Transactional email and SMS help you support customers with the business-critical info they need, when they need it. So, it’s worth optimising these high-speed messages to be perfectly tuned to your customer interactions. But how do you create transactional messages that engage with customers in a way that helps your relationship grow? How do you go beyond just sharing useful information? Here are 5 powerful tips you can try.
1. Pre-Empt Customer Concerns & Defuse Them
Transactional email and SMS make digital interactions with your business more convenient, which opens the door for value-adding customer service.
Develop a transactional content strategy by researching the common pain points your customers face when transacting with you. This will allow you to map out how you can defuse frustrating situations with well-placed transactional messaging.
For example, logistics companies can send customers pre-emptive notifications on delivery statuses to mitigate the so-called “WISMO”, or “Where Is My Order” effect. This avoids unnecessary customer support queries, dissatisfaction, and even churn.
Transactional email strengthens your customer retention in the long run. Find out what this dynamic channel can bring to your business, and how it works, in our Transactional Email Guide.
2. Be Customer-Centric & Speak to Their Needs
Transactional messaging is inherently customer-centric since it’s sent in response to an action taken by a customer on one of your digital touchpoints. That said, there is more you can do to really make customers feel seen and heard.
To start, ensure that the copy and design elements used in your transactional emails and SMSs position the customer as the “hero” in their journey. Let the visual language and the clarity of your communication promote your brand, and rather assume a supporting role in your messaging, helping the customer achieve a specific business goal.
3. Avoid Direct Marketing & Propose Relevant Value
Transactional messaging is designed to keep your customers informed about their transactions with your business, and not to update them on your latest product or service offering.
Including overt promotional content in these messages constitutes unsolicited direct marketing. That’s because you’re specifically targeting recipients with promotional content that they cannot opt in for. Doing this in service messages (like transactional email or SMS) is illegal under POPIA.
That said, there’s a necessary place for proposing additional value to customers in your transactional messaging without getting promotional, especially if doing so supports the services you’re already offering them.
To make these suggestions as natural and unintrusive as possible, use choice architecture and behavioural nudges to propose additional value. This includes the powerful technique of making potentially value-adding options highly visible or easily accessible.
4. Personalised to Resonate with Customers
Personalisation is a subtle way of establishing customer centricity and resonance with your brand by making customers feel noticed – and it’s not complicated. Common fields in transactional email that work well with personalisation include:
- Customer name
- Subject lines
- Preview text
- From name
- From email address
With basic personalisation you can weave relevant customer-specific information into the content you’re sending – making it more engaging to the recipient. For example, you can add data like a customer’s account number, city of residence, loyalty level, or even their loyalty points balance into your transactional messaging.
Personalisation is a powerful way to prompt engagement in your digital messaging, and making it work for your business is easier than you might think. Learn how to get the most from it in our Step-by-Step Guide to Message Personalisation.
5. Keep Tabs on Changing Customer Behaviour
Don’t be fooled into thinking that engagement tracking is not relevant in transactional messaging because your customers are already doing business with you. The goal here is to retain them.
So, keep close tabs on common metrics like deliveries, open rates, click rates, and bounces on your transactional emails. Doing this will help you pick up on decreasing customer engagement and could signal the need for updated content or an entirely new transactional strategy.
Transactional SMS, on platforms like Everlytic, also offers useful tracking metrics like how many of your messages get sent or fail to reach customers.
Engaging with Customers is Only the Start
If long-term business success is your goal, then maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with your customers is essential. Transactional emails and SMSs offer you a simple, reliable way of supporting customers without adding extra load to your support team. Start integrating transactional messaging into your communication strategy so you can boost customer engagement and retention.
