The Notify Customers feature exists for one job: telling people who already bought about a genuine change to the file they own. It is not a marketing channel. Use it to ship a fix or a new version — not to announce a sale.
What does the Notify Customers button do?
The Notify Customers button lives on every product's page in the Alva Digital Downloads admin. Click it, confirm in a modal, and Alva sends a one-shot broadcast to every eligible past buyer of that product. Each email carries a fresh, working download link to the updated file — no manual list-building, no exporting orders.
The flow is built for the moment every digital seller dreads. You have already sold a template a few hundred times, then you spot the mistake. Instead of rebuilding a download link for each buyer by hand, one click reaches all of them at once.
When should you notify past buyers about a file update?
Send a product-update notification whenever the file behind a product changes and existing customers should get the new version. Common triggers: you fixed a typo in an ebook, corrected a broken formula in a spreadsheet template, added a bonus track to a sample pack, or shipped version 2 of a course workbook.
Typical reasons a store reaches for it:
- You fixed an error — a dead link inside a PDF, a wrong figure in a spreadsheet, a corrupted page in a printable.
- You added a bonus file — an extra preset, a second colourway, a companion checklist that buyers should get for free.
- You shipped a new version — v2 of a Notion template, a re-mastered audio pack, or an updated course workbook for the new year.
In each case the customer already paid, already owns the product, and simply needs the latest file with a link that works. That last part matters. Download links expire, so an order confirmation from three months ago is useless. The broadcast issues a brand-new link that opens straight away.
Why re-emailing past buyers is a deliverability minefield
Blasting hundreds of old customers from your normal sending domain is how stores wreck their deliverability. One careless broadcast that draws spam complaints can poison the shared reputation every transactional email depends on — so your order confirmations and download emails start landing in junk. The risk is real, and it is why the feature is engineered defensively.
Mailbox providers judge a sending domain by how recipients react to it. A sudden burst of mail to people who bought months ago — some of whom have forgotten your store — invites "mark as spam" clicks. Enough of those and providers quietly downgrade everything you send, transactional email included.
This is exactly the failure mode Alva engineers against. It is worth pairing this feature with a solid grasp of email delivery setup and troubleshooting so your everyday download emails stay in the inbox too.
How Alva keeps product-update emails reputation-safe
Alva Digital Downloads runs every product-update broadcast on a dedicated Postmark stream, isolated from your transactional email so it can never drag down order confirmations. Layered on top are turned-off tracking, a per-product cooldown, opt-in enforcement, and automatic suspension if complaints climb. Each safeguard exists to protect deliverability for you and every other store on the platform.
A dedicated, isolated broadcast stream
Product-update emails go out on a separate Postmark broadcast stream, walled off from the transactional stream that carries your order confirmations and download emails. If a broadcast ever runs into trouble, the fallout stays contained — your day-to-day fulfilment email keeps flowing on its own reputation.
Tracking is off, so download links never break
Open and click tracking are switched off for these broadcasts on purpose. Tracking works by rewriting every link to pass through a redirect domain — which would mangle the signed, time-limited download URLs Alva generates. With tracking off, the link in the email is the real, working link straight to the file.
A single 7-day per-product cooldown
Each product can be broadcast only once every seven days. That one cooldown makes it impossible to hammer the same buyers with repeat blasts, by accident or by impatience. Update the file twice in an afternoon and you still send just one notice — the cooldown absorbs the rest.
Opt-in and complaint handling are automatic
The broadcast honours every customer's email opt-in status. Anyone who has unsubscribed or filed a spam complaint is excluded automatically — you cannot reach them even if you wanted to. And if a store's overall complaint rate climbs too high, the whole feature auto-suspends to protect deliverability for every store on the platform.
Why you can't rewrite the update email
The product-update email uses a locked, transactional-style template — you cannot edit the subject or body. That is deliberate. A fixed, update-only message keeps the email inside the legal product-updates exemption under CAN-SPAM, so it reads as a genuine notice about something the customer already bought, not a marketing campaign.
It is a real constraint with a real payoff. Under the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, an email whose primary purpose is a product update or upgrade to something already purchased is treated differently from a marketing message. Keeping the template fixed and update-only is what preserves that status.
Your regular delivery email is a different story — that one is fully yours to brand and rewrite. If you want to tune the subject, body, and buttons buyers see at purchase, set up per-product email templates or adjust the global delivery email instead.
Which products can use product-update notifications?
The Notify Customers button appears on standard file, pack, and link products — anything with a shared file that past buyers can re-download. It is not available for personalized products or keys-only products, because there is no shared file to re-notify about. Alva also respects your master email switch: if customer emails are off, nothing sends.
The exclusions are not arbitrary. A personalized product generates a unique file per order, so there is no single shared file to re-issue to everyone. A keys-only product delivers a license key rather than a downloadable file, so there is nothing to re-notify about. For every standard file, pack, or link product, the button is right there on the product page.
How to send a product-update notification
Sending an update notice takes three steps in the Alva Digital Downloads admin. Open the product whose file you have changed, click Notify Customers, and confirm in the modal that appears. Alva queues the broadcast, chunks it for scale, and delivers a fresh download link to every eligible past buyer — thousands of recipients handled cleanly.
- Update the file first. Upload the corrected or new version to the product in Alva so the fresh link points at the right thing.
- Open the product and click Notify Customers. The button sits on the product's page in the Alva admin.
- Confirm in the modal. Alva queues the broadcast, chunks it into batches, and sends every eligible past buyer a working link.
Because the queue is chunked, a product with thousands of past buyers is handled just as cleanly as one with ten. Product-update notifications come with Alva Digital Downloads — see what each tier includes on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
No, not when it is done this way. Alva Digital Downloads sends product-update broadcasts on a dedicated email stream isolated from your transactional mail, with open and click tracking turned off, a 7-day per-product cooldown, and automatic exclusion of anyone who unsubscribed or complained. If a store's complaint rate climbs too high, the feature auto-suspends to protect everyone.
No. The product-update email uses a locked, transactional-style template — the subject and body cannot be changed. That is intentional: a fixed, update-only message keeps the email inside the product-update exemption under CAN-SPAM. If you want to customise what buyers receive, edit your regular delivery email or set up per-product email templates instead.
Once every seven days per product. Alva enforces a single per-product cooldown, so you cannot broadcast the same product's buyers more than once a week — whether you click twice by mistake or update the file several times in a row. The cooldown is the guardrail that stops accidental repeat blasts.
No. Notify Customers is available only for standard file, pack, and link products. Personalized products build a unique file per order, and keys-only products deliver a license key rather than a shared download, so in both cases there is no common file to re-send. Those product types simply do not show the button.
No — it is a product-update notice, not marketing. It goes only to people who already bought the product, tells them about a genuine change to the file they own, and uses a fixed template that cannot carry promotional content. That is what keeps it inside the CAN-SPAM product-update exemption rather than being a marketing blast.