Transactional emails: the eternal forgotten ones
One of the issues related to our agency activity that we often encounter is the lack of attention that companies give to transactional emails. As the name suggests, these are emails that are sent to the user in response to or in order to inform about a transaction.Booking confirmation, generation of an e-commerce order, purchase receipt in the application, credit card expiry notice, etc.
(Source: IBM)
As these are emails with highly relevant information for the user, both open and click metrics significantly exceed those of marketing emails (the open rate is around 45% and the click rate is around 4.8%). - 3 times higher than the 1.6% average of marketing emails- ).
For emails with such positive user acceptance, why are they not given the attention they deserve, and why is their potential to increase engagement and support marketing not harnessed?
The reasons for this are essentially the following:
- Their implementation depends on outdated systems.
We refer to the fact that many companies developed email notification systems that have hardly been updated. They are systems that have been running autonomously and nobody has paid attention to them. - Difficult to define who is responsible for these emails.
Another of the situations we experience in the agency has to do with the lack of clarity about who is in charge of these emails: is it the IT department? Is it the SAT? Is it CRM? It is usual that the interest in taking advantage of the marketing potential of these emails comes from marketing, specifically from those responsible for email marketing, however, their nature means that IT, e-commerce, CRM and customer service also need to be involved. The difficulty arises when we want to coordinate the different departments involved. - Difficult to test when we have multiple languages and local particularities.
This is another factor that can slow down the initiative to improve transnational email in the organisation. There are many cases that need to be tested before a new transnational email system can be put in place and they have to do with the combination of the type of email (order confirmation, change of passwords, expiry of a service, etc.), languages, currencies and legal conditions in the different markets. It is understandable that such work, having other more urgent and "important" tasks, tends to be postponed "for later".
It is usual that the interest in taking advantage of the marketing potential of these emails comes from marketing, specifically from those responsible for email marketing, however, their nature means that IT, e-commerce, CRM and customer service also need to be involved. The difficulty arises when we want to coordinate the different departments involved.
Although in a context such as the one described above, it is understandable that many companies are still not optimising and taking advantage of the potential of transactional emails, at Digital Response we believe that the effort should be made, as the benefits will be much greater. We have had the good fortune to participate in some large companies' transnational email renewal projects. What we have learned is that the project has to be led by three different profiles:
- A project manager neutral (external to the company) to lead the project and bring together the different voices involved. This figure must have experience in Marketing Automation and CRM projects.
- A Lead Email Developer responsible for the optimal coding of the templates.
- A Quality Assurance to verify the correct functioning of the emails before their final launch.
Once the project is completed, the transactional email system is "upgraded" and optimised, so that any subsequent changes that need to be made will be much easier to implement. Our experience has shown us that the benefits obtained more than justify the effort made.
