{"id":3473,"date":"2019-03-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/supercharge-your-transactional-emails-webinar-recording-qa\/"},"modified":"2020-05-04T23:07:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T23:07:45","slug":"supercharge-your-transactional-emails-webinar-recording-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/supercharge-your-transactional-emails-webinar-recording-qa","title":{"rendered":"Supercharge Your Transactional Emails: Webinar Recording + Q&amp;A"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Transactional emails are the cornerstone of a customer\u2019s experience with your company and often generate the majority of email revenue. When customers make an order, forget their password, or add a new user to their account, how do you provide that information and give them a seamless experience\u2014and how can those emails improve retention and engagement?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this webinar, special guest Becs Rivett-Kemm and the Litmus team reviewed transactional emails from your peers and provided hands-on design feedback, copywriting suggestions, and strategic takeaways that you can apply to your own campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Didn\u2019t have a chance to watch the webinar live? Don\u2019t worry. You can <\/span><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/litmus.com\/webinars\/supercharge-your-transactional-emails\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">access the full recording<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the emails we reviewed and read the Q&amp;A below.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Q&amp;A<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We didn\u2019t have time to get to all of the questions during the live webinar, but we\u2019ve answered them here on our blog. Have any additional questions? Please leave them in the comments.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>What is considered a transactional email?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs Rivett-Kemm<\/strong>: <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the most simple terms, transactional emails are one-to-one emails relating specifically to the actions of one particular user.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jaina Mistry<\/strong>: <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Adding to Becs\u2019 answer, the actions that a particular user has taken could be engaging with an app, actions at a store (online or brick and mortar), or on a website. Those actions then trigger an email consisting of content and information the user needs to know or be aware of. Transactional emails can only be emails that alert the user to something important, like changes to their account.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>How often should you update your transactional emails?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">: I would recommend checking your transactional emails at least once a quarter. Here are some items to check for:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Is the content still relevant?<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Ensure there\u2019s no outdated content in your transactional and triggered emails. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Does the email still display correctly?<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Email client support can change often and without notice, so make sure you regularly test your transactional emails in all relevant reading environments to ensure they look great and perform.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Do the links still work?<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You never want any broken links in your emails so test those regularly. Also, make sure all the correct link tracking is in place.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Bettina Specht<\/strong>: <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You might want to review your transactional emails sooner if your performance metrics are falling behind your expectations. You\u2019re seeing a sudden decrease in click-through rates for one of your triggered emails? Review your email as soon as you can to see if broken CTAs, rendering problems or other issues impact email performance and fix those before the email is sent to more subscribers.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Is there a general rule of thumb for placing CTAs above or below the fold?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs<\/strong>: <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For me, the CTA shouldn\u2019t be about above or below the fold, but about providing the user with enough information to understand why they should be clicking the CTA. This might be selling benefits or telling them about the process or action they\u2019re about to do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jaina<\/strong>:<span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> And don\u2019t be afraid of incorporating your main call-to-action in the copy of the email as well as being an actual CTA button. For example, if your main goal is to have someone log into their account, there\u2019s no harm in linking the action in the copy, as well as having a CTA button in place.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Many transactional emails are designed to look like personal letters or notes from an individual. Would you recommend that practice?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Making some of your emails plain text is a great idea to give them a more personal feel and put the focus on the content. If you\u2019re using HTML, I\u2019d avoid a signature image\u2014for me it doesn\u2019t feel natural and just lifted from direct mail.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jaina<\/strong>:<span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I agree! It\u2019s all about the context of the transactional email. And it could be something that\u2019s worth testing, depending on the action you want the user to take upon receiving the email.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Should you use no-reply addresses as the reply-to in your transactional emails?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs<\/strong>:<span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> It\u2019s very useful to monitor if people used a wrong mailing address or their transactional email wasn\u2019t delivered. I learned a lot from monitoring a no-reply email address at my old job! If such an address is active, you need to find a way to act on responses, not just ignore them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jaina<\/strong>:<span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Setting up an autoresponder to direct folks to a place where they can get in touch would be the way to go if you can\u2019t have a monitored reply-to email address.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>What should the from name be for a transactional email?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs<\/strong>:<span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> That depends on your brand, but in most cases I recommend to just go with the company\u2019s name. Always make sure you have a from-name set up. I see too many companies who don\u2019t specify a from name for their transactional emails and you get an order confirmation from <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">payments@<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">somecompany<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.com<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, so the from name is just \u201cpayments.\u201d It makes it very hard to find in the inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Should transactional emails include an unsubscribe link?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Transactional emails don\u2019t require an unsubscribe link, and my advice is not to include one. If you put it in there, what does it mean? You won\u2019t receive any more payment notifications? If you wanted to, you could include a link to your email preference center to let the subscriber manage what emails they\u2019d like to receive from your brand, but make clear that they won\u2019t be able to opt out of crucial transactional messages. I wrote about how we manage opt-ins at Conversio over <\/span><a rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/conversio\/sorting-out-our-email-marketing-opt-ins-223ca92483e7\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jaina<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">: Agree with Becs. Remember to make it clear to the user why they\u2019re receiving the email by adding a short line of copy in the footer of the email. \u201cYou\u2019re receiving this email because you requested a new password\/changed your plan\/etc.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Do graphics in transactional emails hurt deliverability?<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Becs<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">: The key to good deliverability is engagement, so ensure your emails are engaging\u2014with images or without. So <\/span><a rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/litmus.com\/blog\/why-you-shouldnt-send-image-only-emails\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">as long as you\u2019re not serving up an all-images email<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, then no, it\u2019s not a problem. When you include images in your transactional emails, make sure to optimize the file size and add ALT tags.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you want to create the perfect transactional email? In this webinar, special guest Becs Rivett-Kemm and the Litmus team reviewed transactional emails from your peers and provided hands-on design feedback, copywriting suggestions, and strategic takeaways that you can apply to your own campaign. Catch up on the webinar recording and read our Q&amp;A!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[10259],"blog_category":[50],"class_list":["post-3473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-ecommerce","blog_category-webinars"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.5 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Supercharge Your Transactional Emails: Webinar Recording + Q&amp;A - Litmus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Do you want to create the perfect transactional email? In this webinar, special guest Becs Rivett-Kemm and the Litmus team reviewed transactional emails from your peers and provided hands-on design feedback, copywriting suggestions, and strategic takeaways that you can apply to your own campaign. Catch up on the webinar recording and read our Q&amp;A!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.litmus.com\/blog\/supercharge-your-transactional-emails-webinar-recording-qa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supercharge Your Transactional Emails: Webinar Recording + Q&amp;A\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do you want to create the perfect transactional email? In this webinar, special guest Becs Rivett-Kemm and the Litmus team reviewed transactional emails from your peers and provided hands-on design feedback, copywriting suggestions, and strategic takeaways that you can apply to your own campaign. 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