9 Transactional Emails Your Brand Needs To Be Sending

Are you maxing out the power of your email marketing? If you’re not sending these 9 automated email campaigns, you’re leaving money on the table.

We use the email automation platform Klaviyo in conjunction with Shopify to send emails based on your customers’ activity and preferences. By creating targeted audience segments, we can send messages that customers actually want to receive, which leads to more opens, click-throughs, and ultimately, conversions.

For our clients, email revenue consistently contributes between 20 and 25% of total monthly revenues. We’ve used the transactional emails below to grow our clients’ email-based revenue by as much as 1,500%.

Ready to earn more from your emails? Set up these 9 campaigns ASAP.

1. Non-Buyer Welcome

Not everyone who arrives on your website will become a customer. In fact, the vast majority of visitors will bounce without buying anything. But you don’t have to let them get away so easily.

The non-buyer welcome greets new subscribers you’ve captured with an on-site form. The form uses an offer to entice visitors to join your mailing list, like 10% off a future purchase.

This email sequence should consist of at least two messages: an initial message to welcome the subscriber to your list and deliver the offer you promised (i.e. a coupon code), and at least one more message to remind them to redeem their offer.

It’s a well established sales concept that most buyers need to have multiple touchpoints with your brand before converting into a customer. The non-buyer welcome series helps establish subsequent touchpoints after their initial visit and is a low-hanging fruit when it comes to winning more conversions. It’s not uncommon for our non-buyer welcome series to achieve conversion rates of 30% or more.

2. Browse Abandonment/Abandoned Cart

Anywhere between 60 and 80% of all online shopping carts are abandoned, with the average hovering around 67%. The abandoned cart/browse abandonment series is another high-performing transactional email that will edge your revenue upward. For this series, we create audience segments based on the products a user viewed and/or added to their cart, but did not buy.

Shortly after the visitor bounces from your site, we send an email that’s customized to remind them of the specific products they viewed and invite them to return to complete their purchase. If they fail to do so, a follow-up email a day or two later with a coupon code can help nudge them closer to converting.

3. Post Purchase Thank You/Cross Sell

The customer relationship doesn’t end once a visitor converts–far from it. It’s much easier to make a repeat sale to an existing customer than to win a new one, so encourage follow-up purchases with a thank you/cross-sell campaign.

Sent after the customer completes checkout, this campaign suggests products that are similar to or that complement the item the shopper just purchased.

4. Repeat Purchase Predictive Flow

AI presents an exciting opportunity to place a repeat purchase offer in front of your customers before they even have to come looking for it. If your product or service is one that lends itself to recurring purchases (like a beauty product or refillable houseware, for example), Klaviyo’s AI capabilities can determine the best time to send an email based on the expected date of the next order.

90% of consumers say they find marketing personalization like this ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ appealing. It’s the perfect example of sending the right email at the right time in a way that serves customers rather than just sells to them.

5. Win Back

Don’t let your hard-won customers become one-hit wonders. Re-engage shoppers that haven’t visited your store in a while with a win-back campaign.

We find that it works best to be straightforward with subscribers about the reason for your message, with language like ‘we’ve missed you’ or ‘here’s a discount to come back and shop again.’ If customers don’t respond to your win-back message, they’re good candidates for your sunset campaign (see number 9 on this list).

6. VIP Flow

Our analysis consistently shows that the top 20% of customers account for 80% of revenue. It stands to reason, then, that you should go out of your way to engage your most loyal customers.

Segment your customers by lifetime value and create content exclusively for the biggest spenders. High-value discounts, early access to new products and free gift with purchase offers are all great ways to reward your brand’s VIPs.

7. Back in Stock

Few things are more discouraging for an eCommerce customer than to find out the item you want is out of stock. Configure automatic alerts that let customers know as soon as items they’re interested in are replenished so that they can come back and complete their purchase.

To build on number 6, giving VIPs advance notice of restocks is one more way to reward your most loyal subscribers.

8. Birthday/Anniversary Discount

If you’re not already asking for a subscriber’s birthday when they sign up for your mailing list, consider adding it as a field. It’s one of the easiest and most effective transactional emails you can send to drive added revenue all year long.

Consumers don’t just love receiving birthday emails–they love clicking through and shopping from them. According to Experian, birthday emails achieve 481% higher transaction rates and result in 342% more revenue than ordinary marketing emails. And aside from being a powerful driver of sales, sending a warm birthday wish creates a meaningful brand interaction, which builds customer loyalty.

If you don’t collect subscriber birthdates, consider sending celebratory discounts to mark the annual anniversary of their first purchase. You can also create a campaign specifically aimed at gathering subscribers’ birthdays by hinting that they’ll receive a surprise on their special day.

9. Sunset Disengaged Subscribers

Quality comes before quantity with regards to the health of your mailing list. Hanging onto disengaged subscribers leads to lower open and click-through rates, which can hurt your deliverability.

Sunset disengaged subscribers on a regular basis with a breakup series. We do this by creating a segment for subscribers who’ve engaged with zero of the last three to five campaigns. They then receive an email series which attempts to re-engage them. If they don’t interact by the end of the series, they’re tagged as unengaged and cleaned from the list. Doing this quarterly is an appropriate schedule for most brands.

Removing disengaged subscribers not only helps with the metrics that contribute to deliverability, but ensures you’re only taking up the inbox space of people who actually want to hear from you.

Grow Your Email Revenue with Klaviyo and Parkfield

This list is a solid starting point of transactional emails that can help you accelerate sales, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we can do. Let Parkfield help you transform your email strategy from an afterthought to a primary, powerful revenue channel. Get in touch to schedule your free consultation today.