Q: What type of open and click rates do they enjoy? What about delivery?
Transactional messages tend to have very high open and click-through rates. In 2004 Postfuture reported open rates greater than 70% and click-throughs surpassing 50% for transactional messages. Currently, commercial messages are only averaging open rates of about 27% and click-throughs around 7%. The additional attention that transactional emails garner from recipients is alluring to a marketer.
Another survey, done by MarketingSherpa in 2003, found that recipients viewed transactional email messages much more positively than other types of email; they scored a 4.2 rating on a scale of 1 (not positive) to 5 (very positive).
Q: Are transactional messages generally sent as both plain text and HTML? Plain text only? HTML only? Would you recommend one of the formats as better to use - or do they each have their own benefits?
Great question. Organizations are just starting to recognize the potential value of transactional emails. In many cases they haven’t spent much time or effort on the copy and design; many are sent in plain text format, often without any type of tracking or reporting.
In order to become effective marketing tools, transactional emails need to take full advantage of current email technology. This means having both text and HTML versions and sending out multi-part MIME (where both versions are sent and the richest format the email client can read is what’s presented). It also means utilizing tracking and reporting just as you would with marketing emails.
HTML is, in general, just a better way to present content. HTML allows you to use different fonts, different sizes, bold, true bullet points and columns. When you’re looking to incorporate promotional content into your transactional message, columns really help. You’ll want to feature the transactional part of the message first, so there’s no doubt that it’s the primary purpose for the email. With HTML, you can put the promotional piece in a narrow column to the left or right of the body. In text, you end up having to put it further down the page, forcing people to scroll to see it.
Q: For transactional emails to work it seems to me that several departments within an organisation have to work together.
Yes. The marketing team needs to work closely with the customer service/customer relationship team and whoever is sending out the emails, be it an external email service provider or an internal IT team. It’s important that the promotional content be relevant to the transactional content and that it be current.
Q: A pet peeve of mine is the "Do not reply to this message" - this seems to be prevalent in transactional emails I receive. It goes against the idea of developing any personal, relevant and targeted relationship with a recipient.
I hate it, for two reasons. First, if a company is sending a customer or prospect email, they should be willing to accept replies to those emails. In the early days this was a given; organizations monitored the email boxes they sent from for responses. That’s gone out the window and it’s unfortunate because it makes it harder for the customer to interact. But…if you must have an unmonitored mail box at least make the note about it user-friendly. “Do not reply” is so cold. And many organizations don’t provide another way to contact them – you’re just stuck. I like to include a friendly message (“Unfortunately we are unable to receive replies to this email; if you have questions, please call us at 1-800-555-1212 or visit www.oursite.com/comments to send us a message”)
Q: Any other key issues regarding transactional emails that you'd like to mention here?
There are so many reasons that organizations should pay attention to transactional emails. First, many of them aren’t as user-friendly or helpful to the customer as they could be; making them better will improve your customer experience and enhance your brand image. Second, in many companies the quantity of transactional emails sent each day, week or month dwarfs the quantity of marketing emails sent. So this is a great opportunity to increase your marketing’s reach without sending additional emails. Third, the high opens and click-throughs are just so tantalizing.
The recipient is going to open the email to see when their order will arrive – why not leverage those few seconds to tell them about another product they might be interested in or provide them a discount, an incentive to come back to your site and order more. Finally, many companies have viewed transactional messages as a “necessary evil” – they have to send them so they want to do it as cheaply as possible. This is all wrong. Done properly, these emails can change from being a cost center to a profit center. Email marketing is very cost-effective and these readers are highly engaged so it often doesn’t take much to get your transactional emails to break even or make a profit.
ABOUT: Jeanne Jennings is an independent consultant with 15 years of experience in Online, Internet and email; she specialises in helping businesses develop an effective and profitable online presence. Jeanne is also a columnist for ClickZ.com, writes articles for other publications and speaks at industry events. She also publishes The Jennings Report covering market research, articles and other resources for email marketing professionals. In early 2007 SitePoint will be publishing Jeanne’s first book, titled “The Email Marketing Kit.”
