Transactional emails often do not receive the attention they deserve. However, in most cases, it only requires a little effort to transform them into visually appealing messages that catch the recipients’ attention. And it is a sin to not use the potential of transactional email services because they stand out for their above-average open rate – up to 80 percent.
What obstacles can stand in the way of effectively utilizing such potential? Transactional emails are still most commonly sent from a financial or CRM system that has nothing to do with marketing. In this way, the company loses the enormous marketing potential it could gain with transactional email services.
Thus, marketers can effectively acquire new customers, use increased cross-selling opportunities, and increase sales among existing customers. Many factors contribute to the success of such actions.
One of the most important rules is to avoid “text only” emails – even for simple confirmation emails. Another is to use customer relationships to convince them to recommend your services. One may not forget about clever branding and content personalization.
Email Marketing is a very important area of marketing. To be able to deal with it, you need to get a database of email addresses for potential customers. For this, you should install the appropriate plugins on your website. Find out the best WordPress plugins for email newsletter.
What is a transactional email?
A transactional email is a message sent to the client after a specific action. The best example of a transactional email is a message sent to a mailbox after a purchase. It contains information about the transaction, the product, the price, the shipping status, and more.
The most crucial feature of transactional email service is automation and immediate delivery. Recipients are waiting for these messages, so the delivery should take a few seconds. The transactional email service provider must construct a platform capable of sending such a message without delay and containing all the necessary information about their order.
However, it does not mean that a transactional email has to be a dry and formal message reminiscent of a fiscal receipt. You can convert transactional into promotional emails. In the rest of the article, you will learn how to utilize the potential of a transactional email service.
Engaging with customers through a transactional email
The potential of this tool is not only based on transactional email sending. Formatting transactional email templates attractively, preferably using HTML, is crucial. The email template structure should always refer to the reason for sending the transactional email, as the whole message must be coherent.
It is essential to avoid emphasis on the layout and graphic elements, focusing more on its informational nature. However, the information must be tailored to the customer’s interests and aligned with the email campaign strategy.
A transactional email reaches the recipient at a specific time. In addition to providing written information about the order, it should include call-to-action, graphics, animations, or other similar content related to the customer’s interests.
The marketing strategy should be extensive and composed of many interacting elements. Explore the best small business marketing ideas to create your marketing strategy!
Cross-selling
Transactional email services are perfect for upselling additional products to the customer. Your staff may have already made several attempts to upsell, but now, at the time of order summary, is the perfect opportunity to offer accessories that could benefit the customer.
The effectiveness is due to the customer’s emotional state. Immediately after the purchase, they identify with the brand or product and may be more willing to buy something more.
Transactional email templates should encourage customers to make higher-priced purchases. System emails provide an ideal environment in which the benefits of such a purchase can be consistently presented in the appropriate context, effectively stimulating customer interest.
So the transactional email can be the last opportunity to sell a more expensive premium product with a higher margin. Other types of system emails, such as welcome messages, delivery notifications, password resets, and password change requests, have somewhat lower potential for upselling or cross-selling.
What determines the success of a transactional email?
Professional email marketing software
One of the foundations of the success of transactional emails is professional software. It supports sending of the transactional emails and integration with another system (CRM, accounting, or warehouse system) that sends a signal to a transactional email service initiating the mailing process.
A reliable system increases the sender reputation by properly configuring email properties. It also allows you to tailor emails for mobile devices.
Personalization
A significant problem is the lack of personalization. You must adapt the transactional email content to the recipient. It should be more than just a generic greeting. Focus on the individual characteristics and desires of each client. Consider their order history and cross-selling potential, but don’t forget about the user-friendly interface.
Use dynamic paragraphs, targeting a specific audience based on relevant information. If you address messages individually and emotionally, you will additionally increase the effectiveness of CTA in transactional emails.
You can integrate the transactional email service with other enterprise systems and automate the process. If your support team has to send transactional emails, there may be unnecessary delays, so it’s better to hand over the management of these processes to an automated system.
