Category Archives: Best Practices

Transactional email can serve as a great marketing tool. With their higher deliverability rates, you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to effectively and legally (yep, we’re talking about the CAN-SPAM Act) capitalize on these communications, while still staying true to the main purpose of your email. We’ve shared a few examples (Lands’ End, Zulily, UnCommon Goods) of how you can include marketing messaging in your transactional emails, but what about some CTA suggestions? Here are 5 tried and true ways to incorporate marketing-focused CTAs into your transactional email. 1. Surveys: Gain customer feedback by asking them to…

Need a little email inspiration? Learning from your peers can be the best education. Here is a great example of a marketing email from Twitter that follows key best practices. We’ve included a brief breakdown of why we like it, what we think could be improved, and our final verdict. What Works: In an effort to alert the public to their new business program, Twitter sent promotional email to their user base inviting them to start advertising. The clear call to action backed by testimonials makes a powerful statement about proof of concept. The subject line: “@karen, gain more followers…

A few weeks ago, SendGrid’s email experts Amy Mustoe and Ryan Harris held a webcast called Google, Yahoo!, and Hotmail, Oh My! Navigating the ISP Landscape. There was so much interest in the topic that Amy and Ryan couldn’t answer all the questions during the webcast. In an effort to continue the conversation, here are responses to all the questions they were unable to get to during the webcast. For those of you who missed the webcast, access the on-demand version and learn how to stay within the good graces of the ISPs. How do we do segmentation based on…

Subscribers come and subscribers go and while it’s sad to say goodbye, that is the nature of the email marketing beast. List churn is a fact of life, but it’s important to keep a sharp eye on the key data points that will give you clues as to how serious (or normal) you list churn actually is. Here are three metrics you should pay attention to with each deployment: Hard bounce rate: How many bad addresses do you have on your list? Automatically remove these addresses when they bounce once, but also try to identify the source. If people are…

We love sharing great examples of how transactional email can be effectively used as a marketing tool. The following is from unique gifts and creative design site, UnCommon Goods. UnCommon Goods always has clever marketing emails that are relevant, on brand, and witty. Fortunately, their transactional emails are no exception—due in great part to their effective integration of marketing techniques. The following order confirmation is not only well branded, but showcases strong calls to action, and takes advantage of personalizing additional purchase suggestions for the customer based on their past buying behavior. Let’s go over some of the high points of…

What makes a great email? Rather than tell you, we’ll show you. Here is an email from Zulily, a daily deals site for moms, babies, and kids that shows how important clear messaging and branding is in a transactional email. Clear subject line: The subject line of this email clearly states the nature of the message as an order confirmation:  Zulily: New Order # 809178472. The message is succinct and contains important details about the order destination, purchased items, and the transactional total. The email is upfront with the information its sharing—it tells the customer exactly what they need to…

We’re all familiar with the hustle and bustle (and subsequent revenue increases) that happen around the holidays for almost all retailers. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and back to school, are big ones–but, what about the other special days of the year that aren’t as widely talked about? There are tons of special holidays and observances that can help give your email campaigns a little boost. For instance, did you know that April 7th is No Housework Day or that April is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month? Jump to May and you have all sorts of silly and serious…