Many businesses spend countless hours working on their marketing emails but often overlook the transactional ones. The latter is often considered as just a means of passing information to customers. Yet, it has a lot of under-utilized marketing potential.
The average open rate for transactional emails is much higher than for other types of emails. This implies that you're more likely to get people to engage with your brand through it. Getting the attention of your intended audience is the hardest part of marketing, but this type of email makes it really easy.
This article will introduce you to transactional emails and the many benefits you can get from them.
What is a Transactional Email?
A transactional email is a type of unique, automated message that is triggered by a user's action on a website or application. It contains relevant information related to the action the user has taken, often a commercial activity.
An example of this type of email is in online retail where the seller sends a receipt to the buyer following a purchase. The receipt contains relevant information such as the number of items, price and order reference number. Another example is a password reset email containing a link for the user to follow and change the password for their account.
Why Send Transactional Emails?
It’s necessary to send this type of email if you have a website with registered users or customers. It has become common for people to expect transactional messages confirming their commercial dealings with any platform. So, you must send them to build trust and confidence with your customers.
This type of email assures the user that they’re dealing with a legit company and not a dubious one. Besides, it’s essential for certain user activities like password resets, changing usernames and deactivating accounts.
Benefits of Transactional Emails
Transactional emails bring many benefits for both the sender and the person receiving it. For one, it makes it easy to facilitate commercial dealings between both parties. Without it, both parties would find it difficult to trust each other. For example, if you don’t get a confirmation after ordering an item from a store, you may think you have been cheated. The order and delivery confirmations you receive from the seller assure you that you’re dealing with a legit entity that’ll fulfill their ends of the deal.
Indirect benefits of this type of email include boosting sales, strengthening your brand's reputation and staying engaged with customers.
Build Customer Confidence
Customer trust is essential to the success of every business, and transactional messages help you strengthen it. A well-written transactional email means that your customers don't have to pester you for information, which makes them happy with your service.
You should send the messages as timely as possible if you want to build trust with your clients. The ideal time to send one is immediately after the customer takes an action.
Increase Brand Awareness
Transactional messages tend to have open rates of 80% and upwards, much higher than other types of emails. Thus, they present an opportunity to build recognition for your brand. For this type of message, it’s advisable to keep it brief; yet, you can include some information that promotes your brand to the recipient. For example, you can add a short note about a promo you’re running or a discount code.
If customers get regular messages from you, they’ll likely become familiar with and friendly towards your brand.
Increase Sales
The primary goal for every enterprise is to generate sales. Businesses that master the best practices for transactional emails will see higher sales than those that don't. Regular messages to customers build trust, and people are more likely to buy items from brands that they trust. Using this type of email builds brand awareness, which leads to higher sales in the long run.
As we've mentioned, you can include ads for your products in the emails you send to clients. Just make it as concise as possible because heavy ads can be off-putting on transactional messages. The advertisements can make the recipient head to your website to browse more products and purchase some.
Rekindle Customer Engagement
Regular correspondence with your clients keeps them engaged with your brand. You’d often need to send transactional messages many times in response to user actions. These frequent messages help the users keep in sync with your brand.
For example, you can send reminders to customers who added items from your store to their cart but didn’t complete the purchase. Some of the clients may then decide to go through with the purchase because you’ve re-engaged them. In a similar vein, you can send reminders to users about their wishlist or let them know if the price of an item on the wishlist drops.
Conclusion
At this point, you should know what transactional emails entail and why you should send them. It brings about many benefits for your business including increasing customer trust, creating brand awareness and generating more revenue in the long run. Some tips to note for sending this type of email include keeping it brief and precise and using personalization to make the recipient feel important.
You’d need an email service provider, e.g., UniOne, to set up transactional messages for your website or application. UniOne lets you send automated emails to customers around the globe for an affordable price.
