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How to craft transactional emails
An email is a powerful medium to communicate with your target audience. With its help, you build and maintain a connection with millions of customers at the same time. We discussed two types of emails in the previous article. So, feel free to read it and learn what they are and what differs them. In today’s blog post, we talk more about transactional emails and how to make them deliver results.
Let’s start with five tiny but valuable facts about transactional emails.
Let’s start with five tiny but valuable facts about transactional emails.
- It is a one-to-one communication between the brand and the recipient
- It is triggered by a specific action (or lack of action)
- Transactional emails have 8x higher OR and CTR than marketing bulk emails
- You can automate the process with the help of email marketing platforms like Sendios
- Your recipients expect you to send transactional emails
Moreover, you can easily adapt transactional emails to any business. For instance, order confirmations for online shops, password recovery for social media platforms, and comment notifications for project management tools. So, here you’ll find the key elements of any transactional email.
Credible and recognizable “from” address
The first thing the recipients see is the information who sent it. Craft a reliable and credible “from” name. The best option is to place the name of your business.
Planoly — [email protected]
Sendios — [email protected]
Arket — [email protected]
Grammarly Insights — [email protected]
Scribd — [email protected]
Zoom Video Communication — [email protected]
In some cases, you can add the name of the employee who contacts the recipient. For example:
Anton Shulkea — [email protected]
Oles&Roman — [email protected]
This choice could work if the recipient knows the employee. It might be the CEO, Marketing Manager, Customer Support Manager, or the person who has been in contact with the customer before.
Another example is to place the person’s name and the business ones, as in the samples below.
Taco from Trello — [email protected]
Julia from Sendios — [email protected]
Even if recipients have never heard of the employee before, they will be more likely to open the message as they will see the business name. This is your credible touchpoint with customers.
The first thing the recipients see is the information who sent it. Craft a reliable and credible “from” name. The best option is to place the name of your business.
Planoly — [email protected]
Sendios — [email protected]
Arket — [email protected]
Grammarly Insights — [email protected]
Scribd — [email protected]
Zoom Video Communication — [email protected]
In some cases, you can add the name of the employee who contacts the recipient. For example:
Anton Shulkea — [email protected]
Oles&Roman — [email protected]
This choice could work if the recipient knows the employee. It might be the CEO, Marketing Manager, Customer Support Manager, or the person who has been in contact with the customer before.
Another example is to place the person’s name and the business ones, as in the samples below.
Taco from Trello — [email protected]
Julia from Sendios — [email protected]
Even if recipients have never heard of the employee before, they will be more likely to open the message as they will see the business name. This is your credible touchpoint with customers.
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Relevant subject lines
The key characteristics of a subject line are clear, convincing, and truthful. It comes not only from business ethics, but also from legal regulations. According to the CAN-Spam Act, the subject line should reflect the content of the email.
For instance, transactional emails include such messages as password recovery alerts, order confirmation letters, and comment notifications. At Sendios, we tested different formulas for subject lines. The conclusion is the lines that directly depict what is inside the message work better than the catchy ones. Here are some examples of three types of transactional emails.
The key characteristics of a subject line are clear, convincing, and truthful. It comes not only from business ethics, but also from legal regulations. According to the CAN-Spam Act, the subject line should reflect the content of the email.
For instance, transactional emails include such messages as password recovery alerts, order confirmation letters, and comment notifications. At Sendios, we tested different formulas for subject lines. The conclusion is the lines that directly depict what is inside the message work better than the catchy ones. Here are some examples of three types of transactional emails.
Password recovery alerts:
- Password recovery (simple but effective)
- [Business Name] password changed
- [Business Name] password reset confirmation
- Your password has been changed!
- Forgot the password?
Order Confirmation/Receipt
- Your [Business Name] Order Receipt from [When?]
- Your order [Number of the order] has been received
- Order Status [Number of the order]
- Order details on [Business Name]
- Your order on [Business Name] is completed successfully
Comment notifications
- Somebody left a comment for you on [Business Name]
- [User name] left a comment for you
- New comment on [Business Name]
- [User name] mentioned you on [Business Name]
- 3 new notifications on [Business Name]
With transactional emails, you should put your customer first and place the relevant information in the subject lines. Also, keep in mind some numbers. Post providers put limitations on the number of digits in the subject line. For instance, gmail.com fits +/-180 signs, and mail.ru allows writing only +/- 155. But Sendios’ motto is “brevity is the soul of wit,” so we encourage you to write a line that has 120 characters.
