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This guide will help you craft the perfect order confirmation email for your e-commerce website.
You can’t run a successful e-commerce website without sending customers an order confirmation email. After placing an order, most customers will check their inbox for this essential transactional email.
A study conducted by Chamaileon found that order confirmation emails have an average open rate of 70 percent. In the realm of email marketing, any open rate over 20 percent is considered good, meaning order confirmation emails are superb.
Rather than using a barebones template, though, you should take the time to create a custom order confirmation email.
Most e-commerce platforms like Shopify allow you to customize your order confirmation email.
You can add or remove content so that it drives stronger customer loyalty and encourages more repeat purchases.
Use Brand Imagery
When designing your order confirmation email, use brand imagery so that customers will recognize it.
Brand imagery consists of visual elements, including but not limited to images, that are unique and identifiable to your e-commerce website.
While shopping, customers will see your e-commerce website’s brand imagery.
Using brand imagery in your order confirmation email will help customers recognize the email because they’ll remember seeing it on your e-commerce website.
You can use your e-commerce website’s logo in your order confirmation email. Embedding the logo into the top of your order confirmation email will make it instantly recognizable to customers.
If your e-commerce website uses a particular color scheme, you want to use the same colors for your order confirmation email.
Like a logo, colors are part of your e-commerce website’s brand.
By using the same colors in your order confirmation email, customers will associate it with your e-commerce website.
I use Canva Pro for my brand kits.
Include Essential Information
Your order confirmation email should include essential information about customers’ orders.
They are considered transactional emails because they contain information about a transaction.
To learn more about their order, a customer may refer to your order confirmation email.
Neglecting to include the right information in it may lead to an unhappy customer.
Include the following information in your order confirmation email:
- Customer’s name
- Order number
- Payment amount
- Method of shipping
- Tracking code or link
- Expected date of delivery
While you should include essential information in your order confirmation email, you should avoid adding sensitive information to it. Emails can be breached.
If you include sensitive information in your order confirmation email, such as customers’ payment information, it could be exposed during a breach.
Many e-commerce websites now even omit addresses and phone numbers from their order confirmation emails to protect their customers from breaches.
Thank Customers
Don’t forget to thank customers in your order confirmation email.
Customers want to feel appreciated by the stores from which they purchase products. Thanking them in your order confirmation is a way to express this appreciation.
Regardless of what products it sells, your e-commerce website probably has competitors.
If you don’t thank customers for their business, they may choose a competitor for their next online purchase.
To keep customers coming back, customize the opening of your order confirmation email with a brief thank-you message.
Ask for a Review
At the bottom of your order confirmation email, ask customers for a review. Reviews offer insight into whether customers are satisfied.
With a high number of positive reviews, it’s safe to assume customers are satisfied.
If you discover negative reviews, you can investigate them to determine why customers weren’t satisfied with their order or experience.
Reviews also have a positive impact on conversion rates.
According to Reevoo, products displayed with customer reviews generate 18 percent more conversions on average than those without reviews.
You can acquire more reviews by soliciting them from customers in your order confirmation email. Just add a link to the product page where customers can leave a review.
Optimize for Mobile
Make sure your order confirmation email is optimized for mobile devices. Research conducted by the digital marketing company HubSpot shows that nearly half of all emails are viewed on mobile devices.
While mobile devices come in many shapes and sizes, they render emails differently than standard computers.
Even if your order confirmation email renders perfectly on a desktop computer, it may suffer from rendering problems on a mobile device.
Maybe an image stretches the email’s body so that it requires horizontally scrolling, or perhaps the links are small and difficult to click.
To avoid these technical headaches, you need to optimize your order confirmation email for mobile devices.
You can use a responsive design for your order confirmation email that, like responsive websites, adjusts to fit all devices’ display screens.
Responsive emails are coded with relative measurement units. Each element within a responsive email consumes a percentage of viewport space.
Therefore, responsive emails look the same on all devices.
It’s a good idea to test your order confirmation email to ensure it’s optimized for mobile devices. Even if you use a responsive design, some of its elements may render poorly.
Sending your order confirmation email to your own inbox allows you to test it.
You can open the email on a smartphone to view it from the perspective of a mobile customer.
Automate Delivery
You should automate the delivery of your order confirmation email.
Automation ensures that customers receive this vital transactional email as quickly as possible.
Most customers expect to receive an order confirmation email within minutes of placing an order. If you send it manually, they may overlook it.
Fortunately, you don’t have to subscribe to a separate email marketing service to automate your order confirmation email delivery.
It’s a native feature in most e-commerce platforms.
For instance, Shopify will automatically send your order confirmation email to customers immediately after orders have been processed.
Because it’s sent after a customer’s order has been processed, some e-commerce operators neglect to create a high-quality order confirmation email.
Instead, they use the default template provided by their e-commerce platform.
You can still use a template to create your order confirmation email, but don’t ignore the importance of customization.
