How to improve the customer journey using transactional emails

Transactional emails are a huge part of the customer experience, but they’re often overlooked. Get them right, and you’re adding a positive interaction at what can be mundane parts of the customer journey. Improving your transactional emails will improve your customers’ experience, make your brand stand out, and therefore boost your customer retention.?

So, what is a transactional email? Simply, it’s a communication that isn’t marketing related, but instead fulfils a purpose by communicating directly with a customer based on their activity. Examples include an order confirmation, welcome email, order update, dispatch advice, even a password change.?

As transactional emails are often expected, or carrying important information, customers are much more engaged. On average, most transactional emails have an open rate of 80-85%, whereas our benchmark report found that most marketing emails see open rates of around 18.13%.?

Despite this, marketers often neglect transactional emails. For a marketing campaign we'll often spend hours planning, designing, and optimizing our campaigns with a clear strategy in mind. On the other hand, transactional emails are historically overlooked, disregarded as boring, and kept plain. Improving your transactional emails is a great way to excel when it comes to your customers’ journey.?

Why are transactional emails neglected?

Of course, there are often reasons why transactional emails aren't as finessed as a marketing campaign. This is often due to:?

Platform issues. They are driven from a transactional (such as an ecommerce) platform rather than a marketing platform and therefore may be restricted in format and content.

Restricted segmentation. They are driven by data that similarly sits in the transactional system and that may mean that there is less flexibility in how audiences can be segmented.?

Not owned by Marketing. They are ‘owned’ by Operations or IT rather than Marketing. A tell tale sign here can be a ‘donotreply@’ From field – the sort of thing that give marketers nightmares!?

They are legacy driven. They may have been run in a fixed way for many years without focus or review. In extreme cases, this may mean that there is no clarity on how they work, meaning optimization hasn’t even been considered.

There may be other reasons for why transactional emails get forgotten too. Often there is caution about trying to mix marketing and sales messages with service or functional communications. Whilst these reasons are understandable due to strict laws governing what you can send to those not opted into marketing, your transactional emails don't need to be plain or boring.?

Even without a focus on marketing messages, these emails are super valuable. Transactional emails are touch points with your customer, so make it a pleasant interaction that serves them what they need, and does it well. Get these right, and the relationship with your customers will grow even stronger.?

Let’s have a look at some of the best known transactional emails, and what to include.

Welcome emails?

This is the most important email that you’ll send - first impressions count - so it needs to tick all the boxes. A poor welcome email makes a poor introduction to your business.?

A great welcome email uses audience and engagement data to inform what the reader wants at this early stage. Welcome emails aren’t necessarily a single email either. A multi-touch welcome series is a great way to keep subscribers engaged and drive multiple actions across the journey

How to improve welcome emails for a better customer experience (CX):?

A welcome message. It may seem obvious, but be sure to welcome the customer to your brand. Playful copy that they've made a great decision works great too. Remember that you’re communicating to a real person, so be friendly in your copy.

Introduce yourselves. Take this opportunity to introduce your brand properly. Share your story here, and remind the customer what you're about as a brand. This is also where you should remind the customer why your product is the right choice, share your USPs.?

A hit of trust. These are very new customers, so add a hit of trust by sharing social proof in the form of reviews, social media shares, 'featured in' examples, and highlight relevant awards and accreditations.?

What to expect. Explain what customers can expect from being signed up to your emails, such as the content and the frequency. This is a perfect time to introduce your preference center so that they can tailor this to their own preferences.?

Housekeeping. Remind customers to add you to their safe sender list, or email address book so that your emails avoid landing in their spam or junk folders.?

Next steps. Customers who receive a welcome email are at their most engaged, so have a CTA with what you want the customer to do next. Whether that's updating their preferences, browsing the site, or setting up a profile.?

This welcome series from Pandora ticks all the boxes. There’s subject line personalization to start the relationship off with a personal touch, an enticing welcome discount, an explanation of what to expect, some product blocks, and social media sharing options - and that’s just in send one.?

The series continues with a more detailed explanation of the benefits of being subscribed, and also reminds the customer about their discount. All in all, this series informs the customer, demonstrates value, and makes the experience exciting.?

Confirmation emails

These types of emails include everything from double opt-in confirmation to password reminders and changes. All have a very specific function, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be solely functional. In addition to the core trust-building (e.g. we have received your order or we have dispatched it), the best campaigns have a number of things to say to the reader.?

How to drive engagement in your confirmation emails:?

This is genuine. With fears of online scams, phishing, and identity theft, many confirmation emails also include emphasis that this is a genuine message. By including ways to confirm an email is authentic, you give consumers power to trust in your brand.

Further contact. An email can only ever do so much, be sure to include a way to contact customer services in your email campaign. Include links to help pages, and provide contact details to remove any friction for the customer.

Keep them informed. Customers' expectations are now higher than before, people want to be kept up to date on their order's journey. Keep customers updated on dispatch and delivery notifications.?

