A transactional email is an email that is sent in response to an action — things like order confirmations, ship confirmations, and order tracking emails. Transactional emails are generally high performers, on average having seven times the open rate and four times the click rates^* of standard promotional email. Also, transaction rates (i.e. purchases) can be four to eight times higher^* in transaction emails compared to bulk emails.

A few reasons why these types of emails perform so well:

• Transactional emails are sent to already engaged customers, including recent purchasers.
• The recipients in most cases are expecting an email after a transaction and then interact with it once it arrives.
• Since the recipients are already engaged with your brand, they have a higher chance of making another purchase from the transactional email.

10 Transactional Email Best Practices:

1. Say “Thank You” in the email
2. Send optimized transactional emails using HTML
3. Include your branding
4. Include dynamic product cross-sells using product recommendation engines, or seasonal offers
5. Provide a link to track order and shipping status
6. Include some site navigation in the email creative
7. Test the Inclusion of an offer ($ off, % off, free shipping, etc.)
8. Include links to all of your social media efforts
9. Promote email sign up
10. Do not include an offer in the subject line or as the main message

* These statistics come from our June 4, 2010 webinar, “The Key Event-driven Triggers in the Consumer Lifecycle“

Tags: check email status, email roi, lucrative emails, order status, purchases, roi, ship confirmation, transactional emails

Trackback URI | Comments RSS