In marketing, there are many ways in which companies can reach and retain their customers. Transactional emails are an often underutilised but extremely effective tool for marketers. In this article, we will show you why these mailings are invaluable for email marketing, communication with customers and the customer experience.

Transactional emails are automated emails that are triggered by certain actions by visitors or after defined business transactions. In contrast to newsletters, which are sent at regular intervals to a broad group of recipients, transactional emails are individual messages based on the specific actions of a recipient. These notifications are therefore an important point of contact with your customers.

 

Typical transactional emails include

  • Order confirmations
  • Shipping confirmations and shipping status information
  • Delivery confirmations
  • Returns receipt confirmations
  • Invoices
  • Reservation confirmations
  • Password changes or requests
  • Double opt-in mails
  • Subscription and cancellation confirmations
  • Registration confirmations

Whether by email, SMS or push notification, transaction notifications can be sent from a marketing automation system; the respective user action triggers the sending of the transaction emails.

 

The value of transactional emails for email marketing

Transactional emails accompany your customers on their customer journey and therefore harbour enormous potential for marketing. They can be used for customer retention, branding, opt-in generation, cross-selling and up-selling and much more. By integrating marketing content into transactional emails, companies can effectively support their marketing objectives and utilise the full potential of service notifications.

 

Advantages of optimised transactional emails

Reliable delivery is essential for transactional emails and is a top priority. A high-quality design is characterised by flexible templating and includes individualisation or personalisation, design, headers, graphics, call-to-action buttons, interactive elements, text formatting and other design elements. With an appealing design and a clear structure, transactional emails can not only fulfil their function, but also strengthen the brand image and promote customer loyalty.

 

Legally compliant advertising in transactional emails

In the previous sections, we learnt that transactional emails attract an extremely high level of attention. The emails usually contain important information and customers are waiting to receive them. So it’s no wonder that they are particularly interesting for marketing. Nevertheless, from a legal point of view there are a few things to bear in mind, as advertising in emails is heavily regulated in Germany. In principle, advertising by email may only be sent with prior consent. The good news is that when communicating with your own customers, this basic principle is mitigated and advertising is possible, especially in transactional messages.

Nevertheless, there are some requirements that must be met for advertising in transactional messages:

  • The recipients are your own customers.
  • You only advertise your own products/services.
  • You only advertise similar products/services.
  • The recipient has not objected to the advertising.
  • You point out the possibility of objection when collecting the e-mail address and for each use.
  • This advertising must be reflected in the data protection declarations.

 

Use case: Automatic integration of cross-sells and upsells in transactional emails at BMW

For an excellent customer experience, the simple text emails from the BMW Connected Drive backend are automatically converted into high-quality HTML emails and enriched with marketing content. BMW Connected Drive was thus able to generate up to 12% additional sales through the automatic integration of cross-sell and upsell offers.

BMW Connected Drive generates additional sales through the automatic integration of cross-sell and upsell offers in transaction emails

 

Use case: More marketing opt-ins thanks to permission handling in order confirmations

REWE uses order confirmations to gain more email marketing opt-ins from new and existing customers, thereby also increasing sales per customer. The retailer integrates opt-in articles into the transactional emails for an order. Thanks to intelligent permission handling, customers with marketing opt-ins receive marketing content, while customers who have not yet given a marketing opt-in are asked to do so. In this way, REWE gains more marketing opt-ins and increases sales per customer.

 

Marketing Automation mit wenig Date: Use Case 5

REWE refers to its own newsletter in this transaction email (order confirmation).

 

Conclusion: Transactional emails in email marketing

Transactional emails are an indispensable tool for companies to reach and retain customers and improve the customer experience. Through targeted optimisation, companies can exploit the full potential of these service emails and effectively support marketing objectives. With reliable delivery, high-quality design and compliance with legal requirements, transactional emails can become a valuable tool in a company’s marketing strategy.

Whitepaper: ELAINE Transactional Message Hub

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Transactional emails are a real marketing booster. In our white paper, we use exciting and illustrative cases to show you how you can use the ELAINE Transactional Message Hub to optimise and ensure the delivery of your transactional emails. Among other things, you will learn how you can convert your existing transactional emails into high-quality HTML emails in real time during dispatch and enrich them with individualised marketing and service content.

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