4 Secrets to Harness the Power of Transactional Email
If you think transactional email is not on the trend, allow this to remind you, customers want them and need them. As more industries e.g. financial institutions adopt sustainable ways to communicate with customers and go paperless, transactional email continues on the trend. While marketing emails call to action and generate leads, transactional emails also have an irreplaceable role in keeping customers loyal. Findings from Campaign Monitor show that transactional emails have open rates up to 8 times higher than any other emails and can generate up to 6 times more revenue. If you are careful about this powerful triggered-based channel, it could be your MVP. Give them as much attention as you give to promotional email, or else it could cost you a fortune.
No doubt it is a speed game, but the winner has more than speed. Let’s take a look at some factors that determine the success of your transactional email services.
Time is money, especially in a hustle and bustle city. Delivery speed of transactional email is prominent in determining your success. Slow emails can lead to tremendous loss. The email received after pressing the “forgot password” button somehow looks like a lifesaver. People always welcome this lifesaver in their inbox, and the faster it comes the better it is. Customers expect to see the reset password email once they switch tabs or apps; yet, this process takes about 5 seconds. If they see nothing in their inbox, frustration and disappointment hit, this is where dissatisfaction emerges.
What if the wait time passes a minute? For e-commerce, you may have lost a sale because customers can choose to close the tab and forget about their cart. What about banking? A minute may not cost you a sale instantly, more like a negative reputation on efficiency. On top of that, no emails received mean more calls to the customer service hotline, stacking up more workload to the team and lengthening the long call wait times. Customers eventually lost trust in your service and switch to another bank with a faster delivery speed. Delay of email is even worst in popup events. Imagine if your member registration code arrived 2 minutes late in an outdoor street roadshow. Customers will leave right away due to impatience and imbalance incentives compared to their time cost. A nightmare right? The gap between actual and estimated participants could be hard to believe.
Emails found in the spam or junk mailbox do not look decent to any recipient. They find it questionable and less trustworthy with junk mailbox. End up turning to competitors. Of course, nothing works if your email does not land in the right place. Deliverability issues for transactional emails is not a new topic, but the rising percentages stand up. It is reported nearly 40% of email service providers encounter deliverability issues. Only 62% had a deliverability rate of 95% or higher, a standard to consider as good deliverability.
To explain how deliverability can be problematic, we have to go through some technical path, be sure to bear with me! Multiple elements such as domain and IP sender reputation, and authentication influences email deliverability. Shortly saying, sender reputation is the reputation that an IP address has as a sender of email messages. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) filters out mail from unknown senders and send them to spam. Similarly, domain reputation is the overall reputation built based on previous email sending behaviours and other analytics revealed by your IP addresses. Lack of control of the IP address reputation that your domain uses and your domain complaint rate will lower your deliverability.
Please do not panic about these reputations. There are plenty of solutions to improve your domain reputation! The simplest way is to avoid using spam words in the subject line and use the Sender Policy Framework technique to ensure your email authenticates. It requires a lot of effort, so why not leave them to the expertise to help?
In a dynamic world, there are always variables out of control. So does transactional email. Unfortunately, most CRM emails had no trackers. Developers are not able to track transactional emails in which the CRM system sent. In other words, it is genuinely difficult to figure out why email got tripped along the way. The absence of trackers also increases the difficulty for the support team to solve customer requests and add extra costs to troubleshoot.
How troublesome could it be?
Take insurance as an example. Important transactional documents with due dates, such as insurance policy notifications, are sent through emails. These notifications are time-sensitive. If recipients did not take any action, such as click the link attached in the email, sales teams must call the client to follow up. Trackers are crucial in facilitating the sales team to approach clients promptly. Without trackers, an extensive period of time, workload and cost are needed to complete this follow-up action. Tools that enable trackers on each email and facilitate data reports suggest easier troubleshooting and better customer support. It is time to rebuild trust and confidence from customers and be proactive to bugs.
One last tip to stay away from traps in transactional emails. Some businesses may require high volume sending, say to send an astonishing 100k emails. It can take forever to send if your email service provider is not strong enough. Further, you run the risk of getting on ISP’s radar. A high volume is suspicious, and your email can be kept out of subscribers’ inboxes as spam. Such massive volumes need a highly reliable emailing infrastructure with secure deliverability. Do your research and find an email service provider that fits your request and protects you from risk. Otherwise, your campaign could be in great trouble.
Feel urgent to fine-tune your transactional email after reading these E-Tips?
Use this information as a foundation and change for the better.
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