Pre-header
Sometimes it might be challenging to place all the vital information in a subject line. Here a pre-header comes in aid! It is a summary of the email that follows the subject line in the inbox. For instance, if you receive an email and view it on a mobile phone, there is a brief text right under the subject line.
Below, you’ll see how pre-headers look on Gmail:
Pre-header
Sometimes it might be challenging to place all the vital information in a subject line. Here a pre-header comes in aid! It is a summary of the email that follows the subject line in the inbox. For instance, if you receive an email and view it on a mobile phone, there is a brief text right under the subject line.
Below, you’ll see how pre-headers look on Gmail:
Every part of an email has its purpose. The subject line should catch the attention and make curious what the pre-header has to say. The latter one should encourage the customer to open the email and see what’s inside. For instance, to learn more details about the order.
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Copy that acknowledges the customers
Every transactional email has a purpose. The content inside should provide customers with valuable information, either it’s a password recovery link or order confirmation letter. You might feel tempted to add more promotional data to transactional messages. It’s a natural thought, taking into consideration the higher OR and CTR. Our recommendation is to keep it simple and pursue only one particular goal with one email.
The internal elements of the email should be coherent with its body. Follow the next five steps:
Every transactional email has a purpose. The content inside should provide customers with valuable information, either it’s a password recovery link or order confirmation letter. You might feel tempted to add more promotional data to transactional messages. It’s a natural thought, taking into consideration the higher OR and CTR. Our recommendation is to keep it simple and pursue only one particular goal with one email.
The internal elements of the email should be coherent with its body. Follow the next five steps:
- Add essential brand identification elements like a logo and a business name
- Craft a strategic copy that will engage customers
- Choose relevant visual elements (photos, animations)
- Create a compelling CTA that will complete the picture and make users click on it
- Check the ready-to-send email and make it personalized
Talking about personalization, the least you can do is use the user’s name at the beginning of the message. Apart from that, you can set up the appropriate hours of delivery, translate it into a native language, and split the campaign into specific segments. Get creative, conduct A/B tests, and learn your customer’s preferences.
Email validation and deliverability
As we mentioned before, customers expect to receive transactional emails. They enhance your credibility and keep recipients in the loop. So, you want to make sure that your messages will reach the appropriate inbox. At Sendios, we use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to guarantee our clients the desired delivery rates. Let’s remind ourselves what they mean!
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an email authentication technique that allows your users to verify if the email was sent and authorized by the domain’s sender. This method helps to prevent spamming and phishing (illegal attempts to steal personal data).
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is a similar email authentication technique to DKIM. Experts use it to protect your email domain from email spoofing, phishing scams, and other spam.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email technique that prevents spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain. It uses DNS (Domain Name Service) and asks you to specify which servers are permitted to send an email on your part.
Using these techniques allows building a domain reputation and ensuring high delivery rates for our clients.
To sum up, transactional emails are the essential elements of marketing communication with customers. They raise awareness about the brand, tighten the connection, and increase deliverability. Are you ready to improve your KPIs and ROI?
Email validation and deliverability
As we mentioned before, customers expect to receive transactional emails. They enhance your credibility and keep recipients in the loop. So, you want to make sure that your messages will reach the appropriate inbox. At Sendios, we use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to guarantee our clients the desired delivery rates. Let’s remind ourselves what they mean!
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is an email authentication technique that allows your users to verify if the email was sent and authorized by the domain’s sender. This method helps to prevent spamming and phishing (illegal attempts to steal personal data).
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is a similar email authentication technique to DKIM. Experts use it to protect your email domain from email spoofing, phishing scams, and other spam.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email technique that prevents spammers from sending messages on behalf of your domain. It uses DNS (Domain Name Service) and asks you to specify which servers are permitted to send an email on your part.
Using these techniques allows building a domain reputation and ensuring high delivery rates for our clients.
To sum up, transactional emails are the essential elements of marketing communication with customers. They raise awareness about the brand, tighten the connection, and increase deliverability. Are you ready to improve your KPIs and ROI?
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