Trans­ac­tion­al emails are action­al emails (and great mar­ket­ing tools too)

What are trans­ac­tion­al emails exactly?

Broad­ly speak­ing, mar­ket­ing emails are set up to reach users to pro­mote a ser­vice or prod­uct and prompt them to act. 

In a way, it’s like slip­ping notes with your num­ber to a bunch of peo­ple you’ve met at a bar, then going back home and wait­ing for some of them to make that call (to action). Yeah, OK, no one slips notes with their phone num­bers any­more, but you get the idea.

Trans­ac­tion­al emails work the oth­er way round: your cus­tomer ini­ti­ates the con­ver­sa­tion and stares at the screen hit­ting refresh until they hear back from you. 

It’s a 1:1 inter­ac­tion — the email does­n’t go out to your entire list at a time, but to a sin­gle recip­i­ent who is expect­ing it. 

And because they car­ry infor­ma­tion some­one specif­i­cal­ly request­ed, they have out­stand­ing open and click-through rates, too, (99.30% aver­age accept­ed rate, 58.13% aver­age open rate and 32.08% aver­age click to open rate) which is an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty to get more sales, if used prop­er­ly, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty most brands leave on the table.

Here are some of the most com­mon types of trans­ac­tion­al emails:

Order con­fir­ma­tion emails

When­ev­er a cus­tomer buys some­thing online, they receive an email from the com­pa­ny con­firm­ing the order. This is one of the most impor­tant trans­ac­tion­al emails you can send, and one your cus­tomers are most def­i­nite­ly expect­ing to receive to rest assured every­thing is fine. 

Order con­fir­ma­tion emails should include all rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, includ­ing the order num­ber and date, a descrip­tion of the prod­uct or ser­vice ordered, pay­ment infor­ma­tion, and deliv­ery date.

Ship­ping noti­fi­ca­tion emails

Sim­i­lar to order con­fir­ma­tion emails, ship­ping noti­fi­ca­tion emails with track­ing updates are vital to assure your cus­tomers that every­thing is going well.

Pass­word reset emails

Not being able to log in to an account is a very frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence, and annoyed cus­tomers don’t buy that much. 

To get your cus­tomer back on track, and back in the right mood, make sure you send pass­word reset emails imme­di­ate­ly, with clear and quick instruc­tions, such as a link or but­ton to sim­pli­fy the process, as well as mech­a­nisms for users to report any unau­tho­rized pass­word requests.

Sign-up con­fir­ma­tion or wel­come emails 

This is the first email you send when some­one cre­ates a new account on your site or signs up for your newslet­ter, and the most engag­ing one you can send, with open rates over 80% . 

Wel­come emails set the tone for your rela­tion­ship with the cus­tomer and can help moti­vate vis­i­tors to make their first purchase.

Feed­back request emails

A feed­back request email is a fol­low-up mes­sage. You can send one to cus­tomers after they receive a prod­uct, ask­ing for their opin­ion on the item and the service. 

Ask­ing cus­tomers about their sat­is­fac­tion is a great way to keep the line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion open, and also to col­lect (hope­ful­ly pos­i­tive) reviews to include in oth­er mar­ket­ing communications.

Although this makes them a good mar­ket­ing tool, you don’t want your feed­back request emails to come across as mar­ket­ing emails. 

To keep them rel­e­vant to your recip­i­ent, embed the feed­back request email into the deliv­ery noti­fi­ca­tion email and make sure you include the order num­ber and prod­uct descrip­tion in the sub­ject line, as well as pic­tures of the prod­uct in the body.

Aban­doned cart emails

Aban­doned cart emails are a unique type of trans­ac­tion­al email (actu­al­ly, walk­ing on the edge between mar­ket­ing and trans­ac­tion­al) in that they are not trig­gered by a user’s action, but rather by their inaction. 

In oth­er words, cus­tomers are not nec­es­sar­i­ly expect­ing to receive this par­tic­u­lar type of email, but if you include spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion about their account and what they left in the cart, they are like­ly to open it.

It’s also an oppor­tu­ni­ty to give them a friend­ly nudge to resume their pur­chase or help unde­cid­ed cus­tomers take the plunge, by address­ing their doubts or remind­ing them of avail­able pro­mo­tions or discounts.

What makes a suc­cess­ful trans­ac­tion­al email?

Like all oth­er brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions, your trans­ac­tion­al emails should include rel­e­vant and clear infor­ma­tion, with the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion at the begin­ning, such as order num­ber and prod­uct infor­ma­tion in an order con­fir­ma­tion email, and prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions or pro­mo­tion­al infor­ma­tion at the end. 

Includ­ing all trans­ac­tion­al infor­ma­tion at the begin­ning also helps you avoid trou­ble with anti-spam laws, as does explic­it­ly stat­ing the pur­pose of the email in the sub­ject line.

OK, so it may be a cliché, but an impor­tant one to con­sid­er nev­er­the­less: with trans­ac­tion­al emails, time is of the essence. Unlike mar­ket­ing cam­paign emails, for which you can choose the best dates or times to send, it is very impor­tant that cus­tomers receive your trans­ac­tion­al emails ASAP. 