Also, remember that emails sent in HTML offer significantly more promotional potential. In this way, companies can customize the design of their promotional and transactional emails to match their branding and include personalized graphics that are relevant to each customer.
Adding the company logo in each system email, adding a color-accentuated call-to-action button, or changing the banner depending on the season and characteristics of the customer does not pose any problem. You can search the rich library of templates to construct a transactional email. It is easy-going, and after configuring the settings, every employee can use them, even without special IT skills.
Reliable transactional email delivery software
Regardless of the volume, transactional emails should reach every customer in real-time. The loss of cross-selling opportunities can be more expensive than a monthly subscription to the best transactional email services. That’s why you can’t save to avoid problems related to tool performance and delivery speed.
Effective email deliverability is particularly important for the success of transactional email service because they are sent frequently. Therefore, there is a risk that email service providers and filtering programs can classify notification emails as spam. It means the risk of confronting dissatisfied customers and a decline in sales.
Effective emailing also requires a high-trust mail server to prevent your emails from landing in the spam box. To achieve this, you need to obtain a professional email address sent from a highly reliable server. VPS Europe is definitely such a server. Its high-performance European servers and dedicated IP address will ensure that your email marketing reaches your intended recipient without any issues.
Effective monitoring of success
Similar to professional marketing campaigns based on data, the transactional emails performance in the online business should be measured. Software designed for online stores usually can’t provide valuable email tracking and evaluation of customer response to email communication.
In contrast, marketing emails solutions provide insight and effective evaluation of relevant performance data, such as the number of opens and clicks on individual links.
The best transactional email service providers
SendInBlue
SendInBlue allows for the quick and intuitive creation of marketing emails and newsletters, as well as the automated delivery. The platform stands out with a wide range of features. Over the last few years, the platform has significantly developed, offering many attractive options.
SendInBlue is an intuitive tool with a simple, aesthetic interface and a drag-and-drop editor. It is popular among owners of micro- and small businesses who do not have large budgets because the free plan does not limit subscribers number. It only takes into account the number of emails sent, outperforming other tools. However, most features are only available in the paid plan.
The program offers full functionality, including A/B testing, subscriber segmentation, automation, and SMS marketing. It provides vast possibilities for message personalization, including using a builder and real-time reporting. SendInBlue is a great transactional email service thanks to CRM integration functions.
The free plan offers up to 300 emails per day. Additionally, two plans with varying features: Lite for $39 per month and Premium for $69 per month.
Sendgrid
SendGrid is a trendy automated email service provider used by Uber, Spotify, and Airbnb. It stands out for its advanced features that provide professional capabilities for creating email campaigns and testing their effectiveness. The platform allows for generating reports and advanced statistics on email deliverability.
It is one of the best transactional email providers because that was its original function. SendGrid was an email API to interface with SMTP and transactional messages. In the following years, it gained email marketing functions.
The tool offers a high level of email and newsletter personalization thanks to numerous attractive templates. You can send up to 100 newsletters daily without any fees. You can enjoy the full version for 30 days.
SendGrid offers the option of using Web API or an SMTP server to send emails. API is faster and contains features for managing user unsubscribe, IP address management, and creating email message templates.
The tool’s creators focus on stability, security, and performance. The program provides a reliable email delivery level by customizing domains, connections, and IP addresses. In addition, custom SPF and DKIM records eliminate phishing, and the own CDN network ensures performance.
The free plan offers up to 100 emails per day. There are two premium plans (Essentials and Pro) that differ in functionality. Essentials for up to 50,000 emails per month costs $19.95, and up to 100,000 emails costs $34.95.
The Pro plan has three tiers: up to 200,000 emails for $89.95, up to 650,000 emails for $249 per month, and above that number for $449 per month. There is also an option to prepare a personalized plan with custom pricing.
MailChimp
It is the most popular email automation tool, so naturally, it evokes extreme emotions and has many opponents and supporters. Its popularity stems from its ease of use; MailChimp is an incredibly intuitive tool. Despite its simplicity, it is rich in email marketing features and integrations with other applications and software, primarily CRM.
