What should your confirmation email include?

A confirmation email is an email sent automatically as soon as a client finalizes a purchase or registration on your website. 

Also called a welcome email, open rates for these types of email can be as high as 70%. With such a high open rate, carefully crafting what information is sent out is crucial.

A well thought-out confirmation email acts as a powerful tool to:

• Reduce post-purchase support
• Guide people to the right ressources
• Set expectations for what is to come

Now let’s look at how to craft better confirmation emails

The must-haves in a confirmation email

If your payment or registration software’s confirmation email currently does not include the following information… run like the plague!

• Start date & time of the session
• Name of the activity
• PDF version of the invoice
• Exception dates
• Name of the participants

These are non-starters and will lead to excruciating frustrations for both you and your client if not included.

Reduce your post-purchase support

Your software knows very little about the specifics of your business and how you operate. This is where a solution with a fully customizable confirmation email comes into play. What you want to be able to do is:

• Answer the top 3-4 questions you usually receive post-purchase
• Set expectations of what to come

An example of part of a confirmation email for a youth soccer program:

Here is some information to better guide you for the start of the session:

• Classes are offered outdoors, so we recommend that your child wear sports shoes, comfortable clothes for sports, a hat if it’s very hot and sunscreen.
• We recommend that you arrive 10 minutes in advance of class time. Classes are not cancelled if it rains.
• Shin pads and cleats are notre required to participate in the programs
• Parents need to stay at the  field for the duration of the class

Please note that we’ll send you a reminder before your child’s first lesson 7-10 days before the class starts. Here is the parent guide for more information.

How this simple tweak led to 40-50% drop in post-purchase support

After adapting our confirmation email, Sportball Laval’s team saw a 40-50% drop in post-purchase email and phone support. Clients got the information at the time of registration which caused less confusion on all parts and made the beginning of the session much smoother for coaches, parents and children.

You're confirmation email probably sucks (I'm here to tell you it's not your fault)

Every Class management software has a purchase email confirmation. It’s a given. The problem is that most of them don’t allow any or offer very little ways to personalize the email. This leads to post purchase support that could of been avoided.

The right tool should allow you to:

• Fully customize the welcome email
• Add images or a welcome video
• Personalize with placeholders (name, start date & time, etc)
• Add buttons linking to forms, pdf’s or external URLs
• Allow different confirmation emails for different programs or activities

So what should my confirmation email include?

You’re the expert of your own business. This means you should have the last say as to what gets included in a welcome email. Not your software.

With open rates as high as 70%, the lack of personalization is a massive missed opportunity for organizations. Personalizing your confirmation email will act as a powerful tool to mitigate post-purchase support, save time and create better expectations with clients.

This can improve customer satisfaction but also employee happiness at work. And it might even help with retention. Your staff shouldn’t have to repeatedly answer the same questions that a simple tweak in your confirmation email could do for them.