More times than not, email marketing is solely thought of as a strategy used to complement an organization’s customer acquisition efforts; not as a retention tool. And although it’s easy to understand why this misconception is so commonly made (especially in B2B environments), today’s competitive climate has little tolerance for ignorance. Now that may seem a bit harsh, and maybe it is, but in order to be successful among the most disloyal generation of consumers to-date, businesses have no choice but to swallow a few ‘hard truths’ about their existing email marketing efforts.
According to Emarketer, 58% of consumers said they open emails from businesses they are already a customer of, and of that 58%, 53% said those emails impact their buying decisions. Meaning, organizations that are currently not focusing much, if any, of their email marketing efforts on customer retention are losing out on major cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. The good news, however, is that all is not lost. There are numerous email campaigns that marketers can quickly and easily implement to not only attract, convert and close customers, but delight and retain them as well.
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Using Closed-Loop Marketing to Create Targeted List Segmentations
Closed-loop marketing is a term you’re probably already familiar with, but for the sake of clarification, it can be described as a marketing process that relies heavily on data and insights to determine the best course of action in a given scenario. As it relates to email marketing, organizations can use closed-loop reporting to leverage historical consumer data, like purchase history or offer downloads, to create intelligent and targeted list segmentations. By doing so, marketers are able to use a very specific set of criteria to guide their content creation efforts, and ultimately deliver more relevant, engaging and compelling content to their customers.
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Using Incentives to Reactivate Existing Customers
We’d all be lying if we said we weren’t motivated by incentives. Any time the words ‘free’, ‘sale’ or ‘discount’ come across our line of sight our ears perk up, our mouths water and we get all too excited at the prospect of spending less money on shit we don’t actually need. So why would our approach to email marketing be any different? Using various incentives like free assessments, bundle pricing, or free trials for new product lines are great ways up-sell and cross-sell existing customers while still making them feel as if they’re capitalizing on an exclusive offer personalized just for them.
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Announcement Campaigns
We’ve all heard the saying ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’, right? Well, the same goes for your customers. As much as you’d like to think your customers are proactively researching what’s new in your business, the truth is unless you tell them they’ll never know. Creating an announcement email campaign that provides existing customers with insight into the new and exciting things your doing is a great way to keep your organization top of mind. From monthly newsletters and product updates to upcoming events and the addition of new internal team members, email announcement campaigns work to create a sense of inclusivity that promotes, and encourages, customer loyalty.
The cost of acquiring new customers is far greater than sustaining existing business, and as we move deeper into the ‘age of the customer’, customer retention will only continue to become a growing focus area for business leaders. There’s no doubt that acquisition is absolutely critical to surviving in today’s digitally-driven landscape, but customer retention is what will allow businesses to thrive. By placing an added emphasis on expanding upon existing marketing capabilities, and focusing more of creating email marketing campaigns that work to delight and retain customers, modern content marketers will be able to significantly increase their customers’ lifetime value.
Interested in learning if your marketers are performing to email marketing best practices? Request a complimentary inbound assessment.