Your customer waited five days for a parcel, watched it move through three tracking updates, and then it arrived. That is the moment they are most warmly disposed towards your store all year. It is also the exact moment most WooCommerce stores go completely silent.
Everything before delivery gets attention: the confirmation email, the shipped notification, the tracking link. After delivery, nothing. No check that the item arrived in one piece, no review request while the box is still on the kitchen table, no reminder to reorder a consumable eight weeks later. The relationship ends at the doorstep and starts again from scratch on the next campaign.
The reason is usually mechanical rather than strategic. WooCommerce has no idea when a parcel is delivered, so there is nothing to trigger on. Advanced Shipment Tracking Pro (AST PRO), our WooCommerce shipment tracking plugin, closes that gap: it adds a Delivered order status that updates from real carrier data, and it exposes that moment as a trigger your automation tools can act on. This guide covers how to set that up and what to send.
Why WooCommerce cannot tell when an order arrives
WooCommerce order statuses describe what your store did, not what the carrier did. Processing means you took payment. Completed means you marked it done. Neither one knows whether the parcel is in a depot, on a van, or sitting in a porch.
That is why post-delivery automation is rare. Store owners who try it end up guessing: send the review request seven days after the order was marked Completed and hope that is roughly right. For a next-day domestic order that email arrives six days late. For an international order it arrives while the parcel is still in customs, asking someone to review a product they have not seen.
Fixing this needs two pieces: an order status that reflects the shipment’s real position, and something that fires when the order reaches it.
How the Delivered status gets updated
AST PRO adds the tracking number to the order. TrackShip then monitors that shipment and moves the order through the shipment’s journey automatically, from Shipped to In Transit, Out for Delivery, and Delivered.
This is the part worth being clear about, because it causes most of the confusion: AST PRO on its own does not know when a parcel arrives. It structures the tracking data and manages the statuses. TrackShip supplies the carrier events that move the order into Delivered. Without that connection the Delivered status exists but nothing sets it except you, by hand.
| Status | What it means | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| Shipped | Tracking number added, parcel handed to the carrier | You, or a bulk action in AST PRO |
| In Transit | Carrier has scanned the parcel and it is moving | TrackShip, from carrier events |
| Out for Delivery | Parcel is on the vehicle for final delivery | TrackShip, from carrier events |
| Delivered | Carrier has recorded delivery | TrackShip, from carrier events |
How to enable the Delivered order status
- Go to WooCommerce > Shipment Tracking > Settings and open the Order Statuses & Notifications panel.
- Find the Delivered row in the custom status list and turn its switch on. The same panel holds Partially Shipped and Shipped, so enable only the statuses your fulfilment flow actually uses.
- Set the background and font colours for the status. This is cosmetic, but on a busy orders screen it is how your team spots delivered orders at a glance.
- Decide whether Send Email should be on for Delivered. A short “your order arrived” note is reassuring for high-value items and unnecessary for low-value repeat purchases, so this is a judgement call rather than a default.
- Click the gear icon on the Delivered row to open the Email Customizer and edit that email’s content and tracking widget.
One setting in this panel trips people up. The Rename “Completed” to “Shipped” toggle changes the label on the standard WooCommerce Completed status. If you switch it on, the separate custom Shipped status becomes unavailable, because Completed is now doing that job. If you want Shipped and Completed to coexist as distinct states, leave the rename off. The order statuses documentation covers the full panel.
If you are setting up custom statuses more broadly rather than just Delivered, our guide to custom order statuses in WooCommerce goes through the whole set.
How to send an email when an order is delivered
The Delivered status email above is a notification. A follow-up is different: it goes out days or weeks later, it is not about the shipment, and it usually needs conditions. For that you need a workflow tool, and AST PRO integrates with AutomateWoo.
With both plugins active, AST PRO adds an Order Delivered trigger to AutomateWoo’s trigger list, which fires when the order status changes to Delivered. From there the workflow is ordinary AutomateWoo: add a delay, add rules, add the action.
- Create a new workflow in AutomateWoo and choose Order Delivered as the trigger.
- Add a delay. Three to five days is a reasonable starting point for a review request, long enough that the customer has opened the box and short enough that the purchase is still current.
