When was the last time you didn’t open an order confirmation email? Now, what about confirmations to various subscription services, Do you open them? If you’re like most people, you probably do.
Studies have shown that Transactional Emails, as they’re known, are opened and read about 75% of the time. In contrast, regular email newsletters have much, much lower open rates – typically 10% – 30%, and often in the single digits. It’s clear that if you’re looking to grab the readers attention, you’re much more likely to be able to do it with a transactional email. Their higher open rates also tend to garner higher click-through rates, multiplying the effect.
Given this insight, it’s surprising that many sites don’t take advantage of the extra marketing potential they provide. Certainly the large e-commerce vendors like Amazon do, but smaller shops tend to ignore them, partly out of ignorance, but perhaps also out of the effort it takes. True, taking full advantage of transaction emails can mean a lot of customization, especially when it comes to providing tailored upsells of related products or services.
But even without a million dollar technology budget you can still use the technique. Here are a few examples of simple things you can incorporate:
- Invitations to subscribe to your Twitter or Facebook pages.
- A link to signup for your mailing list
- A link to your RSS feed
- Coupon codes
- Dates of sales or upcoming promotions
None of these suggestions requires much effort, but the payoff can be significant. If you’re sending a transaction email that means you’ve already established some degree of trust with the recipient. So long as it is used tastefully, this marketing technique can be extremely effective – and a terrible waste to ignore.
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