Any business entrepreneur will know the struggle of building up a company and having to fight the competition for the attention of customers. There are millions of brands out there, many with huge marketing budgets. To stand out in the massive informational noise, a company has to go above and beyond to gather some traction. However, it is not only about getting attention but also keeping it. Almost 50% of customers are happy to leave a company that they have been loyal too in the case that a competitor meets their needs better. Therefore, retaining customer loyalty should be a top priority to maintain a steady growth of a business.
Make Your Clients Stay Through Savvy Marketing Skills
Thomas Glare
What makes customers feel truly valued? The answer lies in excellent communication. Surely customized, special deals, offers, and other practical means that indicate an appreciation of loyalty are great ways to compel your customers. However, through good communication, you can build a true relationship. Email marketing campaigns are the most direct means to get to your clients. It is personal enough to establish a connection, yet not overly invasive as a phone call might be. Mastering the art of writing savvy marketing emails should be an important point to cover for any business operating in today’s world. We would like to present you with 6 of the main email marketing strategies that will help your email marketing efforts be successful.
What is Email Marketing?
First things first, what is email marketing all about? Essentially, it is a strong platform for digital marketing, allowing you to promote your business products, services, and offers through a personal channel. You can keep customers aware of your latest additions, as well as build and foster a relationship. That can also serve a crucial role in your entire marketing strategy with brand awareness, generating leads, and cultivating customer loyalty. Email marketing can cover a wide sphere of activity. Your specific angle on it is not limited by any means. You can get as creative as you want with your approach, and it will serve you in standing out from the rest of the competition.
Onboarding Emails
It might seem counter-intuitive to consider onboarding emails important when it comes to retaining customers. However, the fact is that new customers are still fresh to your company. That means that they likely have recently discovered your services, meaning the company is still lingering on their mind. The quandary is that if the new customers just purchased something from your company, but they do not use it, then it will be a lot less likely that they will come back to your products. It is not a risk a business should take. Especially when minimizing the risk can be as simple as sending out an inspirational message. People should be excited to use your products, and you can help encourage them with the right communication.
Onboarding emails can be a great way to get customers enthusiastic about registering on your site, as well as using your products. It can also serve as a prompting to complete their profiles on your platform, and thus, have the onboarding process be all set and done. You do not want to miss out on customers who are one leg in, one leg out. That is because the hardest part of getting customers interested has already been achieved at that point. The extra push can sometimes be necessary to give customers the incentive to complete their sign-up process.
You could do that in a few ways. Offering a welcoming discount upon completing their profile could be one way to get customers excited. Another is a simple reminder that their profile is almost done, and it will act upon the notion that people are naturally inclined to be uncomfortable with leaving something incomplete. That is also known as the Zeigarnik Effect.
Inactivity Emails
Re-engage your customers
Inactivity emails can re-engage your customers when they have not been interacting with your company for some time. That can happen for several reasons. In many cases, that happens if your customer does not completely understand your service, product, or the benefits that it gives. Emails that present actionable tips, advice, and how a product integrates with daily life can be a fantastic way to encourage customers to re-engage in an inspired manner.
Monitor customer activity
If you monitor a customer being completely inactive on your company’s site, then you have nothing to lose by prompting them to action. There is no need to feel hesitant about trying to encourage a person. After all, if they already have registered on your site, there is something that compelled them to do so. After that, it is in your hands to rekindle their interest. This also applies to people who abandon their checkout carts. If a customer changes his mind in the last step of purchasing a service or product, then you should make the effort to give them an extra nudge. This can all be done with the help of email marketing tools that automatically contact customers in such cases.
Hit an emotional veign
When it comes to the content on an email, a lot of businesses play the emotional card. The company Teespring, for example, includes a picture of a sad puppy in their inactivity emails, including the headline “Come back?”. It is known that a variety of cuteness factors all play into meddling with people’s dopamine receptors in a positive, engaging manner. Instead of a puppy, you could use any trustworthy symbol, especially mentioning compelling features. You can employ such tricks to hit an emotional vein in your customers and have them associate the visceral reactions to your brand. Associating a period of inactivity with an abandoned puppy who is asking for attention will surely cause a reaction, be it conscious or unconscious.
