Customer retention is one of the primary ways to increase the bottom line at your agency. In fact, increasing customer retention by 5% can boost profits by 95%, according to Bain & Company.
Every agency is looking for the best ways to engage with customers in a way that promotes loyalty. This includes offering competitive prices, instituting a customer loyalty program, hiring dedicated account executives, communicating with customers in a way that fosters relationship, and more.
Each tactic requires different strategies. In this post, we’ll take a close look at email marketing and what you can do when it comes to writing effective emails to positively impact customer retention rates.
Before getting into how to revamp your email marketing strategy to promote loyalty, it’s important to talk about why you should focus on email marketing in the first place.
First and foremost, email marketing continually delivers the strongest ROI out of any other digital marketing channel. In fact, some studies report a 4400% increase in ROI or $44 for every $1 spent. Not to mention, researchers found that you have a 60-70% chance of capturing a sale from an existing customer with email marketing. That’s retention!
When push comes to shove, email marketing is a great way to connect with clients, engage customers, foster loyalty, drive sales, and build a relationship. This is evidenced by the high ROIs for various campaigns and repeat purchases from existing customers.
Not only is it important to know why email marketing is a great tool for engaging with clients in general, but it’s also great to know why it’s good for customer retention, specifically. Here are some of the top reasons:
Email marketing truly is one of the best strategies for customer retention. Now, let’s talk about email marketing strategies you need to make the process smooth sailing.
If the purpose of your email marketing campaigns is to increase customer retention, then it’s vital to send the right messages, to the right customers, at the right time.
The first step in making sure this happens is creating a customer journey map.
Your customer journey map will outline the steps your customer takes before making a purchase or a repeat purchase. Remember, gone are the days where customers enter into the top of the funnel and exit out the bottom with a one-and-done purchase. Today, there are many different parts of the funnel where your customers may need nurturing. Take the time to outline these steps and state the details of what messages will resonate with customers during different phases of the customer journey.
With regard to retention, you may consider a customer journey map that offers continued support after they make a purchase and encourages them to continue to purchase with your brand.
Not all of your customers are the same. If they were, then it would still be common practice to send mass emails to your customers.
With the help of a smart email service provider, you can create customer profiles and segment lists based on those profiles.
Step one is to collect different data on customers including demographic data, gender, purchasing patterns, location, and more. Then, segment your lists based on this information.
With your lists segmented, you can more easily target your customers with either separate emails or dynamic content.
For example, check out the following email from Emerald Street Fashion.
Emerald Street Fashion offers fashion tips, beauty tips, fun stories, information about what to do when you go out, tips on wellbeing, and interior design advice.
Imagine what a mess their email marketing would be if they included information about all those different categories in all of their messages. Instead, their marketing team can easily create customer profiles based on preferences and nurture customers along the journey based on individual interests.
You’ll also notice at the end of the email, Emerald Street Fashion offers customers an opportunity to update their preferences. With a click of a button, customers can opt-in or opt-out of any email list. By giving customers control of what content they receive, you ensure you are nurturing customers with only the content they want to receive.
With better data collection tools and smarter marketing software, personalization is not only becoming more popular in the marketing and advertising world, but it’s also a customer expectation.
Don’t believe it? Check out some of the most recent stats about personalization, amalgamated by MarTech Today:
Email marketing is no exception when it comes to the demand for personalization.
The good news is, the more effort you put in to personalizing your email messages, the better they are received. In fact, 74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement.
Again, with the help of an email service provider, personalization is easy. Tactics like keeping track of customer data with a smart analytics dashboard, building customer profiles, segmenting your lists, using dynamic content, setting up automated emails based on triggers, etc. will help you reach your most loyal customers at the right time and keep them coming back for more.
Email marketing is one of the best things you can do to boost ROI and increase retention levels. By following the steps listed above, you’ll start to see improvements in your client relationships and retention rates.
For more information on how to track your email marketing metrics, as well as all other important KPIs, check out TapClicks today. An omnichannel dashboard and reporting engine does wonders for optimizing email marketing and keeping track of all the data analytics across all marketing campaigns.
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