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A customer has placed an order on your website. This order needs to be confirmed, details clarified and… take advantage of a great opportunity – to contact the customer again. After the transaction is completed, the customer receives a reminder email with further instructions on the transaction. These emails are usually sent automatically. So what should this email contain?
What should a confirmation email contain?
Like most transactional emails, order confirmation emails are necessary to let the customer know what is happening with their order. Emails are sent to: confirm an order or delivery, clarify information, conduct a post-purchase survey
A standard order confirmation email should include
- An order confirmation message and a thank you message
- The date of the order
- Product details, including product name, price and quantity
- The total amount of the order
- Billing and delivery address
- Method of payment
- Shipping method
- A ‘View Order’ button to take you back to the shop.
- Estimated delivery time
- Return and exchange policy explaining the return window and any return requirements.
- Customer service contact information
A memorable email subject line
Did you know that 69% of email recipients classify emails as spam based on the subject line alone? When creating your newsletter, avoid spam tactics, exclamation marks and capital letters are misleading and discouraging.
We decide whether or not to open an email based on a cursory reading of the subject line. That’s why the subject line is often one of the first parameters in A/B testing.
The five most effective phrases to use in your subject lines when sending order confirmation emails:
- Thank you for your order
- Confirming your order on …. #….
- Online store order received – order number
- Great news! Your order has been received #….
- We have received your order from the website … [order number]
When to dispatch?
After paying for their order, customers should receive an immediate response from the seller. They can call back, send a message or send an email. A confirmation email is usually sent immediately, and this process is best automated. Otherwise, the customer will become anxious and contact the salesperson, increasing the workload of the sales or customer service department. Stelvel (Bulgaria) has developed its own system for evaluating and monitoring the effectiveness of post-sales customer service.
Before sending an email to a wide audience, look at it through the eyes of the recipient. Send it to yourself or to a colleague. This will ensure that all buttons and links work correctly.
Visual content
Open rate – The percentage of order confirmation emails that recipients open is quite high at 60%. As consumers become more accustomed to seeing visuals online, emails with images tend to have higher open and click-through rates than emails without images. Infographics and videos in the body of the email generate a lot of interest and response.
Recommendations in the email
Order confirmation emails can be personalised if you are selling non-mass market items. This is an ideal opportunity to sell additional items to those already purchased. Automate the process of adding items to an order, this will simplify the process and motivate the buyer – after all, you can add more items to an order, it’s convenient and easy.
Recommendations influence shopper behaviour, reinforce unmotivated actions, show value and increase sales. You can use a customer’s previous purchases or behaviour to suggest additions to their order:
- Bestsellers – items that are in high demand
- New” – items that have recently gone on sale, been added to the shop or catalogue.
- Related products that complement the order
- Similar products with similar features, characteristics, parameters.
- Recently viewed products, from the product page visited by the user.
- Based on previous history, ‘Customers who bought this product also bought…’.
And be sure to include information in the confirmation email about how users can change their order before submitting it. Check the shape, colour, size and text of the call-to-action button. Use alternative colours.
Despite the growing popularity of social media, forums and mobile chat, email remains one of the world’s most popular forms of communication. To increase the conversion rate of order confirmation emails, Stelvel Ltd recommends tracking and analysing metrics such as message open rate and clickability.