The main element responsible for simplicity is the WYSIWYG editor for forms, newsletters, and drag-and-drop templates. It offers many attractive features, e.g., pop-up forms and dynamic content that increase the range of content personalization.
The second primary advantage is the extensive automation capabilities with ready-made scenarios, including automatic serial and occasional mailings. It also supports A/B testing, personalized remarketing, and cart abandonment recovery.
Very advanced level of analytics. MailChimp allows for ROI analysis, engagement, conversions from various email marketing tools and channels, and tracking of recipient behavior. It reports in real-time. The audience and customer segmentation facilitate and enhance analytical capabilities. It also allows for geolocation.
MailChimp has four different plans. The free plan allows for sending up to 1000 emails per month and has limited functionality, primarily in analytics and automation. Interestingly, the cheapest paid plan (Essentials) for $13 per month also has limited functionality (primarily in email analytics) but allows for sending up to 5000 emails per month.
The Standard plan for $20 per month increases the limit to 6000 emails but is almost fully functional. However, segmentation is still simplified, and advanced comparative testing is unavailable. These are only available in the highest package, which significantly differs both in capabilities and price: it costs $350 per month but allows for up to 150,000 emails per month.
GetResponse
GetResponse is one of the leaders in email delivery service. It has 20 years of experience, over 350,000 clients, and supports up to 27 language versions. It is a tool for everyone: large corporations, medium-sized businesses, and small companies.
GetResponse has prepared an exceptionally intuitive drag & drop WYSIWYG editor that allows you to easily create personalized email messages with a rich database of free stock photos, a QR generator, and the ability to integrate with hundreds of other solutions.
GetResponse also offers numerous marketing automation solutions, a built-in CRM, the ability to create landing pages and signup forms, as well as create webinars. It also contains Autofunnel (a ready-made system for selling products online) and Hydra (an anti-spam system).
There is a reason why this tool is considered the leader in email automatization: GetResponse guarantees the highest level of deliverability on the market, over 99%. It outperforms competitive solutions in every aspect: testing capabilities, automation, analytics, and editing simplicity.
CRM allows you to quickly and efficiently manage your calendar and tasks, as well as forms and sales funnels so you don’t need to invest in external tools. In addition, you can use over 200 different integrations.
The free version allows you to add up to 500 contacts and send 2,500 newsletters per month. Paid plans are divided into three levels with different features, and the price of each depends on the user limit.
For a limit of 1,000 users, the cheapest Email Marketing plan costs $15.58 per month, the Marketing Automation plan costs $48.38, and the highest plan – Ecommerce Marketing – costs $97.58. Price differences decrease at the highest user limits. At the maximum limit of 100,000 users, the plans cost $441.98, $491.18, and $573.18 per month, respectively.
Effective email marketing requires an efficient mailbox. Buy email hosting from UltaHost and enjoy huge performance of the email box that will serve the needs of even the most demanding companies!
Other Programs for transactional emails
I had to make a difficult choice to present the best transactional email services providers. However, these four programs are not the only email automation tools worth considering. If you didn’t find a transactional email provider who complies with your expectations, you can check out Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark, MailerLite, Mailtrap, Freshmail, and Mandrill.
Conclusion
Transactional emails can be a powerful marketing tool. It is worth using professional transactional email providers that will be integrated with other company systems. The whole process should be automated. Purchasing a professional email marketing tool allows for calculating the effectiveness indicators of transactional emails, conducting A/B tests, and increasing the deliverability and efficiency of mailing.
Professional email automation tools also allow for effective formatting of transactional emails and full personalization by adding blocks and logos.
If you enjoyed this article, then you’ll love UltaHost hosting platform. Buy Linux VPS Hosting and get 24/7 support from our support team. Our powered infrastructure focuses on auto-scaling, performance, and security. Let us show you the difference! Check out our plans!
