Automate Commerce and Marketing with Transactional Emails
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the benefits of using transactional emails for marketing.
- Set up an order confirmation email message template.
- Create a flow to send personalized order confirmation emails.
Use the Power of Transactional Emails
Transactional emails are like helpful guides, automatically sending customers important messages. Specific actions or events, like order confirmations, abandoned cart notifications, and welcome emails trigger these messages. Giving customers accurate and timely notifications for each step in their journey builds trust and loyalty.
Because transactional emails contain information that customers expect and value, transactional emails have open rates that are eight times higher than promotional emails. These emails present a unique opportunity to subtly incorporate personalized recommendations, provided the customer has opted into receiving a promotional version of transactional emails. These emails can influence additional sales without detracting from the primary informational purpose.
Meet Michele Hansley, the marketing expert at NTO. She’s excited to see Marketing and Commerce Cloud working together and makes a short list of exciting possibilities to explore first.
- Automated transactional emails with promotional content tucked in
- Fine-tuned audience segmentation based on purchase and intent data
- Personalized recommendations
For her first effort, she sets up an automated order confirmation email that goes to all customers after they place an order. She’ll add a sentence to the end offering 20% off on additional orders with a promo code.
- From the App Launcher, find and select Commerce.
- Click the Store tab and in the navigation sidebar, select the store name from the dropdown.
Michele selects NTO.
- Click Settings, then Messaging.
- Turn on Order Confirmation Email to enable messaging.
- Click Edit.
- If needed, change the OrderConfirmationEmail template.
- Michele likes what she sees, but decides to update the subject line. She clicks the Subject Line edit icon. In the Subject Line field, she types:
- Michele wants to add an upsell message at the end.
From the Components list, she drags Paragraph to the bottom of the message template and types:To thank you for ordering, we’re offering 20% off on your next order. Just enter BACKONTRACK. See you on the trail!
- Click Save and Back.
Michele follows up in a week to see how reorder metrics changed for customers who received the order confirmation email. She’s happy with the results. Follow-up orders are up 5%, all from adding one single line to the email template.
Create Different Order Confirmation Emails for Different Customers
After seeing what a difference her first change made, Michele is eager to keep going. For her next effort, she decides to try a regional promotion. If an Alaskan customer places an order, they’ll receive a promo code for 20% off on winter gear.
First, Michele creates the winter gear email by cloning the existing confirmation email and then the last paragraph.
- Click the Store tab.
- In the navigation sidebar, select the store name from the dropdown.
Michele selects NTO.
- In the navigation sidebar, click Content Manager.
- Select your workspace.
Michele selects NTO Managed Content Space.
- Click your order confirmation email template.
Michele clicks OrderConfirmationEmail.
- Click Clone and enter the new email’s name.
Michele entersConfirmationEmailAlaskaPromo
.
- In the new email, click Edit.
- Edit the email in Content Builder.
At the bottom of the template, Michele changes the text in the Paragraph component to:To thank you for ordering from Alaska, use promo code WinterWonderland to save 20% on all winter gear. Stay warm out there!
- Click Save.
- Click Publish.
- In the Publish Content box, click Next, select the Publish Now option, and click Publish Now.
Now, Michele has two different order confirmation emails.
- The standard one that she enabled earlier
- The new one for the Alaska winter gear promo
She’s ready to hand everything over to her Salesforce admin for the next step.
Use a Flow to Send Each Confirmation Email
Now that Michele has written her content, she asks her Salesforce admin how to send the emails to the correct customers. The admin says that it’s a simple process.
- Set up a flow that sends the special winter confirmation email to Alaskan customers and the standard confirmation email to everyone else.
- Disable sending the standard OrderConfirmation email template so that the system uses this flow.
The admin writes down the parts of the flow.
-
Trigger: A customer places an order, which triggers an Order Placement event.
-
Criteria: The flow checks to see if the customer’s shipping address is in Alaska.
-
Action: If it is in Alaska, the flow sends the winter gear email with the promo code (ConfirmationEmailAlaskaPromo). If the shipping address is for anywhere else, the flow sends those customers the standard order confirmation email (ConfirmationEmail).
The admin creates the flow.
- From the App Launcher, find and select Marketing.
- Click the Flows tab and click New.
- Select Automation Event-Triggered Flow and click Create.
- In the Flow Builder, under Start, click Select Event.
- Choose Order Placement Event and select the store name.
Michele selects the NTO store.
- Click + under Automation Event-Triggered Flow and scroll to choose the Decision action.
- Click + under the Default Outcome box and choose the Send Email Message action.
- Click + under the Outcome of Decision 1 box and choose the Send Email Message action.
Here’s what the Flow Builder looks like now.
- To set the decision logic, click Decision 1 and click Edit Element.
- Fill out the fields.
-
Label:
Alaskan Winter Gear Promo
-
API Name:
Alaskan_Winter_Gear_Promo
-
Description:
If the customer is in Alaska, send an order confirmation email with a special promotion for winter gear. If they live in any other state, send them the standard order confirmation email.
- Under Outcome, for Label:
Shipping Address in AK
-
Outcome API Name:
Shipping_Address_in_AK
-
Condition Requirements to Execute Outcome: All Conditions Are Met (AND)
-
Resource: Event > Shipping Address
-
Operator: Contains
-
Value:
AK
-
Label:
- To send the Alaskan email, click Send Email Message Action 1 and click Edit Element.
- Fill out the fields.
-
Label:
Send Alaska Winter Gear Promo Email
-
API:
Send_Alaska_Winter_Gear_Promo_Email
- Click Select Email.
- Choose your workspace.
Michele chooses NTO Managed Content Space.
- Choose your promo email and click Add.
Michele chooses ConfirmationEmailAlaskaPromo.
-
Label:
- To send the standard email, click Send Email Message and click Edit Element.
- Fill out the fields.
-
Label:
Send Standard Confirmation Email
-
API:
Send_Standard_Confirmation_Email
- Click Select Email.
- Choose your workspace.
Michele chooses NTO Managed Content Space.
- Choose your promo email and click Add.
Michele chooses OrderConfirmationEmail.
-
Label:
- Click Save and enter the flow label and flow API name.
- Click Activate to activate the flow.
After the flow is complete, the admin turns off the standard order confirmation message, so that it'll be replaced by the flow.
- Click the Store tab and in the navigation sidebar, select the store name from the dropdown.
- Click Settings, then Messaging.
- Turn off Order Confirmation Email.
Michele is excited that the new flow is live. She’ll follow up to see how many Alaskan customers use the promo code to buy winter gear. If it’s successful, she plans to come up with other geographical promotions.
For customers who have opted in, you can also use transactional email triggers, like an order confirmation, to trigger promotional flows. For example, send all customers who completed an order a marketing email that offers free shipping on orders placed in the next week.
We explored how unifying Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud can drive personalized and effective marketing strategies. Then we set up and edited an order confirmation email that increased follow-up sales. Finally, we created a new flow to send a specialized email to customers based on their shipping address that increased sales in a particular region. We moved one step closer to creating a customer journey that’s tailored to each customer. Are you ready to increase your marketing power using the magic of Commerce Cloud?
AI supported the writers who created this content.