How to Get More Repeat Customers? Make sure your Confirmation Emails are both Useful – and Great!

Good transactional emails show the customer that you respect their time by telling them exactly what they need to know. In an increasingly time constrained world, this can do wonders for your customer service reputation. The fact is: your "potential" repeat customers at first just don't trust you. However, when they get good confirmation emails they feel like you care about them because they see you immediately taking care of their needs. This article will show you what your three critical goals should be when designing confirmation emails and some basic – often overlooked – tips and tricks for making sure those emails make it to a customer's email inbox.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Access to your company's email server.
• Good writing -- and copywriting -- skills.
• A positive attitude.

1. Convince me that confirmation emails are really that important OK, you're reading this either because you already know the importance of good confirmation emails -- or because you need to be convinced: if you're not convinced, you'll never be motivated to make any changes or improvements to your confirmation emails -- so here we go:
   
   The primary reason is that after your customers leave your website, a confirmation email is your best -- & likely only -- opportunity to 1) communicate your value (i.e., reinforce / remind the customer what you have to offer), 2) provide a critical and valuable service (i.e., effectively communicate the current transactions that have occurred between you), and 3) strengthen and enhance the relationship with your customers (i.e., show them you care).
   
   An accurate description of confirmation emails are those emails that communicate the transaction(s) that have occurred between yourself and your customer. You may be surprised – if not outright shocked – by the number of different types of “transactional emails” that you could send out:
   
   - Order and service confirmations.
   - Shipment notifications.
   - Reservation confirmations and e-tickets.
   - Billing and payment notices.
   - Cancellations, returns, refunds, rebates, and bonuses.
   - Information-request responses.
   - Customer service messages.
   - Failure notices.
   - Registration and account information.
2. Help me! “OK,” you’re saying, “I’m convinced this is an important way to create repeat customers, but -- now I’m also overwhelmed & confused! Exactly how can I make sure my confirmation emails are effective?”
   
   The critical & most important step is to simply be aware that effective transactional emails share three critical features. Let's look at those one at a time.
   
   An international team of usability experts (Nielsen J., Molich R., Snyder C., & Farrell, S., 'E-commerce User Experience,' Nielsen Norman Group, 2001) studied the usefulness of transactional email messages and came to a conclusion that you may not find surprising: reading, filing, and responding to email is a time consuming pain in the butt. They state:
   
   “When users "check their email, they're dealing with multiple requests for their time, including messages from their boss, colleagues, and family. People just want to be done with most email, and quickly move past anything that is not absolutely essential.”
   
   They found that effective transactional emails fulfill 3 goals:
   
   First: Make sure your transactional emails are NOT mistaken for spam.
   
   The first goal should be self-evident: Spam is a huge problem, and your customers' email programs are getting increasingly sophisticated about automatically detecting and eliminating email before your customers even see it.
   
   If your transactional emails do not fulfill the first goal - well, achieving the other two goals won't matter.
   
   Generally to avoid having messages summarily deleted from your customer's in-box, you must put "effective" information in the "FROM:" and "SUBJECT:" fields in the e-mail header.
   
   Fortunately, this is easy to do: make sure the FROM: field shows two things: your brand name and a clear transaction description.
   
   For example, Nielsen et al. found that effective senders included reservations@hilton, [e-mail], and [e-mail]. Do this and both humans and spam detection algorithms are unlikely to mistake your email for spam. Also, the description should be 20 characters or less to avoid truncation in the "in-box" view).
   
   Nielsen et al. also discovered that only certain subject lines were effective. The best subject line explicitly related to a customer-initiated transaction. For example, they found that "Your Order Has Shipped" was the best subject line for an order shipped confirmation email. Short, sweet, to the point -- that's what your customers want.
3. Next: Make sure your emails enhance your company's reputation for customer service. This will increase your customer's confidence in dealing with you.
   
   You can achieve this goal by the simple act of just putting in the time and effort to send out well thought-out emails. Make it a goal to look for ways to use emails to enhance your company's reputation for customer service. Get help from a good marketing expert if you need it. This will automatically increase your customer's confidence when dealing with you and it will increase the likelihood they'll become repeat customers.
4. Finally: Make sure your transactional emails have enough information so that your customers will not feel a need to call in with questions.
   
   Reducing customers call in' s is a win-win for you and your customer in terms of both time and money, i.e., telephone call centers are expensive, and talking to customers on the phone is time consuming and can be a constant interruption for your people.
   
   How do you do this exactly? To ensure that your email answers common questions, run some simple, easy to do, in-house "usability" tests on some of your emails: recruit some of your employees, your family, your friends, and ask them to place a test order through your system and then ask them if the confirmation email they receive contains all the information they need.
   
   Simple usability testing like this is as overlooked as it is powerful. It can be an eye opening experience, and it takes little time or effort. Done throughly, it pays off in future dividends -- big time.
   
   To Sum up:
   
   Good transactional emails show the customer that you respect their time by telling them exactly what they need to know. In an increasingly time constrained world, this can do wonders for your customer service reputation. The fact is, your potential repeat customers at first just don't trust you, but when they get good confirmation emails, they feel like you care about them because it shows you are taking care of their needs immediately.
   
   By the same token , sloppy, poorly designed, hard to understand transactional emails can erode your company's credibility.
   
   Nielsen et al. "asked users to rate their level of trust in each sender on a 1 to 7 scale; poor design elements decreased a company's ratings by up to two points. Lack of contact information was a primary concern, as was sending too much email, but even things like not getting to the point quickly could hurt a company. Remember, users are extremely busy and stressed when reading email. Wasting their time makes them feel like you don't care. Worse, you become part of the problem, not the solution."
   
   Confirmation email and automated messages are really the only way for you to connect with your customers after they leave your site. Effectively designed, they successfully "close the loop" in e-commerce and other transactions and thus increase the likelihood of turning that one successful sale into repeat business.
   
   Any ya can't have enough of that, can ya?
   
   ~ Best
   Christopher Skyi

Tips & Warnings

• Great transaction emails can be the basis of great marketing. To start to learn more about this, see the Resources section at the end of this article.
• If you're still not getting the results you want after running some simple, easy to do, in-house "usability" tests and re-designing your transaction email, don't hesitate to consult a good qualified marketing expert. That's their jobs -- to help you.