Email Marketing

Email marketing 'should include transactional messages'
15/04/2009

Transactional messages should be used in email marketing

Issue Codes Email marketing services Retail

Businesses could do more to include transactional messages in their email marketing strategies, it has been suggested.

According to Stephanie Colleton of Return Path, most retailers do not include any promotional content in their transactional emails at present.

Writing in a DMNews column, she noted that doing so can aid product up-selling and cross-selling, thus enhancing online sales.

However, the two main barriers to this appear to be spam fears and technical issues due to the fact that many retailers use two separate systems for their email marketing and transactional messaging strategies, Ms Colleton commented.

She said: "It may make sense to start with doing simple, generic promotions to dip a toe into the water and get a benchmark for what kinds of sales these messages can generate."

Ed Henrich of ClickZ recently advised email marketing executives to ensure promotional content does not make up more than one-third of the total content of their transactional messages.