When you’re putting together your email marketing campaigns, the chances are that most of your time and effort goes into promotional emails. After all, it’s these emails that will actively drive visitors to your site and revenue to your company. However, it’s not just your promotional emails that are important. Any email that you send your customers, no matter what it contains, has the potential to build stronger relationships and improve sales.
Transactional emails (emails that your customers receive automatically after they’ve completed certain events on your site) are often overlooked when it comes to relationship building and sales opportunities. However, Experian has found that transactional emails have much higher open rates than most promotional emails. For example, someone might click through a dispatch confirmation email multiple times in order to check the progress of their delivery. Therefore, if you make more of your transaction emails, you could see a considerable boost in sales. Here are some tips to help you get started:
Make It Personal
Much has been said about how important personalisation can be for promotional emails, yet it is often overlooked when it comes to transactional emails. Doing something as simple as including your customer’s name in your transactional emails could go a long way towards improving your relationships. Including a name in your emails will improve their deliverability, and your customers will be more likely to open them.
Argos include their customer’s name prominently in their transactional emails; the customer can’t fail to notice that the email is directed at them. They have also included detailed, yet clear and simple, instructions to let the customer know how they can collect their order:
Offer Recommendations
If a customer orders from you once, and they’re happy with their order and the service they received, they will be more likely to order from you again. However, turning a customer into a repeat customer will take some effort on your part. You will need to nurture the relationship between your customer and your brand, and offer suggestions for other products they may like to purchase. However, if you wait too long to do this after your customer has made a purchase, they may not remember their initial ordering experience. So, what better opportunity to recommend products to your customers than in the transactional email?
If you include product recommendations in your order confirmation emails, how quick and simple it was to order from you will be fresh in your customer’s mind. They may also see something that will complement what they’ve just purchased, which could immediately turn your customer into a repeat customer. Amazon include a series of product recommendations in all their order confirmation emails:
Provide Contact Details
When a customer receives a transactional email from you, it’s because they’ve interacted with your company in some way. After this interaction, your customer may need more information, want to ask you a question, or have a complaint. Despite this, most transactional emails come from a ‘no-reply’ email address, meaning that your customers will have to scour your website in order to find a way of contacting you. Including all your contain information in your transitional emails will show your customers that you care about what they’re feeling, and will go a long way towards strengthening your relationship.
Brastop clearly include all their contain information in their order confirmation emails. They also ask their customers to give feedback, helping to further improve the customer experience in the future:
Are you making the most of your transactional emails? Take a look at the ones your company sends and see if there’s any way they can be improved, can add value for the customer, and can drive sales to your business. You could notice significant benefits.
