Over the last few weeks, multiple people have mentioned to me how much they appreciate the customer service provided by Dan Hallagan at Kayenta Publishing, publisher of the game Obsession. I reached out to Dan, and he’s going to join us for a guest post when Obsession is back in stock this summer.
Today, though, I wanted to focus on one specific thing I learned indirectly from a few Kayenta customers: They love the order notification emails they receive from Dan.
Stop to consider that for a second. I don’t know if I’ve ever received an order notification email that stood out to me, much less one I “loved”. They’re all pretty standard, a boilerplate format used across various forms of e-commerce.
But why? Why can’t an order notification be personal, warm, and useful? It seems that Dan dared to ask that question, and the results of his modifications speak for themselves.
Here are a few highlights from a Kayenta order confirmation:
“Jamey, thank you for your order!”
This is just a little touch, but adding the customer’s first name to the order really helps to personalize it, particularly in the sea of generic mass emails we receive every day.
“Customer Service Policy: My policy is that your game must be perfect. Any issues at all, please contact me using this email (it will conveniently have all the info I need), and I will make your game perfect.”
I love this. It’s such a clear, simple, customer-focused policy.
“I will assume by what you’ve ordered that you are new to Obsession, so I will pass along a few tips; please ignore if you are familiar with the game! You’ve purchased the expansions, but I can’t stress how important it is not to just throw everything together and play with the Upstairs, Downstairs expansion right away. There is a ton of gameplay in the base game, and it is so important to learn the base game before adding Upstairs, Downstairs.”
Again, this feels like Dan is talking to the customer one-on-one, trying to provide the best experience for them out of the box.
The email goes on–there’s a lot of detail in it–but you get the gist of it. As I said before, it’s personal, warm, and useful. It’s also super helpful that Kayenta’s only game is Obsession, so the entire focus of every automated email is on that one brand.
After I saw these examples, I looked under the hood of our Shopify store and modified both the order confirmation email and the out-for-delivery email. Both are now variations on the following text:
I’d love to further personalize these emails based on exactly which products are in the order, but I haven’t found a way to do that in Shopify yet.
I made the mistake of overlooking these email templates for a long time, so I wanted to share this today in case it gives other creators some ideas for improving their notification messages. Thank you, Dan, for the inspiration!
If you have any examples over memorable notification emails you’ve received, I’d love to hear about them in the comments! I’m also wide open to your suggestions for improving our confirmation messages to make them more personal, warm, and useful.
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15 Comments on “Notification Emails: How You Can Avoid My Mistake”
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[…] of the highly acclaimed game Obsession. I dug into the great things he was doing and ended up significantly revising the notification email format we use on the Stonemaier Games webstore, directly inspired by Dan’s […]
[…] I learned about the power of the order confirmation email from Dan Hallagan at Kayenta Publishing. Dan inspired me to update the Stonemaier order confirmation message to something that’s in the same realm as the 23andMe […]
I ordered Obsession from Dan a few months ago and forgot to add the Wessex expansion to my order. I contacted him asking him to cancel my order and I would reorder with the expansion. He said it was just easier to go on with the original order and just threw in the Wessex expansion for free! Amazing…
Nice! I can say from our experience with Shopify and fulfillment centers that it’s much easier to add something to an existing order than to cancel it. Free isn’t usually sustainable (though that’s generous of Dan), but Shopify makes it very easy to add to the order.
Hey Jamey,
I think I know of a way to do this. If you set up an account with either Zapier or Integrately, you can likely connect Shopify to your email service provider, depending on the one you use. It allows you to trigger an event when a specific action occurs.
For example, if someone buys a copy of Red Rising, you can have a zap or integration set up to trigger a specific email for this purchase. It could be customized to include the customers name and thank them for buying Red Rising.
You can get a limited number of zaps or integrations for free, but if you use more than this in a month, there is a small cost for this.
I don’t work for either company or get anything for referring them. I am a customer who has used both of these services and have found them to be helpful for integrating different apps that wouldn’t otherwise talk to each other.
Cheers,
Joe
That’s really clever, Joe! I’ll dig into this option.
Regarding the:
“I’d love to further personalize these emails based on exactly which products are in the order, but I haven’t found a way to do that in Shopify yet.”
You could have a follow up email sent outside of shopify that selects an email from a list of templates based on what was inside their order. Not sure if such a tool exists, but it might otherwise be worth creating a small tool for that…
I would like to add that Dan’s customer service is also unprecedented. Well, unprecedented?, Stonemaier Games’ is pretty awesome too!