- Add rules if the email should not go to everyone. Order total, product category, and customer order count are the usual ones, so a first-time buyer and a customer on their tenth order do not get the same message.
- Write the email. AST PRO makes shipment variables available in the workflow, so you can reference the shipment rather than writing generically.
The variables AST PRO adds are {{ order.tracking_number }}, {{ order.shipping_provider }}, {{ order.tracking_url }} and {{ order.date_shipped }}. The shipped date is the useful one in a follow-up: “the trainers you ordered on the 3rd” reads like a shop that remembers, not a mailing list. The AutomateWoo integration documentation lists them in full.
Three follow-ups are worth building, in this order of value: a review request a few days after delivery; a check-in on high-value or fragile orders asking whether everything arrived intact, which surfaces damage before it becomes a chargeback; and a replenishment reminder for consumables, timed to how long the product actually lasts.
How to confirm it worked
Do not assume the chain is connected because you saved the settings. Ship one real order and watch it through.
- Open the order and check the order notes. Status changes are recorded there, so you should see the order moving through the shipment statuses rather than jumping straight from Shipped to nothing.
- Check the order status on the orders screen actually reads Delivered. If it sits on Shipped for days after the carrier’s own site says delivered, the TrackShip connection is the thing to look at, not AutomateWoo.
- Check the workflow’s run log in AutomateWoo. A workflow that has never run has either not been triggered or has been filtered out by its own rules.
- Send yourself a test of the email before you enable the workflow, so you see what lands rather than what you intended.
What this does not do
AST PRO does not send follow-up emails itself. It supplies the status and the trigger; AutomateWoo or a comparable workflow tool sends the message. AutomateWoo is a separate paid extension, so this is a two-plugin setup and worth budgeting as one.
The Delivered status is only as good as the carrier’s data. Some carriers scan a parcel as delivered when it reaches a local depot or a neighbour, so a small proportion of follow-ups will reach someone who does not yet have the box. Building a “did it arrive?” line into the first follow-up handles that gracefully.
There is no built-in review collection here either. AST PRO gets the right email to the right person at the right time; where that email points, whether that is WooCommerce reviews or a third-party platform, is your decision.
And none of this repairs a bad delivery. If parcels arrive late or damaged, a well-timed review request only collects the complaint faster. Tracking visibility during transit is the prior problem, and our guide to reducing “where is my order?” tickets covers that side.
Frequently asked questions
Can WooCommerce tell when an order has been delivered?
Not on its own. WooCommerce statuses record what your store has done, so Completed means you marked the order finished, not that the parcel arrived. Delivery information comes from the carrier, which means you need a tracking layer that reads carrier events and writes them back to the order. With AST PRO and TrackShip connected, the order moves to Delivered from real carrier data.
Do I need TrackShip for the Delivered status to work?
For automatic updates, yes. You can enable the Delivered status in AST PRO without it, but nothing will set that status except a person changing it manually on each order. TrackShip is what monitors the shipment and moves the order through In Transit, Out for Delivery and Delivered as the carrier reports each event.
How long after delivery should a review request go out?
Three to five days suits most physical products: the customer has unpacked and used the item but the purchase is still fresh. Products that need assembly, seasoning or a break-in period justify longer. Because the delay counts from actual delivery rather than from the order date, the timing holds whether the parcel took one day or three weeks.
Will customers get an email at every shipment status?
Only where you switch it on. Each status row in the Order Statuses & Notifications panel has its own Send Email control, so you can notify on Shipped and Delivered while leaving In Transit silent. Enabling emails on every status is the most common way stores turn helpful updates into noise.
Can I send different follow-ups to first-time and repeat customers?
Yes, through the workflow tool rather than through AST PRO. The Order Delivered trigger starts the workflow and AutomateWoo’s rules decide who continues through it, so you can branch on order count, order total, or product category. A first order might get a review request while a returning customer gets a replenishment reminder instead.
Conclusion
Delivery is the last moment a store has a customer’s full attention and the first moment most stores stop using it. Making Delivered a real, carrier-driven status turns it into something you can act on: a review request timed to the actual box, a check-in that catches damage early, a reminder that arrives when the product runs out rather than when a campaign happens to go out.
It is a small amount of setup for a part of the customer journey that currently runs on nothing.
Turn delivery into your next order.
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