shades of gray: incorporating marketing into transactional email

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Transactional email is one of the most engaging communication channels, yet many companies fail to take advantage of its potential. With the CAN-SPAM act and deliverability concerns, many companies are afraid to incorporate marketing into their transactional messages. Carly Brantz and Brian O’Neill broke down ways to increase ROI and engagement with your customers through discrete marketing in your transactional email.

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Shades of Grey Incorporating Marketing into Transactional Email

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Carly Brantzcarly.brantz@sendgrid.com@carlybrantz

Brian O’NeillBrian.oneill@sendgrid.com@emailpm

Delivering Email at Scale

Serving 60,000+ customers

Sending 4 billion emailsper month

Transactional and marketing email solutions

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Agenda

• Categories of Email• The Value of Transactional Email• Ways to Incorporate Marketing into Transactional • Knowing Your Audience• Shades of Grey• Examples

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Categories of Email

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Transactional• Sent based on direct

interaction and within the bounds of a previously agreed upon contract

Marketing • Commercial in nature,

either advertising or promoting commercial product or service

Definitions

VS

Categories of Email

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Transactional• Receipts• ‘Like’ Notifications• ‘Check-Ins’• Bank Notices

Marketing • Newsletters• Product

Announcements• Daily Deals

Examples

Categories of Email

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Transactional

• 1% of all email volume

• 2% of all recipients email

Marketing

• 99% of all email volume

• 98% of all recipients email

Typical Volume

Source: SendGrid Source: Jupiter Research “US email Marketing Forecast”

Categories of Email

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TransactionalOpen: 41 - 54%Click: 18 - 23%Unsubscribe: < .4%

MarketingOpen: 15 - 19%Click: 2 - 5% Unsubscribe Rate: 1.2%

Success Rates

Average of ~20% Better Open and 16% Click Rates!

Source: SendGrid Source: Juniper Research

System Statistics

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9/22/0

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10/26/0

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9/5/0

80%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

20%

OpensUnique OpensClicksUnique Clicks

A Warning

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5 Easy Ways to Incorporate Marketing

Surveys Referrals Opt-ins Follows and likes

Proactive support

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Surveys

• Gain customer feedback by asking them to complete a quick Net Promoter Score survey

• Ask them to answer a single question. A click-to-answer approach works well.

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Referrals

• Ask happy customers to refer your company to their friends

• Give the opportunity for them to earn a reward.

• We’ve seen great success with this approach at SendGrid.

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Opt-Ins

• Allow recipients to subscribe to your marketing emails

• Incorporate a link inside the transactional email.

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Follows and Likes

• Include a few unobtrusive (and nowadays, almost obligatory) social icons

• Facilitate extra follows and likes on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+.

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Proactive Support

• Include a link to documentation, forums or support page to offer help when the user most needs it.

• Help your users while avoiding customer support time.

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Know Your Audience

Who are you? Who who, who who?

He really wants to know.

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Know Your Audience

Be Personal• Include personalized content

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BobTina

Dave

KateJon

Know Your Audience

Be Gentle• Don’t go overboard, use the space efficiently.

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Know Your Audience

Be Relevant • Present applicable, targeted offers

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Know Your Audience

Know Your Interaction Lifecycle• How do your clients react with your

application?• What is the typical path a customer takes

when making a decision to purchase?

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Know Your Audience

Know Your Customer’s Interaction LifecycleMap your application’s transactional work flow:Example Work Flow1. Email Validation2. Sign-Up Completion3. First Purchase4. Shipping Notification5. Delivery Follow-up

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Know Your Audience

Example Work Flow1. Email Validation2. Sign-Up Completion3. First Purchase4. Shipping Notification5. Delivery Follow-up

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Complementary Marketing Message

- Account Completion- Product Walk-Throughs

Know Your Audience

Example Work Flow1. Email Validation2. Sign-Up Completion3. First Purchase4. Shipping Notification5. Delivery Follow-up

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Complementary Marketing Message

- Further engagement, push next steps

- Product Recommendations

Know Your Audience

Example Work Flow1. Email Validation2. Sign-Up Completion3. First Purchase4. Shipping Notification5. Delivery Follow-up

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Complementary Marketing Message

- Recommendations- Social Sharing reminders

Know Your Audience

Example Work Flow1. Email Validation2. Sign-Up Completion3. First Purchase4. Shipping Notification5. Delivery Follow-up

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Complementary Marketing Message

- “Thank You”s- Social Sharing reminders

Know Your Audience

Example Work Flow1. Email Validation2. Sign-Up Completion3. First Purchase4. Shipping Notification5. Delivery Follow-up

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Complementary Marketing Message

- Surveys- Proactive Support

Know Your Audience

• Pro-Tips: – Don’t repeat yourself. – Aim, then fire– Weekly Summaries:

Consolidate the transactional notifications to increase your ability to engage your customers

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Measuring Your Results

• Metrics To Track– Open Rate• Unique Opens / Deliveries • Reflects on the effectiveness of your subject lines, the

timing of your message, and the strength of the call-to-action implied

– Click Rate• Unique Clicks / Deliveries• Measures the strength of the call-to-action and the

perceived benefits

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Measuring Your Results

• Metrics To Track– Email-To-Action• From Open to Purchase • Open -> Click -> Landing Page -> Desired Action• Find weak-points in your customer interaction cycles• Desired Actions: Purchase, Sign-Up, Engagement

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Measuring Your Results

• Tools To Use– Multiple-Link Tracking Reports• Show where in the email recipients are clicking• Help you tailor and adjust your messaging to put the

most important links where users are most likely to click

– A/B Testing• Automatically test out content variations to send our

messages with proven mark-up

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Measuring Your Results

• Tools To Use– Content Versioning• Allows you to track changes to similar content over

time

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Version 1

• 13% Click

Version2 • 14% Click

Live Version

• 15% Click

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Example

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Key Takeaways

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Questions?

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Carly Brantzcarly.brantz@sendgrid.com@carlybrantz

Brian O’NeillBrian.oneill@sendgrid.com@emailpm

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