Plans: Essentials, Pro, Enterprise Platforms: Shopify

Overview

Email Exclusion rules in eCommerce let merchants control who receives review requests and Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys. By filtering out specific orders, customers, products, or collections, you avoid sending irrelevant or unwanted emails.

This reduces customer complaints and helps to improve the quality of feedback you collect. AfterShip Reviews provides an Exclusion rules page where you can configure exclusion rules. For instance, you can prevent sending review request emails to customers who have returned their orders.

Why use Exclusion rules?

You can use this feature for the following purposes:

Create specific rules to prevent sending inappropriate review and NPS (Net Promoter Score) request emails to certain orders, products, or customers. E.g.: Prevent sending review requests to customers who have returned their orders.
Exclude customers who haven't subscribed to email marketing from receiving review request emails, reducing customer complaints and spam reports.
Improve review relevance and data quality by excluding repeat-reviewed products or specific unpopular SKUs.

How to find and set up Exclusion rules

Follow these quick steps to configure exclusion rules:

Log in to your AfterShip Reviews admin dashboard.
Go to Settings > Exclusion rules.
In the Customer opt-in/opt-out section, choose who should receive review and NPS emails:
- Send email to all customers regardless of opt-in status
- Send email to all customers except those who opted out of marketing emails
- Send email only to customers who are opted-in to marketing emails
Under Orders, Customers, and Products, set your exclusion rules:
- Orders: Add minimum order value and enter order tags (e.g., refunded, returned)
- Customers: Add customer tags (e.g., blacklist)
- Products: Select products or collections to exclude
Enable “Don't send review requests to customers for products they already reviewed” to exclude reviewed products.
Review your settings and click Save.

Configure Customer opt-in/opt-out options

The system checks these opt-in/out rules both when it's time to schedule emails and when it’s actually time to send emails. There are three configuration options:

Options	Who receives emails?
Send emails to all customers, regardless of opt-in status (Default)	Sends to all customers except those who have unsubscribed, bounced, or previously reported our review/NPS emails as spam. This option does not check the store’s marketing subscription status.
Send email to all customers except those who opted out of marketing emails	Excludes sending emails to unsubscribed, bounced, or previously reported our review/NPS emails as spam, plus excludes customers who have unsubscribed from the store’s marketing emails , preventing customer complaints.
Send email only to customers who are opted-in to marketing emails	Sends only to customers who are subscribed to marketing emails and have not unsubscribed, bounced, or marked past emails as spam. Use this for strict compliance where required.

There are certain default filters that apply always. Refer to the “Default filters that always apply” section below.

Although review/NPS request emails are generally considered transactional, some regions have stricter email policies, which may require customers to opt in before receiving these emails. Choose the option that balances compliance and reach for your store’s regions.

For your better understanding:

	Not subscribed/ Pending confirmation	Subscribed to marketing emails	Unsubscribed from marketing emails	Previously Unsubscribed, bounced, or reported spam to AfterShip review/NPS request emails	Redactated
Send email to all customers regardless of opt-in status	✔️	✔️	✔️	❌	❌
Send email to all customers except those who opted out of marketing emails	✔️	✔️	❌	❌	❌
Send email only to customers who are opted-in to marketing emails	❌	✔️	❌	❌	❌

Other rules (Orders, customers, and products)

Important: All order, product, collection, and customers rules are evaluated both when it’s time to schedule and time to send emails. If any rule matches, the review or NPS request email for that order, product, or customer will not be triggered.

1. Orders supported exclusion rules

Set order-level rules to avoid sending requests for unsuitable transactions:

Minimum order value to send emails: Set a numeric threshold, so emails will only be triggered/sent if the final paid amount (including taxes and shipping) meets or exceeds this value.

The currency is the same as in your store.

Exclude orders that contain specific tags: Input one or multiple Shopify order tags (e.g., returned, refunded, fraud) to filter matching orders out of email sends. Useful for excluding returned/refunded orders.

2. Customers supported exclusion rules

Exclude customers with specific tags: Add customer tags (for example, blacklist, VIP, no-emails, etc.) to prevent those customers from receiving review/NPS requests. You can add multiple customer tags maintained in Shopify.

3. Products and collections supported exclusion rules

Control review requests at the product level to avoid targeting unpopular SKUs or items where reviews are unwanted.

Exclude specific products: Select products from your store list to avoid sending review/NPS emails for them.
Exclude products in specific collections: Exclude all products within one or more collections and prevent review/NPS emails for those products.

You can exclude multiple products and collections at a time.

4. Exclude already reviewed products

You can prevent sending review requests for products already reviewed by the customer.

Select “Don't send review requests to customers for products they already reviewed”.

When enabled, the system will not send a review request for a product to a customer who has already left a review for that specific product. This reduces duplicate requests and improves customer experience.

Default filters that always apply

These filters require no merchant configuration; they are enforced by the system:

Emails will not be sent to addresses that have previously unsubscribed, bounced, or reported review/NPS messages as spam.
Emails will not be sent for canceled orders.
If a customer requested data erasure in Shopify, they will be excluded automatically.

Additional considerations

Order and customer tags must be consistent between Shopify and AfterShip Reviews admin to ensure exclusion rules work correctly.
As the minimum order value considers your store's currency, double-check currency consistency when stores use multiple currencies.

Conclusion

The Exclusion Rules settings let you prevent sending review/NPS emails to certain orders, customers, or products. Thus, merchants can reduce irrelevant emails, spam reports, and possible complaints. Moreover, it allows you to exclude products that a customer has already reviewed, and helps avoid duplicate review requests. Make the best use of the feature to enhance customer experience.

If you have any queries, feel free to connect with our support team for quick assistance.

FAQs

1. If I change a customer's marketing email subscription after setting the exclusion rule, how will the rule work?

AfterShip Review will check the exclusion rules at scheduling and while sending emails. If any of these rules are matched, we will not trigger the review request emails and NPS request emails for this order/product/customer.