Emails are used to either promote products and services or to carry out business transactions. These emails are known as Promotional and Transactional emails. In this guide, we will discuss what they are and how you can benefit from using them.
Table of contents
- What are promotional emails?
- Types of promotional emails
- What are transactional emails?
- Types of transactional emails
- Difference between promotional and transactional emails
- When to use promotional and transactional email campaigns?
- What is AMP for emails?
- Sending promotional & transactional emails with Mailmodo
- Wrapping up
What are promotional emails?
A promotional email is a business advertisement to notify potential and existing clients about invitations, offers, announcements, new campaigns, and lucrative deals. These are compact packages of information with a powerful call to action.
Few uses of promotional emails are:
Attracting customers: The primary motive is to get customers interested enough to promote an offering to persuade them to make a purchase. The need for promotional emails is to spread the word about your brand. These send a positive signal to build the customer’s confidence towards the commodity that you provide.
Make a loyal customer base: Promotional emails leave a lasting impression on a customer if they like a product or offer that you’re providing. Customers would like to revisit when they find products similar to their liking.
Types of promotional emails
Promotional emails can be of the following types:
1. Time-sensitive offers
Promotional emails can contain details for time-dependent campaigns like seasonal (Christmas, Diwali, Summer haul, etc.). They can also include campaigns that will go live at a specific time and for a specific amount of days.
2. Alluring offers, sales, and giveaways
A customer will always be interested in sales and discounts. An email with instructions on participating and winning should be sent when there is a giveaway contest. As your subscribers have already shown an interest in your brand by signing up for your email list, it is a sure-shot way to convert them into buyers by promoting your upcoming and current offers.
3. Members-only deals
A customer can be on different ladder steps in their journey with a brand or company. Usually, the company would give additional benefits to their registered members like free shipping, early delivery, etc. Hence, such promotional emails are sent to only those who have a membership or are part of the community.
4. Product launch
Many people have established trust in a company or brand. They are eager to know about new products by that brand. Promotional emails are sent to give brief information about these new ventures of the company. When your subscribers are encountered with the right deals, you could turn them into clients.
5. New stock and arrivals
Many times a customer’s cart item might have gone out of stock at the moment. Promotional emails reminding them that a product is back will help increase sales. New arrivals are also informed via mails to generate leads. Product launches do not happen every day, but a smart way to constantly be in your customer’s inbox is to tell them about what’s new and trending.
Promotional emails send a positive signal to build the customer’s confidence towards the commodity that you provide.
What are transactional emails?
Transactional emails are more formal emails sent to give customers crucial information about their needs and share the updates of ongoing transactions between the customer and your business. These are usually auto-generated emails in response to the activity of the client.
Unlike promotional emails, these have become a compulsion to clear your customer’s doubts. They contain information that needs to be delivered to a candidate due to their action on your website.
Some of the applications of transactional emails are as follows:
To keep customers updated: They contain information that needs to be delivered to a candidate due to their action on your website.
Give desired information: A client might ask for certain private information like password reset, bank details, etc. These emails are sent when a client asks for them or responds to their interaction with a website.
Types of transactional emails
Transactional emails can be of the following types:
1. New registration
A confirmation email is sent to verify a new sign-up, member upgrade, or newsletter subscriber. These transaction emails are for clarification and welcoming new candidates to the team.
2. Order confirmation
Once a customer confirms the purchase, a detailed email with the product details, date and time of purchase, and other relevant information must be given. It works as proof plus a follow-up email.
3. Transaction updates
This is an important kind of transactional email containing details of payment. It might include a receipt paid for purchase or details about the process of payment.
4. Shipment details
A customer would like to know the details of delivery and tentative date to receive the parcel. Many major companies have started to provide a link in the email itself to track their orders in real-time.
5. Feedback emails
One of the best ways to make good connections with the audience is to take their feedback about the service, product, and other concerns. It provides credibility to your website when new customers find positive reviews and feedback.
Lack of transactional email service will leave your clients hanging and unaware of the procedure, which would further result in a lack of interest in your service. Most businesses prefer a pre-set response to the user’s interaction with the website or product.
Promotional and transactional emails differ in more ways than just their aesthetics. Check out the next section to point out one from the other.
Difference between promotional and transactional emails
Emails are used for increasing trust in the brand, staying updated with changes, and low-cost promotion. They are a fast, cheap, accessible, and easily replicable form of marketing. Here are the main differences for you to distinguish between them.
| Criteria | Promotional emails | Transactional emails |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Promotional emails are used to promote offers, giveaways, and brand announcements to customers | Transactional emails are pieces of information needed to update customers like bank statements, shipment details, etc. |
| Usage | Promotional emails come in handy when there are campaigns, exclusive deals, sales, etc to inform subscribers and users. | Transactional emails succor users to be notified about account details like receipts, password reset, etc. |
| Automation | Promotional emails are more spontaneous and demand-based. For example, Flipkart's Big Billion Days are periodic hence are not sent automatically. | Transactional emails are predetermined and are the consequence of a customer’s action. For example, an order confirmation email to confirm the purchase. |
| Interaction | Promotional emails contain click-on, swipe, and know more options, making them interactive for the user. | Transactional emails generally do not contain advertisements, but they can have links for feedback and downloads. |
| Trigger | Promotional emails are triggered when there are attractive offers that will catch the consumer’s eye and will help to pedal a brand. | Transactional emails are triggered and pre-programmed to be sent as a result of the customer’s engagement with your brand or website |
| Turnoffs | Using the word ‘Donate’ can lower open rates by 50%. Over-hyping or not giving any real value can damage the brand name. One must use smart wordings for captivating attention. | Transactional Emails are sent to update the consumer, on the possibility of cross-selling and feedback collection. |
When to use promotional and transactional email campaigns?
