Let’s face it. ‘Transactional’ isn’t the most exciting word in the English language and combining it with the word ‘email’ doesn’t heighten the appeal much. Be honest, when was the last time you received a transactional email that you were excited to read? But it doesn’t have to be that way. We’re here to convince you that your transactional emails can be every bit as jazzy as those well-crafted, conversion rate optimized marketing emails you work so hard to create. With the ability to generate 6x more revenue than other types of emails, transactional emails are kind of a big deal. Think your transactional emails could do with a sprinkling of spice? Read on.
In this post we’ll cover what a transactional email is and how it differs from marketing emails, with 5 revenue-generating email examples to get you started.
What is a transactional email?
Transactional emails are one-to-one emails that contain information which completes a transaction or process the recipient has started with you. You’ve probably received some in the form of post-purchase emails, password reset emails, and order confirmation emails (to name a few).
Transactional emails vs marketing emails
How do transactional messages differ from marketing emails? Marketing emails are generally bulk emails sent for commercial purposes, for example to encourage sales. Transactional emails, on the other hand, are used to impart useful information that’s relevant to each recipient.
Research has shown that transactional emails get 8x more opens and click-throughs than any other type of email, which means that eCommerce email marketers have a huge opportunity to use these emails to get customers back to their site and boost conversions.
5 transactional email examples
Here are 5 types of eCommerce emails to drive revenue and liven up your transactional repertoire.
1) Registration emails
These are transactional emails that are sent when a shopper creates an account on your website. This account creation email marketing campaign is a clear indication that the shopper is already interested in what you have to offer, so heighten their intrigue and speed up the purchase process by adding a personalized coupon.
Buyagift includes an enticing £10 discount in their transactional welcome email with a prominent CTA to take shoppers back to their website.
2) Notification emails
These transactional emails are sent when a relevant action or event takes place, such as back in stock emails or price drop alerts.Make sure you include relevant, personalized information to help the customer identify the action they need to take next. Optimize your notification emails for conversions and ramp up the appeal by adding product recommendations.
Country Attire adds tempting recommendations to their price drop emails, encouraging customers to not only fill their basket with the featured product, but also shop for other items that have dropped in price.
3) Confirmation emails
These transaction emails are sent to notify a customer when a specific action has been completed, such as transactional mail relating to flight, hotel or holiday booking confirmations, festival or concert ticket confirmations, and post-purchase online shopping confirmations such as a delivery confirmation email. Make sure these emails are as helpful as possible by including all relevant information – add dates, times, address, booking reference and a ticket attached if needed. Beyond relevant details, eCommerce email marketers can entice customers further by offering a ‘complete the look’ section, recommending products that work well with the item the customer has purchased. Try finishing the email off with a live social feed to encourage your customers to join the community on social media.
Le Creuset uses their online shopping confirmation email to recommend products the customer might also like.
4) Feedback emails
The Le Creuset email above is also a great example of a feedback email as part of their email marketing strategy, which is where you request reviews and ratings for your product or service. Context is everything in these emails as the customer needs to know which product they are supposed to review. Include product descriptions and images where possible and add a prominent CTA with clear, simple instructions to ensure a high response rate. With reviews and ratings being a crucial component of any good marketing strategy (1 in 3 consumers are skeptical of brands that fail to share product reviews), you’ll want to collect as many reviews as possible.
Soletrader ticks all the best practice boxes when it comes to their feedback emails, with a clear product description, image and CTA.
5) Cart and Browse Abandonment emails
A transactional email staple, cart and browse abandonment marketing email messages are key when it comes to driving revenue. In fact, the average Fresh Relevance client doing cart and browse abandonment emails sees a sales uplift of 12%. Similarly to feedback emails, cart and browse abandonment emails should immediately bring the products or services back to the customer’s mind. Aim to recreate the shopping cart with product descriptions and images, while in browse abandonment emails you can use a dynamic hero banner with the brand name of the shopper’s browsed item. Add social proof to increase urgency and ease purchase anxiety, and include product recommendations to give shoppers a dose of inspiration.
Rip Curl recreates the shopper’s cart and includes product recommendations in their abandonment marketing email. This tactic has paid off for Rip Curl, as they’ve seen a 10.3% sales uplift from their abandonment emails.
For more cart and browse abandonment email inspiration, take a look at these 10 examples.
Transactional emails don’t have to be boring. By injecting some interest into your transactional emails, you’ll be delighting your customers and generating more revenue. That’s what we call a win win! Download our eBook for more tips and tricks to help you drive email revenue.
