A little while ago I wrote an article about using transactional email as a promotion tool.  I wrote the article and then just completely forgot about the subject, until recently.

Today, I was just catching up on all the blog posts I’d missed over the past week or so and stumbled across a couple that really got me thinking about this subject again (see links at the bottom of my post).

When I wrote my post I just thought that by throwing in a couple of other related or best selling items into the email might increase a bit of interest within your company post-purchase.

As Nick Valeriote points out in his blog post, on average 54% of transactional emails are opened compared to the 21% of promotional emails that are opened.  As far as I can see it, you have opportunities to do so much with that transactional email.

Firstly you could try and get repeat business by offering a time-constrained deal or voucher.  Offering a month long discount or promotion to them will encourage repeat purchasing and may even put them on the step to the marketing holy grail – brand loyalty.  This kind of promotion as well would not be something that would annoy your recipient; whilst it is encouraging them to return to your site and purchase, it’s giving them something for free and not being too pushy.

Another option you could take up is a “send to a friend” promotion.  Once again, you will be offering a discount or voucher to both the sender and recipient of the promotion.  This way as well, you can take advantage of the purchasers recent interest in your company and reward it by giving them something for passing on your companies information.  Not only could this be a great way to increase both sales and email list size but there is no more trusted marketing channel than word of mouth; especially when the deal is sweetened with a discount.

Urgent: Why you should put house ads in your transactional emails starting tomorrow

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.html?ident=29944

Enhance your transactional emails

http://www.inboxmarketer.com/blog/2008/03/enhance-your-transactional-messages.html

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 11:40 am and is filed under send to friend, transaction email. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.