Updating the subscriber's email address

Learn how to update the subscriber's email address.

Ensuring seamless communication with your subscribers is crucial for maintaining strong customer relationships. Whether they've changed their primary email address or prefer to receive notifications at a different email, updating a subscriber's email address is vital to ensuring they stay informed and engaged. This guide provides a step-by-step process for updating a subscriber's email address in Digital River, allowing you to send future notifications to their preferred email easily. We will cover how to update various types of email addresses, including the sign-in email, billing email, and shipping email associated with a shopper's account, to ensure that your communications reach your subscribers accurately and efficiently.

Digital River supports the following email types:

email address type	Description
Shopper's email address	The email address the shopper uses to sign in to their account. You can change the shopper's email address in the cart before placing the order.
Requisition billing email address	The billing email address the shopper provided when placing an order. You can change the shopper's billing address in the cart before placing the order.
Requisition shipping email address	The shipping email address the shopper provided when placing an order. You can change the shopper's shipping address in the cart before placing the order.
Subscription billing email address	When creating a subscription, subscription-relevant information from the original acquisition, including the billing email address, is copied to the subscription. You can update a shopper's billing email address for a specific subscription or all of the shopper's subscriptions.
Subscription shipping email address	When creating a subscription, subscription-relevant information from the original acquisition, including the shipping email address, is copied to the subscription. You can update a shopper's shipping email address for a specific subscription or all of the shopper's subscriptions.

You can combine the notifications for a specific shopper by creating an event rule per each notification. You update email notifications using Global Commerce.

Email address update phases

Understanding the critical moments for email address updates in the customer journey is essential for maintaining accurate and effective communication. This section outlines the three key phases in which you can update a subscriber's email address on Digital River: before placing the order, at the cart stage, and after creating a subscription. Each phase offers unique opportunities to ensure your communications reach the intended inbox, catering to the dynamic nature of subscriber preferences and needs. Whether correcting an error or updating preferences, these phases provide the flexibility to manage email addresses efficiently.

Phase
Create cart	Apply or edit the email address BEFORE placing the order. You can do this when you attach a payment method to a cart or customer and discover the email address is not the one you expected. Change the billing and shipping email address in the cart before submitting the order.
Submit cart	Update the email address AFTER you submit the order and BEFORE you create the subscription.
Create a subscription product in Global Commerce.	Update an email address for a subscription. If the shopper accidentally enters the incorrect email address while placing an order, you can update the subscriber’s email address for a specific subscription or all of the subscriber's subscriptions. The subscriber can change their billing email address after creating the subscription.

Changing the billing and shipping email addresses in the cart before placing the order  

Ensuring that your billing and shipping email addresses are up-to-date when preparing to finalize an order is critical. This guide outlines the steps to change these email addresses directly from your cart before placing an order on Digital River’s platform. Whether correcting a mistake or updating information, following these procedures helps guarantee that order confirmations and related communications are sent to the correct email address.

Commerce API 

The Commerce API provided by Digital River is a powerful tool designed to streamline the online shopping experience for both shoppers and merchants. It offers a variety of endpoints that allow for the management of carts, including the ability to update billing and shipping email addresses before an order is placed. This flexibility ensures that order communication is accurate and reaches the correct recipient. In this section, we will explore using the Commerce API to change billing and shipping email addresses directly from the cart, ensuring that your order process is as smooth and error-free as possible.

You can use one of the following calls to change the billing or shipping email address from the cart.

• POST /v1/shoppers/me/carts/active to update the billing or shipping email address in the cart.  
• PUT /v1/ shoppers/me/carts/active/billing-address to override the billing email address in the cart.  
• PUT /v1/shoppers/me/carts/active/shipping-address to override the billing email address in the cart.  

Digital River-hosted storefront page 

Changing the billing and shipping email addresses on the Digital River-hosted storefront page depends on how your cart is customized. Contact your account representative for more information.

Email addresses created after submitting an order

Requisition billing and shipping email addresses

In the journey from cart to checkout, understanding the role and mechanism of email addresses becomes pivotal. Specifically, requisition billing and shipping email addresses are essential components. These addresses are not merely contact points but pivotal elements that ensure a smooth and secure transaction process. This section delves into the nuances of these email addresses, shedding light on how they are created, their purposes, and how they differ from the initial email addresses provided during the shopping experience. These addresses play a critical role in the overall commerce ecosystem, whether through the API or a Digital River-hosted storefront.

