Order confirmations are one of the most important transactional emails you send your customers. Because they’re often automated by the ecommerce platform a customer uses, it’s easy to slip into a generic, mechanical tone in these emails. Here are six tips to keep your order confirmation emails from falling into a rut.
1. Make Sure Your Voice is On-Brand
Often, the level of formality in a company’s order confirmation email won’t match that of their other marketing emails. For example, many brands send newsletters that lead off with “Hi [First Name],” but send order confirmation emails that start with “Dear [First Name],” or even “Dear Mr./Ms. [Last Name].”
In this respect, consistency is key. If your other emails are highly formal, it’s fine for your order confirmation emails to be, too. Odds are, though, you take a more conversational tone in your other marketing emails, so make sure this is reflected in your order confirmations as well.
2. Lead with the Most Important Details
Your customers will expect to get an order confirmation email outlining their purchase immediately after they hit the “Place Order” button, and they’ll probably be watching their inbox for it to double-check that everything is correct. The details that you should include are:
Name, quantity, and photo of the item or items purchased
Order number or ID
Billing summary
Payment information
Shipping address
Shipping method
Estimated delivery date
Essentially, this is a customer’s receipt for their purchase. They’ll be more likely to read and save this email than your other emails, so make sure you make a positive impression. To avoid making their order confirmation emails too lengthy or tedious, some companies choose to display this information in a grid format.
To foster a sense of anticipation and excitement, make the item itself the central focus of your order confirmation email. Since customers should get this email immediately, strike while the iron is hot and leverage their excitement. Which brings me to my next point…
3. Get Social
Including social links at the bottom of your order confirmation emails encourages your customers to share their excitement about their recent purchase. If they purchased from a particular category that is new or that you’re hoping to promote, create a relevant hashtag for Twitter or Instagram and include it in the order confirmation email.
4. Make it Easy for Customers to Update Their Orders
Order confirmation emails come before shipping confirmation emails and, as I briefly mentioned above, customers are very likely to read them to double-check that their order is correct. If you or the customer made a mistake — like inputted the wrong shipping address, quantity, or size, for instance — they’ll need to reach out to your company before their item ships.
If they can’t edit their order directly, include a prominent link to customer support to facilitate this process and quell any anxiety a customer might be feeling. You should include a link to customer support no matter what, but the prevalence of this link can depend on the other support information you offer.
5. Be Proactive
In addition to including a method to contact customer support, be proactive and anticipate any questions your customers may have. A link to FAQs and shipping guides, for example, can help your customers find answers to their questions on their own.
6. Optimize for Mobile
Around 50% of email opens take place on mobile, so many of your customers are probably reading your order confirmation emails on the go. For support links especially, it’s important to optimize for mobile viewing — if a customer needs to contact you, they’re going to want to do so sooner rather than later. This means you shouldn’t have many links close together, since it increases the possibility that people tap the wrong link. Using buttons that stack on mobile can alleviate this difficulty.
Conclusion
If you use Shopify, we have a great tutorial on how to import your email confirmation templates from Klaviyo into your Shopify account. Just because order confirmations are transactional emails doesn’t mean they have to feel that way. Show your customers that your appreciate their business and skip the typical impersonal, robotic messaging. Use these six tips to create killer order confirmation emails that will keep your customers coming back for more.
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