5 Ways to Boost Your Customer Retention (With Email Marketing)

Table Of Contents:

1. The power of email marketing
2. Using email marketing for customer retention
3. Welcome email
4. Cart recovery emails
5. Keep the relationships alive using post purchase emails
6. Target inactive customers
7. Show your human side

Remember that Quote from Tom Hanks’ 1998, “You’ve got mail,”

“I go online, and my breath catches in my chest until I hear three little words: You’ve got a mail.”

“You have got a new mail!” We all have heard this phrase at some point in our lives, and it would not be wrong to say that a new email is always a source of curiosity and excitement. Though, because of social media times have changed; nevertheless, one would definitely agree that Email still is a place of solitude amongst the chaos.

The power of email marketing

There is no disputing the fact that email marketing has successfully emerged out as one of the most influential and powerful mediums of modern age marketing and advertising. Email marketing has a median ROI of 122% – almost 4 xs higher than all other marketing formats including social media, direct mail, and paid search.

Email marketing is significantly more important Especially for B2B enterprises as their consumer base is comparatively small and their customer is not an average social media user. These professionals prefer using email when communicating for business purposes. This is why email is regarded as the third most powerful source of information for B2B audiences.

Using email marketing for customer retention

For any business to succeed in the long run; it is important that it keeps its customers engaged and interested in their products and services. Happy customers are the most valuable asset for a company. They leave positive reviews about your products and are more likely to recommend you to their friends.

Moreover, acquiring a new customer cost almost five times as much as keeping an existing one.

Many small business owners and B2B enterprises still rely on the phone or postal cards to keep the relationships alive. The key to customer retention is trust, engagement, personalization, and localization. This is where email marketing can help. Happy customers love receiving emails from their favorite brands. It is an ideal retention tool as it builds trust and helps marketers to develop customer relationships that outlast any one transaction.

However, retention marketing using emails is pure art. In this article we are providing you with five email marketing techniques that you can use to retain more customers and increase your overall revenue:

1. Welcome email

The welcome email is a valuable part of retaining customers, especially if your brand is one that focuses more on personal relationships. To be honest here, there is not a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to welcome email and it’s entirely subjective to the nature of your business.

For instance, a lot of potential brands include a simple “Hi- Great to meet you” in the welcome email as their primary focus is to get-to-know the customer. However, digital marketing guru “Neil Patel” believes that welcome email is a one-time opportunity that must be capitalized to boost subscriber engagement. A good welcome email is a step by step tutorial that serves following purposes;

1. Introduces your brand
2. Inspires your customer to take action
3. Incentivizes customers to take the described action
4. Provides important contact information
5. Provides reassurance

It is also a good practice to capitalize welcome emails by introducing customers to your advocacy program. You can offer rewards and give your business more exposure to prospects by providing consumers with reasons to contribute to your marketing campaigns. In the very first email, offer some reward points, invite people to follow you on your social accounts, and you can even add a live poll and ask your new customers about their interests and shopping preferences. Lastly, the email must close with a reassurance, includes a valediction, your written signature, and your name and title.

Let’s take an example of a popular B2C company and see if they think the same the way.

Soon as you sign your sign up for uber; here is what you receive as the welcome email,

I believe Uber is the perfect example of welcome emails. You can see how beautifully they have crafted the email. Firstly, they have tried to educate the customer how the application works, and there are links to their social media accounts and powerful CTA’s and reassurance at the end. Most of the time they offer a free first ride which I don’t know why was not provided to me though. #UberIsn’tFair

2. Cart recovery emails

The Shopify study finds that almost 67.45% of online shopping carts get abandoned before the customer completes a sale. This is a clear indication that the number of your sales may only be one-third of what they could potentially be.

Lowering your cart abandonment rates is crucial to success. Though, it is certainly not possible to persuade all cart-abandoners to go through checkout and increase your conversions by three times.

However, one can recover a good number of abandoned carts via recovery email campaigns.

Here are some important aspects of a compelling recovery email that resonates with customers

• Use creative subject line creation techniques to make your customers open the email
• Craft a nice and clean, to the point emails and avoid over salesly content so that customers don’t get annoyed.
• Integrate clear and effective CTA’s and get them back to shopping

FAB cart recovery email is simple,clean and includes powerful CTA’s with well written content. FAB clearly sets the expectations with the help of the creative subjective line, beautiful design and offering free shipping and free returns . Moreover, it also includes links to social media accounts.

3. Keep the relationships alive using post purchase emails

The key to maintaining your name and brand recognition with clients is to send regular emails to customers with relevant and personalized content. It’s a good practice send post-purchase emails that offer thank you gifts or custom coupon code or anything that provides significant value to customers. You can also send them new inventory emails and product advice emails based on their past purchases so that customers keep you on top the mind. The next time a customer is looking to purchase anything, your continual presence will influence their minds, and it will not take too long for them to remember who they bought from last time.

Babiesrus are absolutely killing it with their product advice emails by helping customers solve their problems by offering tips on how to use and maintain the products. For example, If you are selling car tires online, send an email to customers on how to choose the right tires, what tires are good for a particular season and anything you think can give your customer a helping hand.

4. Target inactive customers

No matter how much efforts you put into your recovery emails, there is still a significant percentage of people who are going to ignore it anyway. Mailchimp, Awber and many other email marketing platforms provide a reports section to help you analyze how your customers are interacting with your emails.

The reason why customers start to respond less to your emails could be many. Use the relationship in the retention email to figure out where the problem lies. Like we mentioned earlier, the purpose of retention marketing is to keep the customer engaged and interested. Again, you can use polls, giveaways, and surveys and take all necessary steps to get their feedback. This will also help you understand their demands and requirements and introduce products or services they might be interested in future.

Pinkberry’s “we miss you” reminder email is pure enticement. It seduces customer’s senses by offering them a free yogurt making them rush to their nearest store.

5. Show your human side

We, humans, are emotional beings and like to be treated that way. Retention email is not about creating an outstanding sales pitch. It’s about making your customers feel special. Either you are a mortgage professional, or insurance agent or a realtor, nobody wants to see a display of your products or service 24/7. Today, customers want brands to interact with them in a more natural way. A good way to achieving that is by sending greeting cards on new years and birthdays. Moreover, offering personalized discounts on birthdays and anniversaries make customers get associated with the brands, and they continue to adhere to it.

Take this example of Boden, the brand is offering 22% discounts to its customers on account of his/her 22nd Birthday. The body content is short, straight to the point, serves clear call to actions and the over design is simple and responsive.

Conclusion

Retaining customers and building a loyal consumer base is something every brand dreams of achieving. By putting a little more effort into your email marketing campaigns, you can drive customer retention within weeks and take your sales to a whole new level.

Bonus Read – Fix Abandonment To Ramp Up Your Customer Retention. Learn how to do it