email will be sent only to you (at the email address you use to log in to Stages).

• My team: The email will be sent to all team members on your Stages account, excluding yourself.

• Myself and my team: The email will be sent to all team members on your Stages account, including yourself (at the email address you use to log in to Stages).

• Custom recipients: The email will be sent to all given email addresses. The email addresses must be separated by a comma.

In order to reduce the chance of accidentally spamming yourself, your customer or your team, it's important to note that an automated email message will only be sent once per order.