How Reliable Transactional Emails Build Trust — And Boost Revenue

Our last article was a summation of a WordCamp Atlanta talk given by Matt Pritchett, the managing partner here at SendWP. We explored how transactional emails build trust and increase retention — factors directly influencing revenue growth.

We also briefly touched on some keys to effective transactional emails, including reliability. In this post, we’re going to dig into this with more detail.

Read on to learn more about reliable transactional email deliverability — including what it is, why it matters, and how to ensure it for your small business’ transactional emails. Let’s get started!

What is email deliverability?

Email deliverability is whether an email lands in the recipient’s inbox. Because of spammers and other bad actors, internet service providers (ISPs) have many checkpoints in place to block potential threats.

This is a good thing — email recipients don’t want their inboxes full of scams or unsolicited junk. However, it also means email senders need to work harder to ensure their emails are successfully delivered. These checkpoints don’t just remove bad emails: they can block legitimate messages as well.

Deliverability vs. delivery

Email deliverability should not be confused with email delivery. Successful email delivery occurs when an email is accepted by an email server and placed into any folder in the mailbox, including spam. Deliverability refers to messages that land in the primary inbox, where your customers are most likely to see them.

The consequences of poor email deliverability

Deliverability is vital for all emails, but it’s especially important for transactional emails — the messages sent after someone takes an action on your website. When bulk marketing emails aren’t delivered, recipients are none the wiser. But a missing transactional email is another story.

Customers expect to receive their order and shipping notifications, password reset verifications, and form submission confirmations immediately. When your business doesn’t have reliable email deliverability, these messages may not arrive.

Those missing messages often lead to an influx of support tickets — with frustrated customers. Even if you solve their issue, those negative feelings can linger. Consumers may not want to work with your brand in the future.

It all boils down to trust, and unreliable transactional email deliverability breaks trust.

Why you need a reliable transactional email service

Now you might think — this all sounds logical, but how can I control email deliverability? Doesn’t my website hosting provider manage email sending on my behalf?

It’s true, your web host can send your emails. But they aren’t a reliable email service. The email game is complicated. It involves specific configurations like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, along with maintaining a great domain reputation — factors that affect whether an ISP will accept or block messages. Businesses in the email industry also spend time, money, and resources battling spammers, who continuously find new ways to get around the latest security measures.

Email deliverability is a significant undertaking. Hosts are not in the email game, and they have their own problems to solve. They may offer emails as a side feature, but it’s not their focus.

Anyone who relies on their hosting provider to send transactional emails will face deliverability issues. Messages won’t be sent, and some will end up in the spam folder. It’s just a fact.

Email services like SendWP are solely focused on getting your transactional messages into the primary inbox. It’s our entire business.

How reliable transactional emails increase revenue

We mentioned a few eye-opening statistics in our WordCamp Atlanta article, and they bear repeating here. Marketing emails have a typical open rate of just 25%. No matter how much time and creative energy you put into your campaigns, only about a fourth of them will ever be opened and read.

Transactional emails have an open rate of at least 80%. Most customers eagerly await a transactional email.

The other stat we mentioned has to do with keeping those customers. Research indicates that for every 5% annual growth in customer retention, businesses see at least 25% in revenue growth.

Once again, it comes back to reliability. When you can ensure your transactional emails arrive reliably, you can rest assured most of those messages will be opened. Once they are, and if they provide a great user experience through trust and added value, you’re going to retain more customers.

This puts more money directly in your pocket. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Customers get the information they need, and your business grows. Considering most transactional email services’ affordability, there’s no reason not to take your email business to a dedicated provider. Let your hosts focus on hosting, while the email people do what we do best.

Using SendWP for reliable delivery

SendWP was created in direct response to the email deliverability challenges. As more and more WordPress users dealt with poor email deliverability, something was missing: a service dedicated to getting those messages into recipients’ inboxes.

Today, SendWP helps ensure a 99.5% deliverability rate. We handle all configurations and problem-solving that hosting providers cannot — or will not — support.

Getting set up with SendWP takes seconds — just a few clicks — and you never have to worry about reliable email deliverability again. Your messages arrive on time, in the primary inbox. And, as a result, you’ll most likely see growth in both customer retention and revenue.

At just $9/month, this is a worthy investment.

Start building trust today

Trust takes time to build, and very little to break. One vanishing email can sour a customer relationship you’ve maintained for years. Thankfully, the solution is straightforward: reliable transactional emails.

Your website host can’t provide it, but SendWP can. Our entire business model revolves around high deliverability rates for WordPress transactional emails.

Whether your customers are resetting their passwords or buying new products, each message successfully delivered to their inbox takes your brand one step closer to customer retention and revenue growth. Don’t hesitate — get started today!

More to come

Reliability is the most vital step toward building trust, but it’s not the only one. In our next article, we’ll cover another essential way to ensure effective transactional emails: staying on-brand. Revisit our blog for more insight!