How to Score With Transactional Messages

When leveraged properly, transactional messages can strengthen customer loyalty, provide a complete view of the customer lifecycle and increase sales, says e-mail and database marketing provider e-Dialog in a recent report, How to Optimize Transactional E-mail Messages.

Today, e-mail messages serve several purposes, including facilitating, completing or confirming a commercial transaction the recipient previously agreed to enter into with the sender. These messages include warranty, recall and safety or security information; customer service notices; subscription/membership status or account information; information related to employment relationship or benefits; and confirmation of delivery of goods or services, including updates or upgrades.

Transactional messages receive very high open rates and likely are sent from an IT or e-commerce system, not from the same e-mail marketing platform that promotional e-mails are sent. The logical question then becomes, how do catalogers and multichannel merchants get the most value from their transactional messages? Here are a few tips from e-Dialog’s report.

* Enhance messages with HTML. This allows you to quickly and easily customize the text, formatting, graphics and links of these messages.

* Increase acquisition by adding an opt-in field. This way, by encouraging recipients who have given their e-mail address for transactional purposes, you can entice them also to sign up for promotional mailings, the e-Dialog report says. List the benefits they gain by doing this.

* Include dynamic content. Add text and imagery making the message relevant to the recipient. For instance, include an image of the product they’ve just purchased in their order confirmation or warranty recall.

* Improve deliverability. Add a link at the top of the e-mail encouraging recipients to whitelist the “from” to ensure your messages end up in their inbox.

Above all else, marketers should integrate the strategies and tactics used to optimize promotional messages into all transactional messages, e-Dialog suggests. Find a solution that handles automated composition, delivery, tracking and reporting of transactional and promotional e-mails. This provides a complete, integrated view of all customer e-mail communications, helping marketers to plan, execute and measure a well-rounded contact strategy.

For more information, visit www.e-dialog.com or call (781) 863-8117.