When SendGrid’s email experts Carly Brantz and Brian O’Neill waded through the shades of grey of transactional email marketing, their conversation sparked questions that they were unable to answer during the webinar. Later, they took the time to respond to some of them.

1. Shades of Grey
Webcast Q&A with Carly and Brian

2. When SendGrid’s email experts Carly Brantz and
Brian O’Neill waded through the shades of grey of
transactional email marketing, their conversation
sparked questions that they were unable to answer
during the webinar. Later, they took the time to
respond to some of them.
If you missed the webcast, you can access a
recording here.

3. Q: This Webinar is meant for larger companies with dedicated
staff to take care of the myriad of things involved here… Sounds
simple, but not really.
A: I would say that the tips provided here can work with companies
both large and small. Starting out at SendGrid, I focused on small areas
where I could make a meaningful difference in how users interacted
with our emails. I implemented NPS surveys, getting started campaigns
and personalization based on usage in a few primary email campaigns
which resulted in a huge increase to those campaigns and the
subsequent ROI. If I could do that at a small organization with a team of
a few people in the department, I am confident that you could make
some thoughtful changes to your campaigns as well.

4. Q: How do you reconcile your transactional email strategy with a
dramatically shrinking use of email as a digital tool among
younger audiences?
A: Despite countless blog posts that love to decry that email is
dead, our findings suggest that nothing could be farther from the truth.
Fortunately for us, the vast majority of companies expect to increase
their use of transactional email going forward. While younger audiences
are being targeted with online applications, the majority still use
transactional email to confirm sign-ups and connect with their users. If
anything, most of the companies we work with view the transactional
email channel as important for keeping their customers happy and
loyal.

5. Q: Click-to-action surveys were mentioned earlier, do you guys
have a recommended survey service that allows you to create
click-to-answer surveys without much effort? Or is this something
that will have to be custom built?
A: At SendGrid we embed a link to a Survey Monkey survey into
our transactional NPS surveys. It is very simple and can be done easily
with a variety of service providers.

6. Q: Do emails that detail downtime or changes to service count as
transactional and marketing emails where service updates are
concerned? We regularly send out service updates announcing
down time and new features being released, or changes to billing.
How do you know clearly which kind of email is which?
A: The official wording for the types of email that must comply to
the CAN SPAM regulations is: “Any electronic mail message the
primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion
of a commercial product or service.” This can be confusing, and up to
debate but it is better to be on the safe side and follow regulations
when in doubt. I would argue that service changes most certainly
promote the product while downtime may be more of a transactional
message.

7. Q: Do most companies send transactional emails through
SendGrid?
A: Yes, however our newsletter emails are growing in volume very
quickly.

8. Q: What were the average rates for photo, home & garden (or the
like industry Brian just mentioned?)
A: ~28% open and ~6% click

9. Q: Do you use your own newsletter service to send
“transactional” emails?
A: No, but we use our own transactional service to send our
newsletter emails.

10. Carly Brantz
carly.brantz@sendgrid.com
@carlybrantz
Brian O’Neill
brian.oneill@sendgrid.com
@emailpm