4 Transactional Emails to Rethink as Marketing Emails
Transactional emails represent a prime opportunity to make even more sales. Here's why you should rethink your transactional email strategy.
Order confirmation email
The order confirmation email is the most familiar and widely implemented post-purchase email. Best practices for the order confirmation email dictate including the purchase receipt and order details as well as a simple thank you to your customer for their support. The order confirmation should trigger immediately after the purchase transaction is complete.
But an order confirmation can be so much more than a receipt. According to data released by Conversio, who analyzed 12.1 million follow-up emails and 24.5 million digital receipts from ecommerce stores sent through their platform in 2016, digital receipts have an open and click rate more than three times greater than the average ecommerce email send. Consider taking advantage of these supercharged open and click rates by serving an option to share on social media or allowing them to share a discount code with family and friends.
Shipping confirmation email
A post-purchase email series must include a shipping confirmation email to let customers know their expected delivery date and how to track their order. It's also a good time to reiterate information like the return policy.
Customers check their package tracking an average of 4.6 times for each online purchase. Using tools that integrate with your ecommerce platform, you can easily create a custom tracking experience to offer new products and drive more sales. It's a fantastic opportunity to piggyback off the impending package's excitement to cross-sell and recommend another product.
Contemporary product recommendation emails work two ways: personalized recommendations are determined by machine learning, or products are recommended based on past purchases. Your email app will determine which functionality is available to you.
You can also choose to offer products manually. This manual method can be beneficial when your store offers a smaller catalog of items or if part of your business' added value is human curation—in the case of providing a personal stylist service, for example.
Follow-up email
The follow-up email is the most versatile post-purchase email. It's a time to check in with your customer to make sure they are satisfied with their purchase, and it's easy to customize to meet your marketing and sales priorities.
You can use this touchpoint to collect a Net Promoter Score, ask for feedback on the buying experience, ask for a product review, or offer a follow-up coupon towards their next purchase. Use this email to capture your highest priority goal, whether it be more customer testimonials, driving sales, or collecting research.
Make it easy on your customer. Include specific links to direct the user to the exact place to leave the review or buy the related accessory.
Replenishment email (i.e. back in stock email)
Most products have a lifecycle, and although they vary in time, eventually, most products need to be restocked or replenished. Suppose your product has a lifespan of 2 years or less. In that case, it's a best practice to set automated email campaigns to remind your customers to place another order before they experience a lapse in their favorite items.
Although smaller businesses and industries that require higher purchase investment can and should make do with personal reminders as an account management best practice, marketing automation is still imperative to scale these types of campaigns. Be sure to invest in an ecommerce application that can trigger emails based on a product's last purchase date.
Remember, it's always easier to sell more products to customers than acquire new customers. Set up additional email nurture campaigns to keep your customer base engaged before their next restock date.
4 Overlooked Tips for Transactional Emails
Even though transactional emails are an effective marketing channel, never let marketing goals get in the way of function. At their core, transactional emails serve a communication purpose that needs to prioritize above all else. Here are some tips to keep in mind:
Function first
Prominently feature all relevant and vital purchase information at the top of the email. Never let marketing undermine the core function of your transactional email. That's an excellent way to annoy your customer and put them off from purchasing again in the future.
Keep your brand voice consistent
Treat your transactional emails with the same tone and voice as your other marketing channels. Too many retailers don't customize their post-purchase emails to fit their brand's voice. If your company speaks to your customers in a friendly, light-hearted tone, don't let your transactional emails use formal or impersonal language.
Think like your customer
Think like your customer when creating your transactional emails. They are prime pieces of your overall customer experience. Anticipate the questions your customer will have and include the answers or helpful links in your emails. Your goal is to make your shopping, purchasing, and post-purchase flows all as seamless as possible, so your customer wants to come back to your ecommerce store again and again.
Summarizing Best Practices for Post-Purchase Email Campaigns
There are so many details to keep in mind when creating post-purchase email campaigns. Let's review. In this post, we covered:
Keep customer experience top of mind
Critically think through the entire post-purchase experience to serve your customer the information and offers they want and need at the right time. Ensuring your post-purchase experience is seamless and helpful will keep your customers engaged until they are ready to make their next purchase.
Transactional emails are functional first
Never sacrifice the core purpose of your transactional emails. They should always be useful and functional before incorporating any other marketing elements.
Invest in marketing automation
Email marketing automation is necessary for all but the very smallest ecommerce businesses to deliver a scalable, high-quality post-purchase email experience. Invest in an email platform that integrates with your ecommerce platform to automatically send your customers the right information at the right time to the right customers.
By keeping these tips in mind, you can turn your transactional post-purchase emails into effective cross-selling and upselling channels for your ecommerce business.
Malomo helps you capture untapped revenue through beautiful, customized post-purchase experiences. Schedule a demo today to increase your ecommerce sales.