I received the following email from Bombas this AM:
‘Your Bombas Are Almost Home
Order #……..
We can’t wait for you two to meet’
(This was followed by a track your order link).
It was sent the day my order was due to arrive. I was impressed. Could click the link and know immediately where they were. I especially liked the ‘We cant wait for you two to meet’ sentence.
Hey Jamey,
It is funny how little we know about ourselves. And how much we learn when the right buttons are pressed. In this case, you don’t know how much a personalised email will do to your overall perception of a company until you receive it, and oh boy! it really makes a difference!
The story am going to tell is not about a notification, but about a comment I left on Compass Games’ webpage a few weeks ago. I was disappointed about a minor issue and dropped them a line. To my surprise, a couple of days later I got the response: a video-recorded answer from John Kranz himself. You should believe me if I say that my smile was not fitting in my face! I found it incredibly warm and charming. The issue was perfectly clarified and sorted. But besides that, the impression was huge! John gives you the option to also video record a reply. Which I did! And got a second reply from him.
Some times when dealing with complaints (writing them or replying to them), the speed with which we write and the need of conciseness makes our messages to feel cold and dry. Unless you are a poet, it is hard to transmit emotions with plain words. And bad feelings can arise just because we cannot see the face and feel the mood of the person that is writing.
In the difficult and impersonal times we are living, such little details (personalised notifications or video replies) are key for building loyalty and increasing customers’ goodwill.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I love the idea of a recorded video response to a concern raised by the customer. Thank you for sharing this!
I was really impressed by communications from Road ID. Although they are obviously form items, the company clearly has fun with their messaging, such as:
“ Hello Tyler! You’re good people. As far as humans go, you’re easily one of our favorites. “But why?”, you might ask. Well, it’s simple. You’re wicked smart, powerfully good-looking, and you clearly have a knack for recognizing top-notch products. And better yet, we hear you’re willing to provide invaluable feedback (wink, wink).”
I HATE being asked to provide feedback but the tone here made me happy so I did for them. They also provide amusing updates throughout the process, letting me know when the order was engraved “great news Tyler! our top scientists wrangled a herd of stray photons and harnessed their energy to discombobulate the composition of stainless steel for you- translation: your order is engraved!”
They followed up with a video from the owner with minor personalization at the start that talked about why they felt road IDs were important and what safety means to them (it was surprisingly heartfelt for a corporate video) and then the product arrived with a note including info on one of the employees involved in making it including silly facts such as their first concert and favourite foods. My wife also had an order with them and received something similar but about a different staff member. All in all, lovely engagement that really stood out.
The part about the game being perfect is interesting because it’s been my experience that that is how Stonemeier feels about the situation. I have never had you (as a company) not make things perfect for me. So why not formalize that? The “personal touch” isn’t necessarily important to me. It doesn’t hurt, but we’ve all been glad handed in that regard and feeling like the results are there but without the personal touch is preferable to the opposite. However, these kind of messages ARE important to some and they definitely set the tone for how you want people to think about you as a company. You have benefitted from a certain sense of community surrounding your games and again, if that’s your philosophy why not put it in writing?
I received a memorable customer service (not specifically notification) email today from Noble Knight. They shipped me the wrong product, immediately discovered their own mistake, shipped the correct product along with a return label, and told me exactly what had happened. It certainly gives me a nicer feeling about continuing to do business with them since I feel like they are taking care of me.
I think that’s pretty awesome. For me, I know I instant-archive my amazon Order Confirmation emails (I order something every couple days), and haven’t seen the body of one in years. But also, order confirmation emails are where I go when I start to think “where is my order”, AND I don’t find a shipping notice email from the vendor, so I can get a link to the vendor’s site, to check my account and get a status.
This is great stuff; thanks for sharing! Warm, personal communication is always a plus in mind. One small note that you may have already corrected—when creating links, it’s helpful if the link itself describes where the user will go if they click it.
For example:
Rather than “fill out this form,” I’d recommend “fill out our replacement parts form.”
This particularly helps people who may be relying on assistive technology (AT) like screen readers—often times the AT will read out a list of links on the page to make navigation faster. But if all the person hears read to them is “fill out this form,” they don’t have any context for what the form is or why they might want to click on it.
Just a small way to make your communication more inclusive.