Reply­ing to a pass­word reset request a few hours lat­er, will most cer­tain­ly mean los­ing a sale. Mak­ing a cus­tomer wait too long to receive an order con­fir­ma­tion will prob­a­bly result in them try­ing to can­cel the pur­chase, buy­ing the prod­uct again, or con­tact­ing sup­port, all of which is not fan­tas­tic for cus­tomer satisfaction.

Most cus­tomers use desk­tops for trans­ac­tions, but they will like­ly open your trans­ac­tion­al emails on their mobiles. Build­ing mobile-respon­sive emails that look good on all devices is anoth­er thing you can do to make sure your customer’s expe­ri­ence is satisfying.

How to make the super mostest of your trans­ac­tion­al emails

We’ve just shared some best prac­tices to make trans­ac­tion­al emails do what trans­ac­tion­al emails should. 

Now, check out some things you can do to make them work as the amaz­ing mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties they are:

Take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with your cus­tomers on a per­son­al level

You won’t be able to con­nect with your cus­tomer if they don’t open your email. The first thing is to check the sender is some­thing your cus­tomer will rec­og­nize and trust.

Adding a per­son­al touch, like includ­ing your customer’s name in the body of the mail, can go a long way. Per­son­al­ized emails get six times more unique clicks than those with­out a name. 

Engag­ing, com­pelling copy can’t hurt either. In fact, it can make your trans­ac­tion­al email stand out from (most) oth­ers that just deliv­er the information.

Take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cross-sell rel­e­vant products

Your cus­tomer is read­ing your email already. You’ve just shared the infor­ma­tion they were wait­ing for and they are assured every­thing is fine. Your cus­tomer is relaxed, things look good. This is a great time to include per­son­al­ized rec­om­men­da­tions for oth­er prod­ucts or ser­vices you offer. 

Order con­fir­ma­tion or pass­word reset emails are great oppor­tu­ni­ties for some sub­tle marketing.

Use your data to find prod­ucts they are like­ly to find inter­est­ing, such as prod­ucts they added to their cart at some point, a prod­uct cat­e­go­ry they browsed recent­ly, upgrades or good match­es for prod­ucts pur­chased or some­thing they added to their wish list if it’s back in stock. 

Add a rec­om­men­da­tion at the end of your trans­ac­tion­al email, ask them to review their expe­ri­ences, join a loy­al­ty pro­gram, or some­thing to keep them with you a lit­tle longer. No, you hang up. No, you.

Take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inte­grate your branding

As we said ear­li­er, every­one uses emails and every­one uses mar­ket­ing emails, but trans­ac­tion­al emails usu­al­ly look and feel like Cin­derel­la before the makeover. 

To cap­ture atten­tion, it’s impor­tant to cre­ate a visu­al­ly appeal­ing lay­out and make sure they match your company’s cor­po­rate design. Includ­ing your logo, brand col­ors, and font styles in the email design can help rein­force brand recog­ni­tion and trust.

OK. Now faster

Man­u­al­ly respond­ing to each email request is extreme­ly time-con­sum­ing and will most cer­tain­ly lead to errors. If only there was a pro­fes­sion­al solu­tion to stream­line the man­age­ment of trans­ac­tion­al emails to make sure they are deliv­ered prompt­ly and effi­cient­ly, right? Well, there are many.

The best trans­ac­tion­al email setups rely on plat­forms built for reli­a­bil­i­ty, per­son­al­iza­tion, and eCom­merce integration. 

The ones we work with: 

• Klaviyo Our go-to for data-dri­ven eCom­merce flows. Its seg­men­ta­tion capa­bil­i­ty and deep plat­form inte­gra­tions make it the engine behind our best reten­tion work. If your trans­ac­tion­al emails need to talk to your pur­chase his­to­ry and brows­ing behav­ior, Klaviyo is the answer. 
• Bre­vo (for­mer­ly Send­in­blue) for trans­ac­tion­al deliv­er­abil­i­ty at scale, and our choice for enter­prise grade email and SMS with straight­for­ward setup. 
• Mailchimp for small teams that need a proven, acces­si­ble plat­form, and one of our part­ners, and clients, from waaay­back then.
• Dot­Dig­i­tal, which we rec­om­mend for brands with large cus­tomer vol­umes and com­plex cat­a­logs, giv­en its enter­prise-lev­el automa­tion capa­bil­i­ties with sol­id B2B chops.

None of them are a sil­ver bul­let. The plat­form fol­lows the strat­e­gy. 

If you’re not sure which one fits your oper­a­tion, that’s actu­al­ly a good start­ing ques­tion for a con­ver­sa­tion with us.

TL;DR

Trans­ac­tion­al emails are a hid­den email mar­ket­ing gem, usu­al­ly over­looked in mar­ket­ing strate­gies. It’s a shame because they are time­ly, rel­e­vant, and have out­stand­ing open and click-through rates. 

By lever­ag­ing trans­ac­tion­al emails such as order con­fir­ma­tion, ship­ping noti­fi­ca­tions, pass­word reset, sign-up con­fir­ma­tion or wel­come, feed­back request, and aban­doned cart emails, you can increase engage­ment, build cus­tomer loy­al­ty, and grow your busi­ness. Plus, with automa­tion, per­son­al­iza­tion, and easy-to-use tem­plates, giv­ing your cus­tomers a friend­ly nudge towards anoth­er web­site vis­it or pur­chase couldn’t be easier. 

Unless you con­tact us to help with your email mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy and imple­men­ta­tion. That would be even eas­i­er. (Let us know).