People are always complaining about overflowing inboxes and excessive email but there are some messages everyone is happy (or relieved) to receive:  purchase confirmations, shipping notifications, friend requests and other transactional emails.  These messages are expected and anticipated and enjoy extremely high open and click rates.  There is no bigger opportunity to increase email program revenue than by monetizing your transactional mail stream.  If you’re looking for ways to drive purchases or engagement with transactional emails, you’re literally leaving money on the table.

Here are two quick ideas to help your business pick that money up off the table:

1. Sell Across the Purchase Confirmation.  You’ve already got purchase confirmations set up, you know exactly what your customer bought so why not cross-sell with an offer or promotion for a complimentary product or service.

2. Sell Up the Free Trial.  They’ve signed up for the Free Trial – and it’s getting ready to expire.  Instead of the standard notification why not entice them with a small discount on the paid service or another promotion to convert your freeloaders into paying customers.

The way you really capitalize on both these opportunities is simple:  be relevant!  Make sure that whatever the cross-sell or upsell offer that it makes sense for that specific customer.  Use the data you have to make those connections and help point your customers towards other products they might like.  Don’t just toss in your standard monthly promotion and expect it to drive results.

The old marketing cliché – right person, right message, right time – is not easy to achieve but if you leverage your transactional messages you can make it happen for your business.

P.S. Don’t forget those transactional emails have to make it to the inbox first so click here to learn more about how SendGrid’s hosted solutions can help.