How to Encourage Open & Engagement Rates of Credential Delivery Emails

The ability to instantly deliver credentials via email is a key benefit of digital credentialing. Instant delivery reflects the professionalism of an organization and encourages recipients to share and celebrate in the moment, rather than forget about their achievement. In this post we discuss how to encourage recipients to open and engage with their new credentials and increase visibility for the issuer.

Encourage Open Rates

In Q1 2020, almost 320 billion emails were sent everyday and that number continues to grow rapidly. That’s a lot of emails that are arriving in individual’s inboxes and to help encourage recipient open rates, credential emails need to cut through the noise.

Personalization

A key factor in encouraging receivers to open any type of email is personalization. Just like receiving mail to your home, you are more likely to open a letter addressed to you than one addressed to ‘the occupier’. Personalized email subject lines increase the open rate by 26% and result in 6x as many transactions compared to non-personalized emails. Personalized subject lines and body content also increase the click-through rate by an average of 139%.

Subject Lines

The subject line is the ‘first impression’ for a recipient when the email lands in their inbox and needs to grab their attention at first glance. It should be concise and clear in the messaging of what the email contains. A subject line of “Name, we’ve got something for you!” may entice the naturally curious individuals in the audience but is likely to be ignored by the majority. A clear subject line of “Congratulations on your new digital credential Name!” lets the recipient know what the email contains, that it belongs to them, and it encourages them to engage and celebrate.

Follow-Up

With the increasing amount of emails sent everyday, it’s easy for a single email to get lost in the shuffle of a busy inbox. Emails can often go missed, or are opened on receipt but the reader gets drawn into another task and misses the chance to fully read or engage. Follow-up emails ensure that even in a busy inbox, recipients get a reminder to open and engage with their digital credentials. On average, sales emails generate the highest amount of engagement between the 6th and 12th email follow-up.

Use the Brand

By default, emails are sent to recipients from the credential.net domain name. Without prior notification, recipients may not open emails received from the default address as they do not recognize it. To promote trust and increase visibility of the issuer’s brand name and domain, custom SMTP settings can be altered on the Launch, Connect, and Growth plan options. This allows issuers to send emails and host credentials on their own domain to provide a seamless recipient experience.

Increase Engagement Rates

Using the tips above, recipients are more likely to open their credential email. To encourage more than just a brief look, the email should be the right length, contain useful information and a clear call to action in the email that ensures recipients understand the next step.

Explain Value

Digital credentials are rapidly growing in popularity but this may be the first time the recipient has received a digital credential in this way from your organization. After a congratulatory intro, make sure to briefly explain the value of the credential they have received. For example, if the digital credential reflects a new skill, advise the recipient that this can be added to their resume or LinkedIn profile. If the digital credential represents association membership, provide some benefits of presenting their credential in relevant locations.

Instruct Use

Provide clear guidance on how recipients can get the maximum use from their credential using a video guide or short snippet that links to a digital credential landing page or FAQ on the issuer website. Video is the most popular form of informational content which can be embedded directly into the email. If choosing to include step-by-step instructions ensure these are kept concise and where necessary, link to an external page so the email doesn’t become too long.

The Accredible Knowledgebase provides a library of helpful instructional information that can be linked to from the delivery email or used to create help documents in the issuer voice. Examples include:

Ensure Access

Accessible emails are a necessity in today’s world where an estimated 41.9% of all emails are opened and viewed on a personal smartphone. If the email doesn’t appear or load correctly on the device, recipients are more likely to delete it and ignore further emails. Custom email templates on the Accredible platform have been fully optimized to ensure seamless accessibility across popular smart devices and phones. When creating emails outside the platform, ensure to test across multiple devices to ensure recipients aren’t restricted from accessing their credentials.

Call to Action

The credential email CTA denotes the action issuers want recipients to take after they receive their digital certificate or badge email. Depending on the intended use of the credential and the current organization marketing strategy, the CTA can direct recipients in several ways. Multiple CTA buttons can be added to the credential email, however consider designing these slightly differently so there is a clear ‘primary action’ and ‘secondary action’.

For example, if the issuer is trying to grow their LinkedIn presence, the primary CTA would encourage recipients to ‘Share Credential to LinkedIn’ while the secondary action would be ‘View Credential’. A common design trend for primary and secondary action buttons is to use a solid color button for the primary action and a color outlined button or simply a bold text link for the secondary action. The use of design elements in this way provide options to the recipient while directing focus on the preferred next step.

In Summary

The Accredible digital credential platform supports everything an issuer needs to create emails that encourage open and engagement rates from recipients. Customize the subject, body content, and CTA of the email and include automatically generated personalization that pulls through the relevant recipient details. In the email body, the issuer can easily embed helpful video content, link to informational pages on their own website, or include concise step-by-step instructions for using the new credential. Follow-up emails can be sent automatically to ensure recipients are encouraged to share and celebrate their accomplishment should they miss the first email.

Additional features and control are available depending on the chosen plan. Issuers can create an unlimited number of email templates for their credentialing programs using any of the available Accredible pricing plans. Custom SMTP settings are available on the Launch, Connect, and Growth plans. For increased levels of control over the appearance and customization of the credential email, issuers can choose a Connect or Growth plan.

New to digital credentials? Get started with a trial issuer account for up to 20 unique recipients.

For existing issuers, learn more about utilizing advanced branding or white labelling for emails and credential pages and get in touch with the sales team today.