Transactional emails demand your attention. Unlike the majority of emails we receive, these communications are the automated emails we’ve requested: password resets, account activations and booking confirmations, to name a few. These emails are expected and useful, and consequently it should come as little surprise that recipients pay extra attention to them. In fact, transactional emails leverage a 25% better open rate than regular marketing emails, so why are they still being ignored by marketers?

Missed opportunities

According to new research by Mailjet, almost 60% of senior marketers admit that they either know they aren’t generating revenue from transactional emails, or have no idea if they are or not. This detached approach arises from a disconnect between marketers and the technical teams in charge of distribution. Traditionally, transactional emails have been sent out via an organisation’s CMS, bypassing the marketing team entirely. With just 38% of marketers generating revenue from transactional emails, it is clear that many companies are still not exploiting this marketing channel.

These missed opportunities could cost companies dearly. By failing to ensure that email marketing efforts are integrated across the entire sales cycle, senior marketers disregard chances to generate further engagement and sales at key points in the customer’s journey. 

Engaging the audience

Transactional emails offer 25% better engagement rates (opens and clicks) than it is possible to obtain with a newsletter or a promotional message. The customer’s expectation of receiving the email leads to a high level of attention, and it is possible to use this attention to optimise sales. While it is vital to ensure that the transaction remains at the centre of this process to retain trust, transactional data allows linked offers and promotional content to be generated automatically, so that companies can target customers who are already engaged with relevant communications.

User experience is now a more essential source of differentiation between you and your competitors than it has ever been. Transactional emails give organisations the chance to reduce the number of customer service contacts made by clients and demonstrate a flawless service from start to finish. 

Building trust

It is important to remember that every contact with your consumers offer an opportunity to strengthen your brand image. Transactional emails are a great medium for leaving an impression on your users. Think of them as a communication channel that needs to reflect your brand and the value you offer. A great way to do that is to design your transactional emails to correspond with your brand identity. 

Rather than going with a simple, text only layout, consider teaming up with your designer to create a visually appealing template. Spice up your email layout with visuals and make your messaging more powerful. Think of every email you send as an opportunity to share your brand identity with your users. Add images, logos and colours to your email that complement your overall visual identity. 

By ensuring that your brand identity and corporate style are perfectly integrated you can retain clients and drive sales.

Call to action

Transactional messages are a fantastic source of data. With enhanced sight of how effective key messages are, you can serve valuable additional content. 

For example, it is entirely possible to use retargeting if, when shopping, the consumer adds two products to their basket but only actually purchases one of them. The purchase confirmation email thus becomes an opportunity to talk to them about the second product. Additionally, you can use customer data to help keep users engaged and active, check in with users who have been inactive or haven’t opened or clicked an email in the past six months. This doesn’t mean they’re no longer interested, they might just need a little nudge to remind them to visit your site again. To turn inactivity around, embrace your transactional emails and give users a good reason to come back.

The call to action is as essential to transactional emails as it is to landing pages. It encourages the user to take action and engage with a brand. It can help drive traffic or attention to a certain marketing campaign and thereby support other channels. A call to action can be added to introduce users to a newly added feature, add social media buttons to encourage a follow to build your community, or inform users about your current promotions to increase sales. Regardless of the specific call to action you choose to use in your emails, remember to always be clear about what you’re offering and give users an incentive to take action.