What are confirmation emails and how to use them?
In this blog, we uncover the basics of confirmation emails, some best practices – and also how using them increases customer engagement. Learn more!
In our series on email, we mentioned what email automation is. This was followed by what transactional emails are and how they should be used. And in this part of the series we will look at confirmation emails, what they are – and how businesses can use them to increase engagement.
What is a confirmation email?
Confirmation emails are emails that businesses send to their users following a user action to confirm said action.
Whenever users perform an action with your business, they should receive an email confirming that this action has been performed and processed. You can think of it as reassuring acknowledgement on your part – and this is something customers appreciate.
Why email confirmation is important
Confirmation emails serve the important function of confirming a transaction. Customers expect confirmation of any interaction – and this is something confirmation emails achieve.
Imagine if you, as a customer, completed a purchase online and you didn’t receive an email confirming said purchase? I know I’d get anxious about that.
This is because confirmation emails are triggered by user actions. They expect something in return. And because they expect an email, they’re more likely to open the messages you send.
And this is how businesses can use email confirmation to improve engagement. Open rates for confirmation emails are at well above 50%. This generates more than 80% higher click rates and increases sales.
Customers interact more with confirmation emails
+50%
open rates
80%
higher click rates
This represents an opportunity for businesses to collect valuable information from their customers to create a strong relationship moving forward.
Here are some more reasons why confirmation emails are important:
Confirmed email address
When interacting with a business, customers often use their primary email address. Having this valuable customer contact information – as well as the necessary permission from customers (opt-ins) – gives you the cornerstone for building a lasting customer relationship.
Having a confirmed email address also helps businesses avoid targeting so-called spam traps, which can lower a business’ sender reputation score.
If a user hasn’t opened an email in 12 months, or they haven’t confirmed their email address, it can be considered very likely that the address is a spam trap address.
Sending to email to a spam trap address can lower your sender reputation score and result in your legitimate promo emails landing in spam boxes – instead of confirmed email recipient inboxes.
Build detailed customer profiles
By engaging with customers, you’ll be able to develop highly detailed customer profiles based on their patterns and behavior throughout the customer journey.
This data helps you improve customer experiences by accessing detailed customer history for fast, proactive support or personalized offers.
Boost CTR and sales with relevant offers
Leverage customer data to send personalized offers based on order history. For example, your data shows that a buyer restocks a particular item every other week. Send them a relevant reminder with a discount code and watch engagement go through the roof!
Nurture loyalty
Avoid making customers anxious with confirmation emails that notify them of each next step of their order.
A well-designed customer journey confirmation email flow will help keep your customers informed from the time they place their order to when it arrives at their door.
Your customers will appreciate being kept in the loop throughout, and will reward you with lasting loyalty.
Confirmation email best practices
Email confirmations can be sent at any point throughout the customer journey. For this reason, a single confirmation email template won’t be enough to cover your bases.
A best practice is to craft confirmation email templates that cover several steps of your customer or user journey. Use them as a guide to help progress your customers towards a conversion.
Since confirmation emails are triggered by new customer actions, they can include up-to-date customer information. Using this fresh data can help you populate your customer data profile to create highly personalized messaging. Making the most of this data can even help create up sell and cross sell opportunities.
Here are some more confirmation email best practices to keep in mind:
Short and on point
Keep the content of your confirmation emails short and on point. Ideally, the message should relate to the completed step of the customer journey.
Start with a subject heading that reflects your brand tone of voice. Follow that up with a brief, personalized greeting and confirmation of the completed step.
While keeping mindful to stay on point, you can use the opportunity to offer more information via helpful links.
By keeping the confirmation messages short, relevant, and helpful, you will show your customers that you value their time.
Mobile optimized
More and more customers are completing entire customer journeys on their mobile devices. Keep this in mind when designing confirmation email templates. If your confirmation emails aren’t optimized for mobile, you may risk having customers abandon the customer journey before they even get started.
Stand out
While taking care to ensure your confirmation emails can be read on mobile devices, make sure that your message also stands out.
It can be as simple as adding a relevant emoji to the subject header, or your logo in the message body. Make your message stand out to avoid being drowned out in a crowded inbox.
Call to action
Adding a call-to-action in your confirmation email footer can help you expand your customer engagement. For example, adding a CTA to follow your brand social media gives you a new channel to engage customers over, enhancing your omnichannel strategy.
Confirmation email examples
Confirmation emails will generally fall into one of four main categories. These are:
Order confirmations
This type of confirmation email is sent to users who completed an order for goods or services. It’s also an opportunity for cross-sell and upselling – but make sure the proper subscriptions are in place.
Order confirmation subsets include booking confirmations and reservations, for example, as well.
Registration confirmations
These can include account creation – but also cancellations. It’s helpful to include useful links for customer support – or links to reactivate cancelled accounts.
Payment confirmations
Payment and related confirmation emails (which can include subscriptions, for example) confirm that your business has received or is in the process of receiving a payment.
Include invoices and returns policies, as well as any shipping details for physical goods.
How to create confirmation emails
Whether you’re using an email integration or other means, confirmation emails follow a simple structure. Here are some basic guidelines on how to create confirmation emails:
- Subject header: Add a relevant subject header to your confirmation email. Follow the mullet rule – business in front and then party in the back. For email subject headers, this means that if you’re confirming a payment, your best bet for a header would be “Payment confirmation”. After that, you can get creative with order numbers and so on. For example “Payment confirmation – thank you for payment #12345”. This makes for easy browsing later on – if your customer has any issues, they can reference their payment from the email subject line.
- Message body: Use customer data whenever possible to add a personal touch. Start with a personal greeting using the customer’s name. Next, specify what action you are confirming using clear language. Add any customer actions using descriptive links, if necessary. For example, you can add a link for customers to track shipping of their order.
- Email footer: Add any useful contact information relevant to your customers’ interaction. For example, add sales support contact details for any sales. Don’t forget to add your company’s logo. This makes your message more reassuring – which is what confirmation emails are all about.
- Attachments: Don’t forget to add any attachments, such as order confirmations, invoices for payment confirmations, shipping receipt confirmations, etc. Additionally, add a link to your customer’s profile on your site where they can access these documents as needed.
Follow these basic guidelines – with some flourishes of your own – to make the most of this must-have customer communication tool.
Conclusion
Confirmation emails are a must-have customer communication tool. They provide customers a strong sense of assurance while providing you with an engagement channel rich with customer data.
Get started with confirmation emails by taking advantage of our free trial, and take your customer communication strategy to the next level.
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