When a shopper submits an order, the system creates two email addresses for the order: 

• Requisition billing email address

• Requisition shipping email address

The requisition billing and shipping email addresses are snapshots belonging to the order. The requisition billing email address is the shopper’s billing address associated with their chosen payment method. When the shopper places the order, the action disconnects the requisition billing email address from the payment method.  

Orders placed by Commerce API

The requisition billing email address for; if a physical product order comes from the billing address associated with the payment method/payment option used to place the order. (The billing address includes the email address.) The shopper provides the requisition shipping email address; if the shopper does not specify the shipping email address, the system copies the requisition billing email address to the requisition shipping email address. 

The requisition shipping email address for a non-physical product order comes from the requisition billing address. (The billing address includes the email address.)  The system copies the requisition billing email address to the shipping email address.  

Orders placed by Digital River-hosted solution with legacy payments

When an authenticated shopper signs into your storefront and your Digital River-hosted storefront billing address page provides an Email field, the system copies the owner's email address to the requisition billing email address.  

An anonymous shopper flow should provide an Email field on the storefront page for shoppers to provide their email addresses. 

Orders placed by Digital River-hosted solution with CloudPay (Checkout.js) 

A Digital River-hosted solution leverages Checkout.js to support the payment source, and Checkout.js leverages the Commerce API/apply-payment-method API to attach the source to the cart for both authenticated and anonymous shoppers. So, the system uses the requisition billing email address as the source’s billing email address in the cart.

Subscription billing and shipping email addresses

If the shopper submits a subscription order, the system creates two more email addresses for the subscription:  

• Subscription billing email address

• Subscription shipping email address

The subscription billing address is associated with the shopper’s subscription and recurring payment method. You can update the subscription email address for a shopper’s specific subscription or all of the shopper’s subscriptions.

Owner’s email address

If the shopper is authenticated and has an account they can use to sign in, the system also associates an owner’s email address with the shopper. The owner’s email address applies only to the authenticated shopper and is not associated with the shopper’s order or subscription.

When the authenticated user signs in to their account, they can manage their email addresses from their account and add several often-used payment methods to their account. Each payment method is associated with a billing address in the shopper’s address book. The billing address includes a billing email address.

Updating the subscriber’s email address for a specific subscription

A long-term subscriber sometimes needs to change their subscription email address for a particular authenticated subscription. Use the POST /v1/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/email request to update a subscription customer’s ship-to and bill-to email address so they can receive notifications. You need to include the email address (emailAddress) in the payload. The email address should use a valid email format and not exceed 255 characters. In the following example, the value of the emailAddress is [e-mail].

cURL

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.digitalriver.com/v1/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}/email' \
--header‘ 'authorization: Basic ***\
...
--data-raw '{“ "emailAddress”" “ "[e-mail]"
}'

You will receive a 202 Accepted response.

Missing email address parameter

If the email address parameter is missing, you will see a 400 Bad Request error message with a validation-error code.

JSON

{
  "errors": {
    "error": [
      {
        "code": "validation-error",
        "subcode": "required-data-missing",
        "description": "Missing required field: emailAddress"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Email address is more than 255 characters

An email address cannot exceed 255 characters. If the email address is more than 255 characters, you will see a 400 Bad Request error message with an invalid-request code.

cURL

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.digitalriver.com/v1/shoppers/me?applyEmailToSubscriptions=true' \
--header 'authorization: Basic ***\
...
--data-raw '{
 "emailAddress" : "[e-mail]"
}'

Error example

{
  "errors": {
    "error": [
      {
         "code": "invalid-request",
         "subcode": "invalid-length",
         "description": "emailAddress cannot exceed a length of 255 characters"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Updating the subscriber's email address for all subscriptions

A long-term subscriber sometimes needs to change their subscription email address for all subscriptions. Use the POST /v1/shoppers/me?applyEmailToSubscriptions=true request to update a subscription customer's ship-to and bill-to email addresses for all subscriptions so they can receive notifications. You need to include the email address (emailAddress). The email address should use a valid email format and not exceed 255 characters. In the following example, the value of the emailAddress is [e-mail].

cURL

curl --location --request POST 'https://api.digitalriver.com/v1/shoppers/me?applyEmailToSubscriptions=true' \
--header 'authorization: Basic ***\
...
--data-raw '{
 "emailAddress" : "[e-mail]"
}'

You will receive a 204 No Content response.