Given the high open rate of transactional emails and the fact that customers are anticipating these messages, you need to strike a winning balance between being functional and engaging.?

The best brands are able to achieve a winning balance with the content of their transactional emails between an informative and functional experience, and a positive interaction with a brand - all things which build a stronger relationship and increase loyalty.?

These examples offer an clear confirmation, and provide information, including next steps. The Disney+ email lets the customer know they can start using the service straight away and explains future billing information. The Nike email has a clear and friendly confirmation message and is functional; including the order number, product imagery and an expected delivery date. The email also includes a section of product recommendations to not waste any opportunity to upsell.?

Reminders?

Reminders require actions from the recipient. This includes double opt-in verifications (so the first step of the double opt-in process), product or service renewals, reservations, and end of trial periods.

How to ensure your reminder emails are successful:?

Highlight the importance. Make sure that the email conveys that this is important (e.g. on a double opt in as it’s necessary to receive the material for which they have signed up).?

Convey urgency. ?That action is necessary and, sometimes, urgent. Where appropriate this is specific – an action needs to be done by a specific time and day.?

Explain why it’s necessary. This may sound obvious, but it is important to emphasize the value to the reader.?

A clear CTA. The call to action must be clear, and the process itself must be straightforward and smooth. Navigation and UX (user experience) is crucial for this type of transactional email.?

Keep in touch. For those readers who haven’t opted in to marketing emails - and there may be many in these categories - this is an ideal place to give them the opportunity.

The core objective here of course is to ensure that the message – and action to be taken by the reader – is clear, especially if it's paramount to the user continuing to be a customer with your business.?

In this example from Netflix, it improves the customer journey by informing the customer of the benefits they could soon gain - it also works great for Netflix as it’s a final push right when the customer is on the cusp of converting. It also directs the recipient to a health center or customer support agent should they need it.?

Requests?

Requests cover a whole range of messages including post-order feedback and reviews, preference details and surveys. Unlike the other transactional emails, these may not be expected.

With no direct benefit to the customer, or a reason for the email to earn the reader’s attention, you need to put a bit of work into ensuring they’re opened and recipients are interacting with them.

How to ensure your request emails are effective:

Consider the situation. Nothing will make a worse impression than asking for feedback or reviews from a customer whose order went wrong. It’s essential to make certain therefore that all current and recent complaint cases are excluded.?

Show their opinion matters. If we are asking the customer to spend time doing something that doesn’t benefit them directly then tell them why you’re asking. Such as it influences future product choices and stock levels.?

Make it easy. A review email should allow the reader to simply click and provide their rating and feedback either directly from within the email, or via a deep-linked click-through. Any service-based request should be clear and make it easy for the customer to know what to do next.?

Show who it’s from. With so many third party ratings and review engines able to send direct to the customer, don’t overlook how this lands for the recipient. If the reader sees an email from an unfamiliar brand they may ignore it completely without realizing it's come from your brand.

Demonstrate security. With phishing and identity theft concerns, you need to justify why a customer should give information about themselves. Providing some information, such as including the specific product they bought when asking for a review, is enough to show you are who you say you are.

A basic request email often misses many of these points. It assumes that the customer won’t question why they should spend their time responding.?

This example from Ritual hits the nail on the head. It has a friendly tone, makes clear that the survey will only take a few minutes, and the CTA is easily identifiable, clear, and simple.?

The key things for a successful transactional campaign:?

1. The timing is right

Transactional messages are in response to something the customer has, or hasn't, done. You need to ensure the email is landing at the right time, so that the customer is at their most engaged. This will vary depending on the type of email, so test this across your various campaigns.?

2. The message is right

Transactional messages are going to be read by lots of people, so considering the tone of the email is even more important than everyday marketing campaigns. Transactional emails also often carry a lot of information. Ensure the email conveys the message it needs to, and is on-brand, and a pleasant message to receive - it's an extension of customer service after all.?

3. That it's visually appealing

Sometimes if you're running your transactional emails from a different provider than your marketing emails, design capabilities maybe reduced. However these emails get a lot of eyes, so do what you can to make them look nice to the consumer. It's also super important that these emails are instantly recognizable as from your brand, this is crucial for trust building.

4. That it achieves the objective?

Transactional emails have a purpose. The most important thing to remember when creating your email campaign, is the goal. Be sure that the campaign ticks all the boxes needed to get the information across, and clearly showcase the CTA if there is one.?

Transactional emails and the customer experience

Ultimately, transactional emails are a huge part of your customers’ email marketing experience with your brand. And they’re often overlooked. Stand out from the crowd by giving these email campaigns the dedication they deserve.?

By optimizing your transactional emails to not only inform the customer, but delight them too, with engaging copy, helpful advice, and captivating design, your brand will stand out. With transactional emails being such a huge part of the customer experience, improving them will see your customers’ satisfaction increase, and lead to stronger loyalty and customer retention to boot.?