Emailing customers using an order manager

In our quest to work closely with our Yahoo! Store clients to improve every detail of their site, we rountinely ask our clients to ship one of their products to us, so that we can evaluate the process from the web customer perspective.

In doing this process today, we found that this particular client was using an order management software that produced its own email. The email itself was great, but the address it was sent from was bad. It was the client's personal email address.

Now even though the customer has already decided to purchase from you, it is important to continually reassure the customer of your professionalism. For example, Kevin@VenturaWebDesign.com is professional, whereas sambasdaddy@aol.com (Samba is my dog's name) is not a preferable business image for my company. Remember, your customers are judging you at every point of contact (POC). This order status update email is an important POC.

I suggested that the Client setup a Yahoo! Business Mail account, since it's already included for free with his Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Store. The interface is easy and immediatel provides that professional image that we all desire.

Another question that the client had was in regards to using a "no-reply" email address on the status update. While many, if not most, of the big guys do this... Small business owners should take the opposite approach. Remember, we are SMALL business owners, not gargantuan Fortune 500's. Use our "weakness" of being small as a strength by providing excellent customer service.

By using a real email address for your order status updates, you will be able to immediately recognize when a customer has provided an incorrect email address. This lets you proactively contact them and provide the order status update via telephone. I know, sounds likes a lot of work right? No, it's really not. Just pick up the phone and make the 30 second phone call. Trust me, it's worth it.

Another great reason to use a real email address instead of the no-reply is that you will often times be pleasantly surprised with the many "thank you" emails that you will receive. At our candle store, we find that customers are happy to be able to communicate with us this way.

As we approach the holidays, keep thinking of ways to "wow" your customers... And I promise this will pay off in the years to come.