How do marketers decide which email option to send? The discrepancies between the two categories, marketing, and transactional emails, are often unclear. Before we understand the differences, let us define the two.
What is a Marketing Email?
A marketing email is considered to be any type of commercial email that contains content specifically designed to nurture leads through your funnel and bring conversions. Marketing emails must abide by local laws and are normally sent to groups of potential or existing customers.
What is a Transactional Email?
Now transactional emails are private conversations between brands and individual customers. They consist of key information regarding subscriptions, transactions, or other important information. A common example is the email you receive when you purchased an item online. The supplier then sends you information on the price, shipment details, and more.
Examples of Transactional Emails:
- Notification emails – This is common for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. They will send an email regarding any key notifications about your account or simply a quick update on their new terms.
- Confirmation emails – These vary; it can be an email to confirm your order, your purchase, or perhaps an email acknowledging that the business received your query on something. Often these emails will contain other promotional content based on your previous browsing or purchases.
- Client feedback – Brands will often send feedback forms in order to find ways to improve their business. While clients do not actively seek out feedback forms, they often will find it useful to share feedback when directly asked.
- Security emails – When you login into your account from a different PC, unknown to your computer, and receive an email to check that it’s really you logging into the account.
Transactional Emails: Best Practices
Companies that have managed to successfully cultivate transactional emails tend to treat them as an opportunity to build stronger relationships with their customers. Transactional emails need to offer clients the chance to take action, for example, a password reset or a security check.
In addition to this, transactional emails should contain baseline transactional email etiquette:
- Personalization – include the customer’s name, order number, purchase details, etc., to ensure they feel valued and catered to.
- Add product offers through dynamic visuals but ensure they don’t overwhelm and deviate too much from the core transactional message. Suppose a customer has purchased something from you in the past; they are much more likely to buy from you again, especially via a message that targets them indirectly. Product suggestions add a sense of personalization but do not diverge from the original purpose of the email.
- Lastly, make sure to keep your promotional material is dynamic, enthusiastic, and follows your core brand message.
Final thoughts
When combining transactional and marketing emails together, you open significant doors to deliver a remarkable experience to your clients. Integrating promotional content into your transactional emails can give your marketing posts the edge you need to convert leads and drive sales.
