Those differences are pretty dramatic, but for top-quartile companies, the engagement levels are really off the charts. Roughly three out of every four transactional emails sent by a top-performing business is opened, and nearly one in three generates a click.

Given these already-strong engagement levels, it begs the question: Are you doing everything you can to create transactional emails that provide value, build deeper connections with your customers and, yes, increase revenue?

To help you with the task of optimizing your transactional messages, we created a sample retail/ecommerce transactional email that incorporates best practices on everything from subject line to content to calls to action. Give it a look for some ideas and inspiration, and then revisit your transactional emails to think about how you might enhance these messages: