Customer Loyalty: How to Improve It with Email Marketing
Customer loyalty is when suppliers of a service or a product resort to special measures in order to tie customers to their own company in the long term and to achieve
positive side effects.
The term customer loyalty summarizes measures that go beyond the mere customer orientation or the satisfaction of the customer. The whole thing pursues a goal: To transform
the passing customers into a regular customer.
Customers who have already purchased from you are extremely valuable. They have already shown interest in your offer and built up a certain trust. This makes it easier to
convince them of a new purchase. In comparison, winning new customers is significantly more labour-intensive and cost-intensive.
The challenge is to stay in touch with new and one-time customers and build a long-term customer relationship. The goal is to guide each customer to the next purchase using
relevant content. A perfect tool for this is e-mail. E-mail marketing is highly efficient and personal at the same time. With an ROI of nearly 40, it offers unbeatable value for money. Since you can reach the recipients directly in their own mailbox, their undivided attention is ensured.
As an e-mail marketing practitioner I show in this article how to use e-mails to attract existing customers and stimulate repeat purchases.
Collect email addresses
The foundation of successful email marketing is a list of contacts who are interested in your offer. The addresses of the customers who have already made a purchase with you,
are already available to you. You may send these customers newsletters with similar offers.
In order to increase your circle of recipients, you should not limit yourself to this group, but rather collect additional addresses. There is a lot to consider. The purchase of e-mail addresses is generally possible but you cannot be sure that the recipients are interested in your offer or that the addresses have been collected in a legally compliant manner.
For the sending of newsletters the consent of the recipient is generally necessary. The safest and most widely used method is the so-called double opt-in. The recipient must confirm his newsletter subscription via a link sent to his by e-mail.
In principle, you should provide a double opt-in registration form on your website and in your social media channels. Even at events themselves, you can point to your
newsletter to encourage participants to sign up. It is useful to provide additional incentives for subscribers. By offering newsletter subscribers a discount on the first purchase
or regular special offers, you can enlarge your list in an instant.
The recipe for success: Automated emails
Email marketing is not just newsletters. Particularly important for customer loyalty are automated emails, which are sent based on the behaviour of the customers or fixed
occasions. They are highly relevant because they are always sent with a time-line reference, ie with due consideration for customer lifecycle stage.
Mandatory is a welcome email, which is sent after each new shop registration or newsletter registration. This forms the basis for every new customer relationship. Here you
have the opportunity to greet the customer and take advantage of initial customer retention measures, such as exclusive coupon codes.
Birthday emails are also very popular. These can easily be set up to be sent automatically on the customer's birthday and personalized with a personalized gift. Send your
customers something that they are really looking forward to, such as a personal gift certificate.
Less active customers can be especially well addressed with automated emails. Set up reactivation emails that will be sent after a certain period of inactivity, eg 60 days
after the last purchase. This will attract the attention of customers and may be able to attract additional purchases with additional incentives.
Ask for feedback
A crucial time to get your customers back is just after the first activity. The experience is still fresh for the customer at this time. He may even feel the need to share his experiences. You should take advantage of that. Now is the time to ask customers for their opinion on the activity. Positive experiences are strengthened in this way, while you get the chance to solve negative experiences.
Therefore, set up an automated feedback email that will be sent shortly after the activity. The feedback will help you improve your offer. It also gives customers a voice, which strengthens the relationship with your company. To get more feedback, you can offer a reward for submitting reviews, such as a discount on the next purchase.
Personalized recommendations
One of the most important success factors in email marketing is relevance. This means you have to meet the interests, needs and tastes of your customers. Of course, no
customer is like the other one.
It's best to use existing data from your system to personalize your mailings. This will help you make recommendations for activities that may be interesting. Keep in mind,
however, that events and products are often booked or purchased as gifts. It may happen that the booked activity was not relevant for the customer. Therefore always give your recipients the possibility to adjust their interests or to specify them.