Mind the marketing gap - go transpromo

Transpromo marketing provides an ideal opportunity to engage customers where an electronic relationship has already been established. It is commonly used to addmarketing to transactional messages, such as invoices, statements and bills. In the same way, you can use transactional emails to extend your brand, market your services and present offers to customers regularly and effectively.

Transactional emails marketing gap
Companies are increasingly offering their customers digital solutions to replace paper communications but, as this happens, customers are no longer marketed to effectively and a “marketing gap” occurs.

So, where a statement was sent with a bill stuffer, an email pulling customers to the company's portal is now delivered in text format, with no personalisation, tracking and certainly no relevant marketing.

Transactional emails are a crucial customer touch point
This is where transpromo marketing should be transported from the off-line world to the online world. Transactional emails enjoy some of the highest open and response rates because they are expected by customers - a perfect platform to add relevant marketing.

There are many of these types of emails leaving organisations with little to no input from the marketing department, because they’re seen as operational and usually managed by IT. However, every customer touch point should have a consistent voice and brand, which is usually exclusively managed by the marketing department.

From transactional to transpromo email
These transactional messages should form part of your customer lifecycle communication programme, designed with the customer in mind and created with the aim of increasing revenue or entrenching your brand further.

There are many examples of transpromo marketing on operational and transactional emails, such as dropped basket campaigns and holiday booking confirmations, where this tactic has been used well and the results are evident by the upturn in sales. When implemented well, this type of marketing can really outperform other mediums.

It’s not just about increasing sales though, it’s also about getting the customer to take action and engage in this prime email real estate. Adding easy steps to set up a debit order (when the customer hasn’t done so), when sending out a customer’s bill, as an example, can get the customer to take action. But, if this copy remains as a standard in this email, customers will quickly become oblivious to these messages and stop reading them altogether.

A few tips to consider when implementing a transpromo strategy

• Identify the 'forgotten' transactional emails that are leaving your organisation without any input from marketing
• Tackle one email at a time – it’s a mammoth task, so take time to get each one right
• Profile customers and start including messages that are relevant to the individual at the time the email reaches them
• Ensure these messages are relevant and that the messages change at regular intervals (don’t simply leave a direct debit message there indefinitely in the hope that the customer will one day act on it)
• Track everything and make changes to maximise your ROI on these emails

Mia Papanicolaou, head of operations UK, Striata

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