Businesses often focus their email marketing efforts on campaigns like newsletters and sales-blasts, leaving little-to-no time for design and segmentation efforts relating to transactional emails. We've said it before and we'll say it again, transactional emails are a missed opportunity! It all starts where lazy marketers think it ends: order confirmations. Order confirmation emails are hugely important because 60% or more of your customers will open the emails, so let's be sure to get them right.

1. Branding, Branding, Branding

We've all experienced a bad order confirmation like the one below. It's difficult to figure out what company or brand sent this email thanks to an utter lack of branding. The email fails to emulate the company’s brand and image through visual content. This email is not only rough on the eye, messages this visually sparse and unidentifiable often create a sense of uneasiness with customers who are fearful of having their identity stolen in a hack. Many consumers believe plain, text-only messages are cyber threats. 

order confirmation emails
Be sure to put at least a little extra effort in by adding your logo and some HTML. Bonus points if you can make a beer joke as this company did! The one thing they did right here was express their brand's voice, even without taking advantage of the visual branding opportunity.

2. Mobile Friendly Order Confirmation Emails

Phone-friendly emails may seem like an obvious one, but many retailers don’t realize that their transactional emails fail to optimize for mobile and tablet. With customers spending more and more time on phones instead of a desktop, businesses need to design emails with a mobile-first mindset.

confirmation email design tips

3. Include Valuable Content

Confirmation emails are so important because they receive remarkably high open rates - at least in the 60-70% range - which makes them perfect for additional content. If you are launching a new product, drive them to the pre-order page or a blog post about the upcoming release. If you are looking to send more traffic to your sale page, show off the great deals your offering for a limited time. Remember, these emails are to confirm purchases, but that doesn't mean you're completely limited to receipt-like content. 

4. Ask For A Product Review

Studies show that 55% of all customers find reading product reviews helpful before making a purchase, so it stands to reason that you should be encouraging your customers to leave reviews after buying your products. If your site is lacking reviews, confirmation emails to repeat buyers that include a CTA to review a product will help drive more reviews. Thanks to Unific's segmenting capabilities, you can target your loyal customers and use confirmation emails to for product reviews. Also, don't forget good manners: thank customers for making the purchase before you ask for a favor like leaving a review! 

5. Include Some Product Recommendations

You already know that a consumer is interested in your products because they've already purchased from you! Maybe they bought a pair of pants, might as well let them know you have the perfect top to go with their new favorite jeans. Make it as easy as possible, provide them with valuable product information that relates to the previous purchase. 

6. Get Social!

Growing your social communities is a daunting task. There are Millennials all over the world working tirelessly to increase their company’s online community. Keeping that in mind, it makes sense to include a simple “Follow Us” CTA within your order confirmation emails. 

 

Of course, there are other actions you can take to improve your order confirmations, but if you are just starting the optimization process, these six tips are a great place to start!

Looking to go beyond these basics? Feel free to reach out and let us tell you how Unific's advanced segmentation can help you drive revenue through targeted order confirmations.