What changes go live instantly?

Smart Emails stores your global settings as Shopify Metafields. The exported email code reads these Metafields every time an email is sent. That means when you change a color, a font, or a footer text, the next email that goes out already uses the new value — no re-export needed.

How it works behind the scenes

When you make a change in the editor, this is what happens:

1. The editor saves your change to the database
2. Your change is synced to Shopify as a Metafield (within a few seconds)
3. The next time Shopify sends an email, the Liquid code in the template reads the updated Metafield
4. The email renders with your new setting

This happens automatically. You do not need to click a sync button.

What goes live instantly

• Colors — All 17 color values: backgrounds, text colors, link colors, borders, dividers, table colors
• Typography — Font families, sizes, and weights for headings, body text, and footer
• Button styling — Variant (filled/outline/link), colors, corner radius, size
• Header logo — Image URL, width, alignment, spacing
• Footer — Everything: logo, social links, legal notice, free text, links, copyright, app buttons
• Shop Links — Enable/disable, heading text, all link texts and URLs
• Message Banner — Text, colors, and which templates show it
• Marketing Sections — Discounts, Featured Product, Recommended Products, Gift Card, Reorder — enable/disable and texts
• Text translations — All translated content across all languages

What requires a re-export

• Adding or removing sections from the email layout
• Changing the order of sections
• Switching to a different base preset

The 8 Metafields

Smart Emails uses 8 JSON Metafields in the Shopify namespace smart_emails:

1. colors — 17 color values
2. typography — Font families, sizes, weights
3. buttons — Variant, colors, radius, typography
4. header — Logo URL, width, alignment, spacing
5. footer — Logo, social, links, copyright, free text, imprint, app buttons
6. shop_links — Enabled/disabled, heading, 7 link texts and URLs
7. message_banner — Enabled, message, colors, template assignments
8. marketing_sections — Discounts, Gift Card, Reorder, Featured Product, Recommended Products

These 8 Metafields use only 3% of Shopify's Metafield limit (8 out of 256 available).

Updated on: 29/04/2026