Ask Us: How to Break the Email Jinx?

Sales cycles are seldom closed with just website optimization, re-targeting ads are also a great feature but these two alone cannot complete the cycle. The real tool you should be looking at is Email-Notifications! No this is not one of those email marketing phenomenons of the by gone area. But a new method of marketing and up selling from the old mode of communication with a new set of rules.

So what is, email notifications and why are they important to you

Basically email notifications are small set of emails sent out via auto-responders, when the customer walks in on some trigger points inside your application or website. Just like Facebook sends an email when a friend comments or likes your status update, emails ought to be sent out on for some key trigger points such as when a prospect signs up or makes a purchase.

Why is this relevant? In subscription businesses prospects tend to realize that by subscribing they are committing to a long term relationship and hence they try to familiarize themselves with the product before signing the dotted line. Re targeting ads are good to keep the prospect’s interest burning but with some well-crafted emails, you could plan a covert coup from the prospect’s mailbox.

Mark the Trigger Points

Each application, website is unique its own perspective and SaaS, Web Agencies, E-commerce all have subscription needs. Nevertheless the vertical your business stands in, every business’s interaction funnel is the same.  And when the prospects complete a certain action inside the funnel, an auto-responder email should be fired to keep the interest burning inside their heads, these are the trigger points. An e-commerce store might consider triggers such as when a prospect lands on their home page, subscribes to social media, subscribes to the monthly club. While a SaaS might consider trigger points at signup for a trial, trial expiring and become an active customer. In addition to this subscription business can take a step ahead in triggering emails when the customer’s credit card is failing or about to expire and politely tempting them to renew their credit card details. Here’s what else could trigger emails from inside ChargeBee.

Personalize Your Conversation

This one’s no longer secret! The era of Dear Customer or the other arbitrary words is bygone. The need for emails to be personalized is stressed enough and just about everyone now supports mail-merge fields. But one chapter that goes untold for subscription businesses is the need for extra fields.

As I said, subscription businesses need to rely on email notifications for solidifying their relationships. And apart from names and phone numbers in ChargeBee, the mail merge fields go into the details of what dunning attempt the transaction is on, or even pinpoint to each line items present in the invoice.

Oh! If you haven’t configured something yet, don’t worry we got you covered with some neat defaults.

The Transactional Mail Jinx

Though transactional mails look redundant or stale but with a good fat click rate averaging around 52%, these emails are a gold mine for extra sales. When a recurring charge is being levied on your customers, ChargeBee lets you send an invoice. Sometimes the need arises for emailing your customer expanding a bit more on the transaction or its status, or their credit card status whether it’s failing or expiring. These emails tend to have a huge click rate, but would this be enough to motivate the customer to open your website, navigate through to update their credit card details? No, but a much neater option would be to have a neat link for the customer to immediately jump through the hassles and update the card in one click. You could even tempt a slipping away customer with an appropriate coupon added into the email.

Crisp Text or Sleek HTML or Alluring Images, the Endless Debate

Every marketer’s has been part of this debate: plain text or polished HTML or wavy images, which one’s better. Text mails are simple, they look precise and no fluff and most important they look consistent on all platforms. The world we work in is surrounded by HTML objects, with the ability to size, structure and have click-able portions inside the email and this is the reason HTML emails still pack a punch. And finally, off-late the websites are obsessing over image based designs and the same can be said in emails too, marketers are luring customers in with alluring high resolution images. So now which one’s sells or which one’s fluff, is an endless debate. But, while the jury’s out why be pampered with the possibility of all three.

Regardless of the meteoric rise of social media, emails still remain key in the merchant-customer relationship. With these nitty-gritty features master the art of emailing in subscription businesses. Or if you are an emailing Zen master you could flex your muscles with your own SMTP setup or even better make use of our free integration with the super cool MailChimp.