No matter what is happening in the ecommerce market, moving your customers from the acquired stage to engaged and finally becoming retained brand advocates is essential for an ecommerce brand’s sustainable growth.
While some “experts” might tell you that email is going the way of the dinosaur, for the time being, it remains the number one way to get in touch with your customers and motivate them to engage with your business.
There are so many possibilities to choose from with email, but to help you get started here are the top 3 things you need to do to effectively increase your customer engagement with email marketing.
Make every email rewarding
A properly configured loyalty program is one of the best ways to engage with your customers, and part of optimizing it includes incorporating it into your email strategy. Rewards programs work well with email marketing because they are designed to keep customers engaged, no matter what stage of the customer journey they are at.
Once a customer becomes a member of your rewards program you should include their program information in every email you send. This is one way of segmenting your email audience so that the content is always tailored to the individual, their goals, and their needs.
Not only can you set up workflows triggered by rewards program events and actions, but you can start including information about member’s points balances, VIP tier status, and any bonus campaigns you may be running. This way, no matter what the rest of your email content shares, it acts as a regular reminder to customers about the value they’ve already received by engaging with your brand, prompting them to take action and re-engage again and again.
Unique Vintage takes the rewarding emails experience to heart by pairing the winning power of their Devoted Darling Rewards with every email sent. Specifically calling out their customer’s points balance and showing what their next available rewards are provides valuable personalization, making the experience feel unique for each customer rather than just another email from an automated template.
Making every email a rewards-packed experience reinforces the value of your loyalty program and helps customers connect the idea of your brand with the joy of being rewarded.
Less is more when it’s value-adding
Whether you believe it or not, your customers want to hear from you. In fact, the data shows that over 60% of customers want to get an email at least once per week. While sending a mass, generic sales email to your whole customer base is a sure-fire way to get put in the junk folder, using audience segmentation to target the right audience with the right email content will ensure every message is properly received. With the right planning, segmentation can even increase your click-through-rate by over 100%.
The most important thing to remember with any email content is to make it specific to what your brand’s customer base cares about, which will build credibility by showing customers you’re the expert in your industry that they should pay attention to. Staying top-of-mind with valuable content will build trust with your audience, making you the first choice when it’s time for them to make a first or repeat purchase.
For purchasers of the Simplified By Emily Ley planners, they know they only get content in their inbox if it’s going to be something they will find valuable. This email that invites customers to a live workshop is the perfect example of how Simplified goes above and beyond to give their customers value-added content that goes beyond what they might expect from their stationery purchases.
Whatever email you send, offering a key, actionable takeaway like this will supercharge your customer engagement and make your customers value you as much as the products you sell.
Always thank your customers
After you’ve honed your email skills to close the sale you might think it’s time to relax, but that can’t be the end of the customer experience if you want to keep engagement levels high and bring customers back again and again. What you do next can make or break someone loving your brand or seeing it as just another one-off purchase.
Modifying your post-purchase emails from boilerplate, generic text to something that looks and feels like a personal thank you from your team makes customers feel like they aren’t just a number to you, but that they’re a valued member of your rewards and brand ecosystem.
Aquatic-themed clothing connoisseurs Shark Zen are big fish in the pond when it comes to thanking their customers. This email from Shark Zen founder, Billy Walsh, to their most-dedicated customers is their way of connecting with them on a very personal level. An email like this can look so personalized that it can be hard to tell when it is a one-to-one email or an automation! By thanking your customers both immediately and long after the sale, you help build emotional connections with them that can turn them into highly engaged members of your brand community.
Email is just one of the marketing channels needed to create long-term success. Find out what they are and how they can make your business thrive.
This post was written by Tim Peckover, Content Marketing Lead at Smile.io.
Smile.io is an easy-to-build loyalty app trusted by 30,000+ ecommerce brands who want to offer rewards to increase repeat purchases, strengthen customer retention, and grow powerful brand communities.