In this segment, we’ll point out when each type of mail should be used. The most successful businesses use integrated transactional and promotional email strategies. This means that branding, messaging, and speech are conveyed through transactional emails and promotional emails.
1. Promotional email campaigns
91% of US adults like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with, and it is fairly only relevant ones. Promotional emails are usually a by-product of resolute campaigns for specific time limits.
You should depend on promotional emails:
When you want to promote your product: Promotional emails are primarily used to spread cognizance about your product and brand. Use promotional email templates that have been proven effective to market yourself well.
When you want to send a seasonal offer to your users: For example, every Black Friday, Diwali, Halloween, and Christmas sale is different than the previous year. Hence promotional emails have to be crafted carefully and only to be used when a requirement strikes.
When there is a new offering or product release: Are you giving special discounts, bankable and reliable deals? Let your customers know how it will be profitable for them. Promotional emails will attract interested customers to look at the offers provided.
But make sure not to rely entirely upon promotional emails to boost traffic. If you do not build a real connection with your customers, they will not stay for the long run. Carefully monitor the response of your promotional emails and find ways that work best for your organization.
2. Transactional email campaigns
Transactional emails are obligatory for any application with user authentication. Most businesses prefer a pre-set response to the user’s interaction with the website or product.
Transactional emails are necessary to facilitate a transaction and provide service. When used adroitly can deepen consumer relations and improve communication.
You should rely on Transactional emails:
For user authentication: Transactional emails are obligatory for any application with user authentication. Most websites choose email verification to verify credentials entered by the user are genuine. Double opt-in emails enable new users to confirm that they want your emails to be sent to them. Sending a double opt-in email verifies that the subscriber owns the email address, which can help avoid spam and increase the deliverability of emails.
To keep customers informed: Customers must receive emails for order confirmations, password reminders, product notifications, or account balance updates. Emails of order approval show that the transaction has been successful and the business is taking action, making the consumers feel safe about the transaction.
For important private details: Transactional emails may be used to alert clients of substantial changes in legal documents and policies of their company. They may also contain an element of security or privacy. The information is only for the intended recipient’s eyes, such as a bank statement or a notification from their accountant.
Check out our guide to know more about transactional email best practices to follow when creating one.
What is AMP for emails?
APM stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is an open-sourced service provided by Google to develop faster mobile pages. Google in 2016 has come with including AMP features in your mail itself.
Mailmodo is a no-code platform for the creation of such interactive and dynamic AMP emails. By adopting AMP in your mail, you can help your customers book meeting, purchase products, send reviews, etc., without having to open another tab.
Why should you rely on Mailmodo to provide you with the best service? See for yourself.
Sending promotional & transactional emails with Mailmodo
We here at Mailmodo take your email marketing growth very seriously. Mailmodo is a complete email marketing solution enabling users to create and send app-like interactive emails to improve email conversions.
Let us give you all assistance that Mailmodo can provide for your emails:
| Promotional Emails | Transactional emails |
|---|---|
| Promotional emails are a key ingredient of business communication and promotion. | Transactional emails are a necessity for a business-to-customer interaction and vice versa. |
| With our facilities, you will use a better depiction of the product in a cart, along with eCommerce carts within the mail. | Transactional emails tend to be formal and direct. With AMP mail by Mailmodo, transactional emails will engage the customer and increase conversion. |
| Customers can easily view complete descriptions of items and place orders in their email itself without the hassle of having to visit the website and re-read the details. | When you use AMP mail, your readers will be able to view all the information within the email. They don’t have to rubber band between the website and their mailbox. |
| We know with this competitive market the characteristics of a product keep changing. Some brands might want to give discounts and reduce costs and others may run out of the desired item for time being. | You can make interactive emails and avoid unnecessary, boring, and information-stuffed emails. With AMP mail transactional emails will engage the customer and increase conversion. |
| With this constant change, the process of updating your customers is tiresome. But using AMP service different attributes like price quantity, types, etc are automatically updated in the mail. | You can provide the whole customer journey plan in the email itself. It is the entire journey from adding to cart, confirming the order, payment procedure, and delivery can be done in one place. Our biggest flex is auto-scheduling the emails. You can set a trigger for sending an email in response to the client’s needs, beforehand. |
These features will help you get open rates and save you from getting filtered. This will simplify the process and make it more efficient. Your enterprise will grow effortlessly once you become proficient in using promotional and transactional emails to your advantage.
Wrapping up
Emails have been around for more than three decades. They still are a key ingredient of business communication. Transactional emails are one-to-one emails to provide relevant and mandatory information that a customer requests or needs to stay up to date. Promotional emails are more like an advertisement to get recognition. To level up your income generation, you first need to get the targeted audience to notice you.
Mailmodo provides an interactive email campaign platform that will sore your business to heights. Users can interact with any advertising campaign sent through email inside the comfort of their inbox without having to redirect to another tab. Sign up straight away for free and let the growth of your business fire up!
Mailmodo provides an interactive email campaign platform that will sore your business to heights. Users can interact with any advertising campaign sent through email inside their inbox's comfort without having to redirect to another tab. Sign up straight away for free and let the growth of your business fire up!
What you should do next
Hey there, thanks for reading till the end. Here are 3 ways we can help you grow your business:
Talk to an email expert. Need someone to take your email marketing to the next level? Mailmodo’s experts are here for you. Schedule a 30-minute email consultation. Don’t worry, it’s on the house. Book a meet here.
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