At sendwithus we see the majority of transactional emails are actually a "dead end". In this talk I covered why dead end emails happen, how it's crucial for an online business to fix them, and how to identify any dead-end email you might be sending. I also cover how to optimize transactional email for opens/clicks, and different strategies for engaging transactional email. A fundamental thesis in this talk is that transactional email is an extension of your product, and it should be treated with the same care. Your email experience needs to match your product experience, and in truth, your transactional email should be owned by your customer-facing teams (marketers).

1. Dead-End
Transactional Email
Matt Harris
sendwithus.com
@mrmch

2. Hi, I’m Matt
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From Canada (Victoria, BC)
CEO/founder sendwithus.com
SendGrid partner
Over 10 years experience
building web products

3. Objectives
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Show what dead-end emails are
Why they’re important to your business
Provide a few examples of good and bad emails
Explain how to fix bad emails

4. Transactional Email
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One to one
Very important to user engagement
Closely tied to actions in your website or product
People like it

5. Transactional Email :(
● We often see “dead-end” emails
Definition: dead-end email
“An email that does not contain
a clear call to action or next
step for your user.”

6. Why do dead-end emails matter?
● Part of your users website workflow
● Discontinuous experience
Dead-end emails create poor user
experiences

7. How does this happen?
Marketer owned landing page
Developer owned email

8. How does this happen?
Landing Page
Transactional Email
● owned by marketer
● optimized for
engagement
● customer-centric
● owned by developer
● focus is information
● information-centric

9. Example: Welcome Email

10. Details: Welcome Email
● very hard email to read
● no call to action
● very clear goal,
“click the blue link”

11. Example: Notification Email

12. Details: Notification Email
● no call to action
● unclear purpose
● clear context
● direct call to action

13. Example: Payment Receipt

14. Details: Payment Receipt
● no call to action
● broken formatting
● clear call to action
● good presentation of
information
● AirBnb has clearly put
effort into this email

15. How to identify dead-end email
Open Rate
Click Rate
High
Low
High
Yay!
Subject
Low
Body, CTA
Subject,
Body, CTA

16. Granular analytics, per email template
Open Rate
Click Rate
High
Low
High
Yay!
Subject
Low
Body, CTA
Subject,
Body, CTA

17. Granular analytics, per email template
Open Rate
Click Rate
High
Low
High
Yay!
Subject
Low
Body, CTA
Subject,
Body, CTA

18. Granular analytics, per email template
Open Rate
Click Rate
High
Low
High
Yay!
Subject
Low
Body, CTA
Subject,
Body, CTA

19. How to identify dead-end email
Visual Identification
Ask yourself:
● Is it clear who this email is from?
● Is it clear what my next step is?
● Is there an opportunity for me to engage further?

20. Increase Open Rate

21. Increase Click Rate

22. One last thing - A/B test!
● Don’t assume. Test.
● Treat email like a landing page
● Email is complicated, you can test
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subject line
intro text
body style
headings
call to action

23. Wrapping up
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Email is an extension of your product
Email experience has to match product
Identify dead-ends
Put your customer-focused team in control
Test everything

24. Thanks!
Matt Harris
matt@sendwithus.com
@mrmch