Consumers Want More Out Of Transactional Emails

As part of Postmark joining ActiveCampaign, research was done to understand how consumers and businesses feel about transactional email and where transactional email can better serve audiences. With Postmark joining ActiveCampaign, transactional recipients will be able to reply to emails, a key pain-point surfaced in the research.

Have you ever received an email from a brand with an order confirmation that tells you not to reply to the email? Of course you have! In fact, new data from ActiveCampaign reveals most consumers receive noreply@brand.com emails once a day or multiple times a week. Wouldn’t it be helpful if you could respond to these emails with questions or concerns about your order? Of course it would! Today’s buyers have unlimited choices, making it harder to keep customers and earn new ones. The deciding factor for purchase often comes down to the relationship with the brand, making every interaction a crucial touchpoint, including these transactional emails. 

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ActiveCampaign data reveals nearly half of consumers reported they have responded to an email from a brand, only to receive a bounce-back from a no-reply address. With that deciding factor relying so closely on the customer experience, this is one way brands need to strengthen it.

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With important communications coming from transactional interactions like order confirmations, billing notifications, and the actions and updates that occur when consumers interact with a customer’s platform or product, as well as the sales and marketing messages often used to create and nurture customer relationships, it’s critical that communications are unified and create a cohesive experience. This can be hard for growing businesses, as transactional communications often come from tools outside of sales and marketing, making it difficult to align. 

Why do companies use no-reply emails? Data shows that customers are negatively impacted

According to ActiveCampaign data, more than half of consumers are frustrated by no-reply email addresses that aren’t set up to receive incoming mail (e.g., noreply@brand.com), and 29% have actually stopped shopping with a brand because of these emails.

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Further, 65% of consumers want to be able to respond directly to transactional emails when they have questions or issues about a purchase.

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The survey was conducted online by Dynata from April 28-29, 2022. Dynata surveyed 1,000 adults (18+) living in the United States.