If your IT department is in charge of your company's transactional emails, you could be leaving millions of dollars on the table. Here's how -- and why -- to take control.

Over the past year or so, there has been a lot of talk about the benefits of implementing a marketing program for transactional email. However, given all the talk, I still get a lot of plain-text purchase confirmations, password reminders and other service-based messages.

So, if there is that much upside, you'd think that more companies would be making it a priority to upgrade their transactional email with HTML-enabled branding, relevant promotional offers and dynamic content. One of the barriers comes down to the challenges involved with transferring ownership of transactional email from the IT department to marketing. Since most transactional email is generated off back-end ecommerce systems, IT has generally assumed the management of running it. In fact, in many instances, marketing has no insight into these messages at all -- even into the question of whether they're getting delivered!

Fortunately, a new research study, "The Transactional Messaging Imperative," has just been released that might help convince companies to put ownership of these critical customer communications where they belong: in the hands of marketing. Given the important role transactional email plays, StrongMail commissioned JupiterResearch to conduct a study looking at the challenges companies face when implementing a marketing program for transactional email -- and also the rewards that can be generated by doing so.

The selling point comes in the form of an additional $2.9 million of additional revenue annually that the average retailer can generate by integrating cross- and up-sell messages into transactional email. JupiterResearch arrived at this figure by analyzing average order sizes, transactional message volumes and a conservative 3 percent revenue contribution from service-based messages. The bottom-line is that sending out generic or plain-text messages is leaving money on the table.

The good news is that 60 percent of marketers are already generating revenue with transactional email. But, that also means that 40 percent aren't. One of the likely reasons that number isn't higher is the issue of ownership. The study confirmed that transactional email is owned by marketing in less than half of the companies surveyed. This makes it difficult for marketers to implement promotional offers, much less integrate transactional email into their overall email marketing initiatives.

Another interesting point to come out of the study is that the amount of transactional email revenue that companies reported varied according to the type of email system on which they relied. JupiterResearch found that companies that use a dedicated commercial application drive 68 percent more revenue than homegrown systems or a system designed for (and shared with) email marketing. This underscores the importance of using a system that is optimized for transactional email -- and not trusting these mission-critical messages to bulk email marketing systems or homegrown solutions with limited capabilities and reporting.

However, it's important to note that, while the study recommends having a dedicated commercial system for transactional email, it also strongly recommends that that system be fully integrated into a centralized email marketing platform. In that way, email marketers can have one view into all email that touches the customer and plan their programs accordingly. By running reports across marketing and transactional email, marketers can keep tabs on deliverability and implement frequency controls to help prevent customer burnout.

This visibility is key, as the study found that 60 percent of companies had limited or no access to reporting data. At a time when deliverability factors are constantly changing, marketing must be aware when transactional emails aren't getting delivered. If you don't have this level of insight, you risk frustrating the customer, who will wind up calling your customer service line and driving up your operational costs. Plus, continuing to send to a bad address will damage your sender reputation.

In the end, the study found that companies are integrating marketing messages into transactional email for three main reasons: increased revenue, increased brand revenue and increased customer satisfaction. While adding marketing messages might seem counter-intuitive to that last point, part of the benefit stems from using a dedicated commercial system that improves inbox delivery over other deployment methods that aren't optimized for the unique nature of transactional email.

If you aren't adding promotional messages to transactional email, you should find the proper system and get started. Of course, you'll want to make sure you follow CAN-SPAM laws, but they're pretty straightforward. The key point is to keep the transactional message front and center, which you should be doing anyway.

You should also make sure you take care of the basics. Surprisingly, the study found that less than one-third of companies are authenticating their email, and only 50 percent are using a dedicated IP address. These are critical tactics that you should implement right away, regardless of what system you use. So, don't neglect your transactional email messages. Instead, treat them like the critical customer communications that they are. For more study findings, you can download the report at StrongMail's website.

Good luck and good sending.

Spencer Kollas is director of delivery services for StrongMail Systems.