If your website does anything more than just display content, chances are it sends out what are called "transactional emails" to admins and other users. This is especially true for e-commerce sites, but are part of any web app that provides even rudimentary functionality.
What are Transactional Emails?
These are emails that are part of the normal process of interacting with website. As an example, a typical e-commerce will have the following transactional emails, at a minimum:
- Order Confirmation - you get this when you complete an order on the site
- New Account Creation - you get this after you complete your first order, or after you sign up for an account
- Forgot Password - you've forgotten your password, so the website sends instructions on how to reset it
So they can be triggered by a user action, but they can also be time-based, such as appointment reminder emails or abandoned cart emails.
The Problem of Taking Transactional Emails for Granted
Since a website sends so many of them, and its a matter of expectation, its easy to not give them a lot of thought. Many systems, including Drupal, send them out automatically with no configuration required. Because of this, and because of the sheer volume, they are not given the weight they should be. Like being flooded with snowflakes, we forget the power each individual one can have when given a closer look.
But website owners should look closer. Since they are a part of the process of the website, they can have a direct effect on revenue and success. And in the case of something like an abandoned cart email, they can also serve as a powerful marketing tool that draws customers back in and re-engages them.
- Is the wording on your emails effective? Does it convey what it needs to convey?
- Is it clear? Does the user know what the have to click and when? Perhaps they are getting confused, or the subject does not lead to them opening the email.
- Do you know how many of your transactional emails are being dumped into spam folders? Probably more than you think.
Deliverability is the most critical issue. If they aren't getting delivered, what is the point? Since most transactional emails are just sent by website code, they probably come from a server that isn't optimized or managed for email. The IP address might be blacklisted on certain spam filters and lists, for whatever reason.
You can look up these lists yourself, but that takes time, and you have to be diligent: your IP could be on a list tomorrow when it was clear of that same list yesterday. And when you get down to it, you're blind anyway, as you don't even know the success rate of your emails in the first place.
Deliverability is a problem with email in general, but usually, whoever provides your email takes care of these issues. People and organizations automatically put a high level of importance of the deliverability of their personal or business email.
Likewise, if you have an email list and do email marketing campaigns, the issue of deliverability is obvious. Of course you want to make sure people are getting these emails in their inbox. This is one of the main reasons services like Constant Contact, iContact, and Mailchimp exist. Email delivery is an entire industry in itself. You don't have the time to manage all of the technical issues, IP address reputation, and blacklists yourself. You just want to focus on creating good content that people will respond to.
You should have the exact same desire for your transactional emails. Because, like your official marketing email opt-in list, transactional emails are sent to people who have "opted in." You are sending information to a willing participant who has your attention, even if for just a brief moment. Don't waste the opportunity.
Ensuring Delivery of Transactional Emails
Just like there are dedicated services to handle delivery and analytics of your specific marketing emails, there are several services that can help you do the same thing with transactional emails. Emails are sent through their servers, so you don't have to worry as much about the reputation of your own server and IP address.
All of these provide some form of analytics for tracking bounces, open rates and clicks. If you are using Drupal, setting them up is as simple as installing a module and putting in your API keys.
From the makers of Mailchimp. This is our main recommendation, because they give you 12,000 emails per month for free. After that, their pricing is very competitive. If you have a small store, you might never send more than 12,000 emails per month.
With a free option like this, if transactional emails are important for your business, you have no excuse to remain blind. Mandrill also offers split-testing capabilities, so you can test different text and layouts.
The only negative is that they have no real support structure in place, other than a basic ticketing system. They usually respond quickly, but if phone support is important to you, look at other offerings.
SendGrid is one of the larger players in the space. They have the advantage of also offering regular email to customers, so even your business email needs could be handled by them. They are $.10 per 1,000 emails, if you pay as you go. However, if you get one of their monthly plans, starting at $9.95, you get access to their phone support. This is a very reasonable price for what you get.
In addition, at higher plan levels, you get access to their Parse API. This means that your customers can reply to an email, and SendGrid can help you react accordingly, looking at what they wrote and even scanning attachments. This can then trigger events where you can do what you want with that data.
This has some interesting applications that are beyond the scope of this article, but know that it can be useful and help with your customer engagement.
Postmark has a single pricing scheme: $1.50 per thousand emails. This is more than some others, but they do have discounts if you buy in bulk. If your transactional email needs are high, then the pricing will make more sense for you.
They also offer inbound email services like SendGrid, and can parse email contents and attachments, allowing you to act on those events and resources.
