The Email You Already Send With an 80% Open Rate

Did You Know? Transactional emails, like order confirmation and password reset emails, have an incredible 80-85% open rate. That’s 300% higher than the typical 20-25% open rate on marketing emails. (Source)

Imagine your customers staring at their inbox.

Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing.

Impatiently waiting for your next email to arrive.

Believe it or not, there’s one type of email you already send where that actually happens.

Transactional emails.

Transactional emails are those emails triggered by user actions:

• Welcome emails

• Password reset emails

• Abandoned cart emails

• Order confirmation emails

• Receipt emails

Transactional emails have 80-85% open rates compared to a typical 20-25% open rate of standard marketing emails, like newsletters, product announcements, and drip campaigns.

That’s a 300% higher open rate from an audience on the edge of their seat!

Of course, not all transactional emails are made the same. Your recipient probably is in a very different headspace when opening a password reset email 😠 vs. an order confirmation email 😄.

Still, how can we not try to optimize any email with an 80% open rate? That would be irresponsible.

Actually, strike that.

It would be downright negligent.

How can you optimize your various transactional emails already getting a ton of eyeballs?

That just so happens to be the subject of today’s edition of Data-Driven Marketing.

8 ways to optimize the transactional emails your subscribers actually open

Some strategies apply to transactional emails of all types. Others are situation-specific. Let’s get started.

1/ Don’t use a no-reply email address

We’ll start with two technical tips.

First, don’t send your transactional emails from a no-reply email address.

These are emails your customers actually open when they’re actively engaging with your business.

So why the hell do companies think it’s a good idea to send these emails from an email address that effectively severs communication?

That’s something Kevin Malone would do.

Don’t be like Kevin.

I mean, I get it from a practicality standpoint. You don’t want people to reply to a password reset email needing case-specific help because they can’t figure out how to click a link and enter a new password.

But if that’s happening to you with frustrating regularity, maybe that means there’s something unclear or challenging about your process that needs improvement.

(Though I know we can’t engineer human stupidity out of the equation entirely.)

Every time I receive an email from a no-reply email address, my literal first thought is, “That’s annoying. What an unhelpful, corporatey vibe. “

And yes, I know everything isn’t about me. I’m not part of Gen Z. 🤣

But I did put an entire email together with 28 stats showing why customer retention is so crucial for a business’s bottom line.

Here’s one such stat: The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% while the probability of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with a standoffish no-reply email address. Embrace all of the replies you get, because those replies are engagement from people who actually care enough to reach out!

2/ Consider sending from a dedicated subdomain

Second, it’s considered good practice to protect your transactional email’s deliverability by sending those emails from a dedicated subdomain.

This ensures your transactional emails aren’t mixed with your standard marketing emails, which have substantially lower open rates. If, for some reason, your marketing emails start getting sent to spam folders or suffer other deliverability problems, they won’t drag your transactional emails down with them.

What does it mean to send from a dedicated subdomain?

If your marketing emails come from [email protected], then create a new subdomain like marketing.yourdomain.com or promotions.yourdomain.com and send all transactional emails from an address like [email protected].

You don’t need to build any content or web pages around that subdomain. Just add an email account to it and configure redirect logic with your host to make sure any traffic to that subdomain redirects back to your primary domain.

3/ Ask for reviews, testimonials, and feedback

For order confirmations and other immediate, post-purchase transactional emails, use the opportunity to capitalize on your customers’ active engagement, excitement, and (hopefully) warm and fuzzy feelings about your brand to solicit reviews, testimonials, and other feedback.

This guide has some review-solicitation strategies you can use today.

This guide has more tips about encouraging user-generated content.

4/ Share your social media profiles

A quick win for any transactional email: Promote your social media accounts!

Maybe the reason someone isn’t following you on Instagram is because they aren’t even aware you’re on Instagram.

5/ Link to relevant, high-value content

One study found that consumers are 131% more likely to buy from a brand immediately after they consume educational content.

Another study found that 68% of customers use products more frequently after receiving training with 56% reporting they actually used more features.

Both of those are good for your business.

6/ Upsell and cross-sell

If your customers are in an active buying frenzy, then give them more opportunities to buy! This is where it really pays to have both robust customer data and a good understanding of your ideal customer profiles.

Businesses that upsell effectively can increase customer lifetime value by 20%, and one study found that upsells are responsible for 10-30% of all e-commerce revenue. For Amazon, that number hovers around 35%.

7/ Personalize, build trust, and nurture relationships

It definitely pays to personalize transactional emails with commercial intent, such as order confirmation emails. You just saw those stats about upselling. Here’s another stat: Personalized product recommendations can increase conversion rates by 150% and revenues by up to 300%.

Your brand also can reap significant soft value by personalizing non-commercial emails, such as password reset and welcome emails. Those email templates present great opportunities to provide genuine, non-robotic-feeling help (even though the emails themselves are automated) by including links to additional helpful resources or encouraging customer feedback.

I try to build trust and nurture relationships in this newsletter’s welcome email by asking subscribers to share something fun about themselves.

I get enough new subscriber responses to have a dedicated “Meet a Subscriber” section at the bottom of each day’s edition, making those highlighted subscribers feel more connected to this community.

8/ Showcase your brand personality

Unless you’re a US telecommunications company, chances are good your customers have choices when buying products or services in your industry.

92% of a customer’s buying decision is emotional. While they’re certainly buying products or services, a lot of the time (probably most of the time) they’re actually buying brands.

• Regardless of how big or small your company is…

• Regardless of your level of expertise…

• Regardless of how “feature-rich” your product is…

…there’s one advantage your company has over every other company.

Tell ‘em, Trebek.

No one else can be you.

Corny? Yes.

True? Also yes.

Use your “you-ness” to your advantage by showcasing your brand’s personality as often as possible.

Each day, when I sit down to carefully craft the next day’s email hastily cobble together today’s email, I try to infuse my content with as much of my unique personality and thought process as possible.

There are a lot of marketing newsletters out there.

(Plus, your inbox is packed with so much unholy junk, it probably needs an exorcism.)

I try to make each of my emails as helpful and memorable as possible so you actually look forward to opening them.

Does it work?

😎

And these aren’t even the transactional emails we’ve been talking about in today’s write-up. My open rate is about 50% higher than the industry average, and that isn’t just sample size noise.

While not about email specifically, I’ll leave you with a great example of how to showcase your brand personality on oft-forgotten, under-optimized aspects of your business: 404 pages.

No one likes encountering 404 pages. They’re the web browsing equivalent of password reset emails, which means you can use the same approach to those types of transactional emails as these brands did with their awesome 404 page designs.

My favorite 404 page from that list?

What’s yours?!

Everyone say, “Hi!” to Justin G 👋

Question: What’s the most random fact you know?

Justin G’s Answer: “Bananas, spinach, oranges and several other foods are actually radioactive. They contain trace amounts of radioactive isotopes such as potassium 40 in bananas but not enough to get you sick.“

ChatGPT-Generated Joke of the Day 🤣

What happens to a frog's car when it breaks down?

It gets toad away. 🐸

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