4 Ways To Improve Your Transactional Emails
“Thank you for your order!” Sounds familiar, right? It should, because this is the opening of all good transactional emails.
Transactional emails have an average open rate of 48% compared to 18% for non-transactional emails. This is because transactional emails are relevant and they’re highly expected by customers.
But it’s few marketers who take advantage of them, and this leads to massive loss of potential profit. Most of them are created by developers who lack copywriting skills. Therefore, most of them are often outdated, lack branding, and don’t align with your existing marketing strategy. This creates an inconsistent customer experience.
If you optimize your transactional emails properly, you’ll increase email engagement and get more profit from your consumers. Here are 4 transactional emails best practices.
FREE Checklist: Create An Effective Email Sales Funnel
1. Create Personalized Emails
Always personalize your emails by including the recipient’s name. This will help to get it delivered and it will improve the open rates. Put simply, we enjoy seeing our name.
If you’re sending a B2B automated email, ensure your submission form captures the full name of your customers and adds it to the email. And if you’re sending an eCommerce email, make sure the sender name is your brand. In addition, make sure it’s an email people can reply to and inquire about their order.
For a B2B email, make sure you send it using a real name and an email address that looks like it’s from a real person.
2. Give Custom Suggestions for the Next Step
Suggest other products the customer may like based on what they purchased. This is easy to achieve for eCommerce transactional emails if you have more data on who the customer is and what they may want.
A transactional email campaign in a B2B market doesn’t need every email to be uniquely customized, but treat every email like your drip campaign. Give the reader a blog to read and share. Give them something of value for free if they’ve just signed up for your service, or offer consultation if they just downloaded your product information. Use A/B testing to get it right and be willing to revisit your emails and make changes.
3. Give the Consumer the Info They’re Looking For
Don’t make customers wander through your website after they’ve received an email when you know what they’re likely to want. Include an email footer with quick links to pages your customers are likely to need, or place bold calls to action that address their need based on the email they’re receiving. Be proactive and anticipate what your readers will need. This is a great way to provide personalized value.
4. Write Right
It’s easy to think copywriting is for advertising and not marketing, but take a good look at your transactional email templates. Consider how customers view your brand. Don’t write formal emails if you’re a casual company, and don’t use very a familiar copy if you’re offering professional services.
If your email is for a company, it should mirror the copy you use in other emails, your social media, and your website. And if your email is for a real person with a real name, experiment with the copy and see if a more relaxed copy will be more relatable and create more engagement. Don’t write a robotic email. Think about the value you can add through copywriting, and make your email personal through the tone and style of writing. You need to build an email marketing strategy that is human and helpful and builds trust with your contacts.
Free Checklist: Best Transactional Email Design
Adding upsell, cross-sell, and downsell opportunities to your transactional emails will increase your average order price, develop a bigger email list and keep people excited about your offers. When you’re careful about the offers you add, test each offer, and then use the best, you’ll see a noticeable uplift in orders.
An email sales funnel strategy puts your upsells and downsells on autopilot and can consistently turn prospects into paying customers if you structure it the right way. Download my free Sales Funnel Checklist which outlines the best practices to make your transactional emails produce the intended result.