That is only one example, but you could take this idea in many directions, depending on your particular brand’s voice. However, do not be afraid to get into the emotionally engaging territory. Customer loyalty is based on the relationship you manage to create with your clients. Ideally, it should be partially based on an emotional bias. Certain brands feel better than others due to their visual representation, communication, and overall appeal. You want to be the one that stands out by excelling in all of those areas.
Activity Emails
Activity emails are pretty much standard procedure by now. Big names like Amazon, Apple, and popular gaming sites use them regularly. These emails inform clients about their on-site activities, offering various updates, notifications, and the like. People are quite comfortable with activity emails by now, and it is known that they get opened around eightfold more than regular promotional messages. If you are not yet sending out activity emails on your brand’s behalf, be sure that it is worth it. Why so? The fact that they get opened a whole lot more than promotional emails means that it is a chance for you to increase engagement with your clients. That is one of the benefits of email marketing – you can shape your messages as you want, and you can include whatever promotions you like within common activity emails. That will work to maximize your marketing efficiency.
Renewal Emails
Given that your product or service is based on a regular subscription, then it is pivotal to remind your customers about the need to renew the membership. Ideally, you want to get your customers to turn on an auto-subscription. Apple Music does exactly that when its customers’ membership is about to expire. The call-to-action email is not just a reminder to prolong the membership but to make the renewal automatic. By doing this, a customer won’t need to keep thinking about the issue, resulting in a win-win situation.
A renewal email is also applicable when you offer free trials to your customers. At the end of it, you have to make sure to engage with your customer and try to get them subscribed. Whether they will or won’t is a different question, but trying is most definitely in your company’s interest. Whenever a customer chooses not to subscribe, you could also follow up with an email or a quick survey to clarify the reasons. Such information, collected over months, can be incredibly insightful regarding what you can do to make your services more appealing. Email marketing for services and products does not have to be one-sided, but it should encourage a conversation via surveys, comments, and so on. It will give you valuable data, as well as establish a relationship that will aid customer loyalty.
Up-Sells and Cross-Sells
Loyal customers are the best thing that can happen to your company. People who buy products or service memberships repeatedly are likely to keep doing so. It goes without saying that repeat customers should be treated with respect and offered rewards. A gift to celebrate a customer’s loyalty goes a long way in establishing a deeper relationship between the company and your client. That sets the tone for the long-term prospects. Repeat customers are also your best bet for cross-selling (buying a related product) and up-selling (buying a higher-end product). Offering to add related items to one’s basket before checking out is a well-known and promising marketing tactic. If you are not doing it already, then you are likely missing out on revenue. As for cross-sales, the receipt sent out to customers after a purchase is a great opportunity to implement them using the help of automatized email marketing software.
VIP Deals
Everybody loves to feel special. You can use that notion to your advantage when building your marketing campaigns. By promising customers special VIP perks and exclusive content, you can encourage them to sign up for your company’s mailing list. Building a large customer email list is the foundation for your marketing efforts. Exclusive offers only available for subscribers can also act as a magnificent way to get more customers to subscribe. Offers can consist of discounts, free courses, exclusive products, limited productions, and so on. Exclusive products should truly be limited and not reachable for non-subscribers. Trust is extremely important for customer loyalty. You don’t want to lose it by repurposing your special offer content.
Conclusion
We hope that you gained practical insight into the types of email marketing that are being used nowadays. All in all, you should try and employ as many methods as possible to attract and retain customers. A lot of functions can be automated due to clever software, so sending out tons of emails at precise times does not have to be laborious. We wish you the best of luck with your upcoming marketing campaigns. We would also love to hear about your favorite email marketing tips. Please leave them in the comment section below!
The featured image is from Campaign Creators on Unsplash.
by Ahoy
